Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, journeying through her childhood and family history and into the worlds of physics and chance, looking for hints of where her own creativity comes from. It’s a wild ride with a surprise ending. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 22:52.) Watch Amy Tan’s talk […]Read more
From the blog of TED’s musical director, Thomas Dolby: I’ve done a remix of Radiohead’s gorgeous ‘Nude’ from the Rainbows album. This was not solicited by the band. They are running a remix contest for their single, and I just went to iTunes and bought the ’stems’ to the song for $5 just like everybody […]
Dr. Ernest Madu runs the Heart Institute of the Caribbean in Kingston, Jamaica, where he proves that — with careful design, smart technical choices, and a true desire to serve — it’s possible to offer world-class health care in the developing world. Listen for some eye-opening statistics on heart disease, which is as ruthless a […]
Law professor Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization. By disrupting traditional economic production, copyright law and established competition, they’re paving the way for a new set of economic laws, where empowered individuals are put on a level playing field with industry giants. (Recorded July […]
Tod Machover of MIT’s Media Lab invented the musical technology behind Guitar Hero, and here he talks about what’s coming next. Listen for some brand-new ways to interface with music — to play it, compose it, enjoy it. Machover then introduces Dan Ellsey, a composer with cerebral palsy who uses some new tools to write […]
When photographer Edward Burtynsky won the 2005 TED Prize, he wished that the TED community would help him teach kids how to live green. This month, his web cartoon series for kids, The Greens, turns 1 year old — and celebrates 3 million page views! Written and produced by WGBH in Boston (with partners including […]
Photo: Shaul Schwarz/Reportage, for The New York Times. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company The New York Times Magazine recently tagged along with Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase and got an arresting look at the impact of mobile phones in the Third World. Chipchase, a “user anthropologist,” spoke at TED in 2007 to talk about […]
This month’s National Geographic has a great story on biomimetics, or biomimicry, the art of studying nature’s engineering. If you’re inspired by this story, check out these TEDTalks for more on biomimicry. Clicking on a name (or an image above) will launch the TEDTalks player >> + Scientist Robert Full (whose work with geckos is […]
Johnny Lee demos his amazing Wii Remote hacks, bending the $40 game part so it powers a digital whiteboard, a multitouch display and a head-mounted 3-D viewer. A multi-ovation demo from TED2008. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 05:40.) Watch Johnny Lee’s demo on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment […]
2006 TED Prize winner Larry Brilliant is profiled in the latest Rolling Stone. The long piece talks about Brilliant’s amazing life, from the hippie days of the 1960s, to his time in India helping eradicate smallpox, to his current job as head of Google.org, charged with spending some of Google’s money to solve global health […]
The beautiful film that helped launch the Encyclopedia of Life has been nominated for a 2008 Webby Award. Created by Avenue A | Razorfish, the film is just one outcome of E.O. Wilson’s 2007 TED Prize wish: to “help create the key tool that we need to inspire preservation of Earth’s biodiversity: the Encyclopedia of […]
This morning, TED.com received three nominations for the 2008 Webby Awards — for Best Navigation/Structure, Best Visual Design – Function, and Podcasts. You can visit the Webby Awards’ People’s Voice site to vote for TED.com and for your other favorite finalists. (Voting requires registration — we need your support.)
In Al Gore’s brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of “generational mission” — the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement — to set it right. […]