As congratulations for Al Gore, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, pour in from the TED community, we asked people who saw Gore’s TED2006 presentations to talk about the impact his talks had on them. This is the second in the series. When I facilitate a gathering of wild tiger experts next month in India, Al […]
Paul MacCready‘s first try for the Kremer Prize for human-powered flight, in 1976, was his Gossamer Condor, a Mylar-covered aircraft powered by a very, very tenacious bicyclist. Filmmaker Ben Shedd followed MacCready’s team as they designed and built this elegant plane. Shedd’s resulting documentary, The Flight of the Gossamer Condor, won an Academy Award in […]
The photographer Kristen Ashburn, whose unforgettable images of the human impact of AIDS in Africa made a powerful impact at TED a couple years back, has just opened her first public exhibition in New York. It’s stunning. For a taste, take a few minutes to watch this. Better yet, check it out in person at […]
Fifteen months after disseminating hints at TEDGLOBAL in Oxford, XPrize‘s Peter Diamandis and his posse are getting ready to annouce their plans for the first Rocket Racing League (RRL) races. The RRL is a racing competition akin to Nascar, with cars replaced by rocket-powered aircrafts called X-Racers that will zip around a virtual track in […]
This morning, Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson offered the first public look at the rocketship expected to make space tourism a reality. The mock-up — revealed at WIRED/NextFest in New York — is based on the design of SpaceShipOne, the Ansari X-Prize-winning craft designed by Burt Rutan (TED2006). (Watch for Rutan’s TEDTalk later this fall.) […]
Even if there weren’t two TEDsters in the running, we’d be keeping a close watch on the race to succeed Kofi Annan as U.N. Secretary General, when he steps down at year’s end. One in a series of informal votes takes place today at UN Headquarters. In today’s New York Times, an Op/ED piece titled […]
San Francisco investor Peter A. Thiel (co-founder of PayPal) is putting $3.5 million into the antiaging research pioneered by TED speaker Aubrey de Grey (see past posts on him). The money will come in annual installments of $500,000 over the next three years for a pilot project, plus matching money for every dollar donated by […]
For a long time, TEDPrize winner Cameron Sinclair has encapsulated his philosophy in a slogan that recently turned into the title of his inspiring book: "Design like you give a damn" (see Cameron’s speech on TEDtalks – or if you are in New York see him live this coming Wednesday 20 at the NYPL). Now, […]
To TEDsters, Google.org – the philanthropic arm of Google – is mostly known for the inspiring speech its director Larry Brilliant gave at TED last february, outlining a very compelling plan for an Internet-based system to rapidly detect disease outbreaks (see the original post from the conference or Brilliant’s TEDprize speech in video). A story […]
<!––>TEDPrize winner, Cameron Sinclair, and Architecture for Humanity co-founder, Kate Stohr, will be in NYC next week for the celebration of the launch of their book – Design Like You Give a Damn. They’re being interviewed by John Hockenberry at the New York Public Library on September 20th. A similar event is being planned for […]
One of the "Ten Faces of Innovation" described in Tom Kelley’s recent book is that of the cross-pollinator, who "can create something new and better through an unexpected juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts". Tom is the general manager of TEDPrize supporter IDEO. During a recent talk he mentioned as an example of cross-pollination […]
Elevation Partners, a private-equity group of which U2 singer, make-poverty-history activist and TEDprize winner Bono is one of the 6 partners, has bought a "significant minority stake" (rumored to be of more than 40 percent, and worth US$ 250 to 300 million) in Forbes Media, which includes Forbes magazine and Forbes.com. Today’s International Herald Tribune […]
From Wired‘s July issue: A charming Q + A with 2006 TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant, recently appointed Director of the $1B Google Foundation. Along with solving some of the world’s biggest problems, Brilliant cites another ambitious goal: changing the famous Google mantra ‘Don’t be evil’ to "Do something really, really, really good."
Could someone with the proper scientific credentials please stand up and tell us whether Aubrey de Grey’s claim that we can defeat aging has any credibility? That’s the challenge put forth by the MIT Technology Review last summer – and a few people did stand up. The dispute is not resolved yet, but the controversy […]
At TED2006, we devoted an unusual amount of our “interstitial” time to a single advertiser, showing three different ads from Honda, all brilliant in their own way. Mind you, Honda has no affiliation with TED. We just like their ads. And we’re not the only ones. Two of the Honda spots — Choir and Impossible […]
TEDPrize winner Cameron Sinclair is having a very good year. Fresh on the heels of both the TEDPrize and the RISD/Target Emerging Designer Award, tonight he’ll receive a WIRED Rave Award, recognizing him and his wife/Architecture for Humanity co-founder Kate Stohr for innovation in architecture. WIRED is also raving about other TED speakers, who’ll be […]