Yesterday, during the session “Create!,” 15-year-old Dong Woo Jang delighted us with his tale of bow-making. I caught up with him after to discuss. Why did you choose bows? I just stumbled upon it. When I was a boy, I wasn’t allowed to play computer games, so I just went around looking for something to […]
Kibwe Tavares combines his training as an architect with his love of storytelling and animation to create futuristic 3D animated/live action films with social and political depth, creating incredibly detailed, vivid, and kinetic visual environments to entice audiences. His short film, Robots of Brixton, distributed on the internet, won a special jury prize at Sundance. And his […]
Where does education go from here? On Tuesday, Sugata Mitra accepted the 2013 TED Prize and offered a bold wish for the world: that we encourage children to explore questions about our world in self-organized learning environments. He proposed the founding of a School in the Cloud based in India, and encouraged TED community members, […]
The growing desert Allan Savory has dedicated his life to studying management of grasslands. And if that doesn’t sound exciting, just wait, because it touches on the deepest roots of climate change and the future of the planet. “The most massive, tsunami, perfect storm is bearing down on us,” is the grim beginning to Savory’s talk. […]
Architect Michael Green presents an interesting riddle: why are buildings made of wood only a few stories high when trees found in nature are remarkable for their height? Speaking in session 7 of TED2013, Green shares his deep love of wood — which he first discovered from his grandfather, a woodworker who taught him to […]
Pedrito Martinez is back onstage at TED, and this time he’s brought his band, including the dynamite Ariacne Trujillo on keys. “They have almost a psychic communication,” says TED music advisor, Bill Bragin, a longtime fan who describes taking guests who visit New York City to go see Martinez play at the local Cuban restaurant […]
Have you checked your email today? Your finances? What about your energy use? Alex Laskey thinks that with just a shift in attitude toward our energy use, we can all save a lot. Laskey introduces an experiment he ran with his team at Opower. People received one of three different messages on their doors about […]
Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao were the winners in British Columbia of the 2012 Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada. After a visit to a Vancouver waste station, Wang and Yao were blown away by the enormous amount of waste in plastic. Plastic is very hard to sort for recycling — all types have a similar density. Says Wang, “Plastics are useful, but […]
We all know sustainability is essential to our future, in vague terms. But what does that mean for the choices we make every day? In other words: paper or plastic? For one thing, design consultant Leyla Acaroglu wants you to think beyond choosing a material for your grocery tote. Instead, she encourages us to think […]
It sounds like music that could be pumping from the sound system of a packed nightclub. But these electronic-tinged sounds actually come from the mouth of one man, Wang Li, a master mouth harp musician, as he plays the kouxiang. In session 7 of TED2013, Li gives the audience a taste of his sonic stylings. Raised in […]
Ron Finley describes himself as a “renegade gardener,” and he’s here to tell us all about his home, in South Central, or South Los Angeles, as city planners attempted to rebrand the area. Whatever you call it, the truth is that the area comprises liquor stores, fast food and vacant lots, and it epitomizes the […]
It’s no longer possible to ignore the effect humans have — on the environment, on each other and on the Internet. In that spirit, this session brings together people with big ideas on responsible design, creation, consumption and eating. From a renegade gardener to energy software maker, this session takes into mind that it’s not […]
The Korean education system is famed for its high levels of scholastic achievement, but as 15-year-old Seoul native Dong Woo Jang professes, not everyone responds to this kind of “pressure cooking” in the same way. His response to the high-pressure environment was an unusual one: to make wooden bows. Why? He’s not sure. Perhaps all […]
When Jack Andraka was 15 years old, he didn’t know what a pancreas was. Now, this teenager has created a test for the early detection of pancreatic cancer that, while still in the preliminary stages, looks promising. So how did he become an health innovator? Andraka tells the story during Session 6 of TED2013. “Have […]
Kate Stone loves paper, and she loves technology, so she resolved to combine the two, which she shows us in a magical demonstration on the TED stage. But first, three key moments that got her to where she is today: 1. An obsession with technology: As a child, she hid switches behind the wall in her bedroom, […]
Recently, the New York Times released Snow Fall, an extraordinary interactive experience that was heralded by many as a milestone in interactive narrative. The experience was enhanced by extra media, as had many projects before. But unlike previous projects the blending was seamless and the whole experience felt completely natural. TED invited the designer, Jacky Myint, […]