An overhead sculpture of cut paper that looks like an intricately woven cloud. An undulating shopping mall designed like a wave. An apartment complex that emulates the beauty of the local peach blossom trees. These are the kind of things that architect, interior designer and artist Yu “Jordy” Fu creates. Fu, now of the firm Marques and Jordy, […]
You think your food tastes good, but food inventor Barb Stuckey thinks you could be doing better. In her book, Taste What You’ve Been Missing, Stuckey explores the science of what, exactly, what makes food taste good — and what doesn’t. Which brings us today to: Uuuuumami! (That’s oo-ma-mee.) What is umami? That rich, brothy […]
Jinsop Lee is here at TED to ask a very important question: Why is sex so damn good? The audience laughs, but the playful designer is making a serious point. Great sex, and great design, is about the five senses and how and when we use them. Lee tells us the story of a university challenge […]
The rise of droids Andrew McAfee starts his TED2013 talk by making a forecast: “In the world that we’re creating very quickly, we’re going to see more and more things that look like science fiction and fewer and fewer things that look like jobs.” It’s clear, he says, that big technology-driven changes in employment are […]
Martin Villeneuve’s Mars et Avril is a luscious sci-fi film, set in Montreal 50 years in future, where the subway line takes you straight to Mars. It’s a dreamy love story in which the acting is top-notch, the shots are stunning and the visual effects unreal. And Villeneuve made it all for $2.3 million. To put that in perspective, […]
Once you dream, you have to do. The speakers in Session 6 have spent their careers giving form to ideas. They are makers, builders, artists and implementers — all with fascinating ideas about what it means to be a creative person. The speakers who appeared in this session. Click on their name to read a […]
On Monday on the TED Fellows stage, Safwat Saleem made the crowd roar and squirm with his art – satirical and profane posters and animated shorts skewering racism, the absurdity of politics, petty dishonesty and general stupidity. In a word, bullshit. Here at TED2013, he’s launching a new project, called “Pardon Me, but WTF?” – […]
“The TED Salon in Seoul was lit up by this performer, by her extraordinary passion for her music,” says TED curator Chris Anderson by way of introduction. He’s referring to the Talent Search auditions held in 14 cities around the world that provided the conference with 33 speakers this year. And in particular, he’s talking […]
Last time we saw Stewart Brand on the TED stage was in 2010, in his debate with Mark Z. Jacobson over whether the world needs nuclear energy. Brand, perhaps surprisingly, gave a passionate pro argument. But today he’s here for a very different — and potentially very controversial — purpose. Extinction is not just death, […]
Taylor Wilson graduated from high school in May. And Popular Science has already dubbed him “The Boy who Played with Fusion” and Forbes has suggested that he may just be “The Bill Gates of Energy.” Wilson first received attention at the age of 14, after building a nuclear fusion reactor he’d dreamed up in his parents’ garage. He spoke at TED2012 […]
“Let’s talk about what’s in our heads and how to get it out,” says Mary Lou Jepsen as she begins her talk at TED2013. Jepsen, a display engineer, recently had brain surgery. Afterward she faced a stigma: “Are you still smart? If not, can you make yourself smart again?” Well, her surgery gave her a […]
The cofounder of PayPal, Elon Musk has become one of his generation’s most aggressive, not to mention successful, entrepreneurs. As CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors and CEO and CTO of SpaceX, his interests clearly lie in transforming transportation and creating an economy built on sustainable energy. Now he takes the TED stage to tell us more. First, he talks about […]
Brothers Rich + Tone Talauega are choreographers whose energy is so powerful one performance makes the whole room seem to vibrate. This morning at TED, with the help of music producer Keith Harris, they unleash an eclectic menagerie of dance forms that meld martial arts, hip-hop and classical dance. The intensity is palpable across the […]
Before you can create a new world, you have to imagine new possibilities. The speakers in this session are the visionaries who propose that which couldn’t be seen before, and suggest new paths that not only haven’t been traveled yet — but haven’t been thought of. Here are the speakers in this session. Click their […]
“When I was 14 years old, I had low self-esteem,” yo-yo champion BLACK begins his talk during session 4 of TED2013. “Then one day, I bought a yo-yo.” The first trick he tried — well, it didn’t work. But after a week of practice, he started to get somewhere. He remembers, “I thought, ‘The yo-yo […]
Larry Lessig has been referenced twice this morning, first by Wikihouse’s Alastair Parvin and secondly by the musician Amanda Palmer. So it seems only right and proper that the Harvard Law professor should round off this session of TED2013. He’s here to talk about Lesterland, a fictional land with a population of 311 million people of […]