A new word for a new profession Laura Snyder begins with a scene from June 24, 1833. It’s a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elderly man stands up to make a comment. It’s Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He stands up and demands, “You must stop calling yourselves Natural Philosophers.” He […]
Sarah Slean has made eight albums, the latest of which is a double album, Land & Sea, featuring original scores composed for a 21-piece string orchestra. She hasn’t brought quite that many musicians with her to TEDGlobal but together with the local Cairn String Quartet she starts off with a quiet piece for piano, a string quartet […]
Brief: Radical Openness through open source motion graphics. Welcome to be re-used and remixed. Director’s statement: “Motion graphic animations based on colors, patterns and schemes. Project these onto various surfaces which break the light coming from the projector. Think mirrors, glass, water etc. All the moving images we use to build our films are available […]
Click to view (and remix) the session-opening animation Progress comes, often, from forging ahead, striking out in a direction and discovering the unknown. But sometimes it comes from looking at a familiar problem, or a familiar solution, and looking at it in a new way. In this session we’ll look at a variety of familiar […]
The director of the Design Museum in London, Deyan Sudjic arrives onstage with a confession. “Designers have a tendency to answer the question they haven’t been asked,” he says. As such, he’s going to overlook the theme of the session, “The Upside of Transparency,” and instead focus on other aspects of the term. After all, […]
Heather Brooke starts her talk by telling us a fairy tale. It’s a tale of children, scolded for daring to question the authority of their parents. Then a man comes to town and shares some secret documents stolen from the parents and revealing — shock! — that the parents are terribly badly behaved themselves. It’s […]
Everyone can use technology. Everyone. Marc Goodman starts, cheerily, by saying, “I study the future of crime and terrorism. And quite frankly I’m afraid.” He want to believe that technology will be the utopia, as many hope. But he’s spent his life in law enforcement around the world, and that has given him a perspective […]
As the US’s first Deputy CTO, Beth Noveck founded the White House Open Government Initiative, which developed administration policy on transparency, participation and collaboration. She starts her talk by reminding us that in the old days, the White House was literally an open house. At the beginning of the 19th century, John Quincy Adams met a local […]
From Bihar to the World Bank Sanjay Pradhan grew up in Bihar, India’s poorest state. He came home one day, at 6 years old, to find a cart of sweets at the front door. He and his brothers greedily dug in — but when his father came home, he was livid. Those sweets, it turns […]
A list of regrets Jane McGonigal is a gamer, so she likes to have goals and special missions. For this talk, her goal is to increase the lifespan of everyone in the audience by 7.5 minutes. Our secret mission: How will we spend these bonus minutes? (To back that up, she has math! Well, science, that […]
Jason McCue takes the stage wearing a T-shirt reading “Free Yulia in Ukraine.” It’s a reference to the 2011 imprisonment of Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko and a hint of what’s to come in his talk: a discussion of terrorism and the law. “We are at war with a new form of terrorism,” he says. The traditional […]
Geo-strategist and author Parag Khanna has put together this session, which promises to be enlightening, thought-provoking, and perhaps just a little bit scary. Read our Q&A with Khanna to get his take on why he’s invited these speakers to the TED stage. And, get ready. In this session: Sanjay Pradhan is vice president of the World […]
Snap judgements of others Amy Cuddy starts by asking us to pay attention to what we’re doing with our bodies. Are our shoulders hunched? Are we trying to not bump into the person next to us? Are we sprawled out? “We’re fascinated with body language,” she says. We dissect and analyze and judge people, and […]
TEDGlobal loves Marco Tempest. For the TEDGlobal stage he’s bringing something brand-new. (Behind him — the playable titles spelling out his name.) For the trick, he straps on a pair of augmented reality goggles wired up to the big screen, so we can see what he sees — and a little bit more. Nothing makes […]
What is your reputation? “If someone asked you for the three words that would sum up your reputation, what would you say?” Rachel Botsman asks us. “The answer to this question will become profoundly important in an age where reputation will become your most important asset.” She introduces us to Sebastian, a host on Airbnb, […]
“12 years ago I cofounded Zipcar,” says Robin Chase. “Zipcar buys cars and parks them through dense metropolitan areas for people to use by the hour or day instead of owning their own cars.” Each Zipcar replaced 17 personal cars and caused drivers to drive 80% less. But Chase isn’t here to wax nostalgic. She’s here […]