Wayne McGregor bounds onto stage wearing a tracksuit. “I’m passionate about creativity,” says the choreographer excitedly. “And it’s something you can teach. You can find out something about your own cognitive habits and use that as a point of departure to misbehave beautifully.” McGregor, who runs his own company, Random Dance, is here to choreograph and […]
Ruby Wax bounds onto the stage with a beaming smile and a glint in her eye. Then she says firmly, “One in four people have mental illness.” She looks down at the audience mischievously. She counts out. “You, sir, with the weird teeth. It’s you.” She points behind him. “That whole row isn’t right. Hi. […]
A professor with schizophrenia Elyn Saks has chronic schizophrenia, and she is a professor of law, psychology and psychiatry at USC. She might have spent her life in the back ward of a hospital, but that’s not what happened. She starts by telling of the time when Dr. White, her doctor after she graduated from law school, was getting […]
Brief: An idea multiplies and becomes open when you play with it. Director’s statement: “I like to bring out the growth of inspiration. How a new idea inspires others to think differently and let their mind generate ideas.” — Kim Demane CREDITS: Direction, Illustration and Animation: Kim Demane http://www.kimdemane.se/ Music: Lili Labass Agency: WE ARE […]
A reformed computational neuroscientist, professor Read Montague takes the stage and admits he’s nervous. Then he asks the audience to put their hands up if they think they have a behavioral superpower. “Oh! I actually see hands! TED really is a superconference.” Montague is here to talk about people, relationships, and brains. As he tells […]
Click to watch the session-opening animation We’re going through a revolution is neuroscience and psychology, gaining new insights into how the brain works, and what happens when parts go wrong. All that insight is producing applications in a crucial area: understanding mental illness. And that understanding is one that holds the promise of removing the […]
“I’ve never seen color and I don’t know what color looks like. I come from a grayscale world,” says artist Neil Harbisson, to gasps from the audience. Yet this is not an “oh me miserum” story. Instead, Harbisson is here to tell us that in 2003, he started a collaborative project to create an electronic eye to […]
Think about the things you use every day — and about the people who make them. Leslie Chang is a journalist who has spent years in China to talk to the workers who make the products we use, voices that have been missing from much of the discussion about labor, global markets and exploitation. “This […]
Gerard Senehi is a performer of tiny miracles or, if you’re looking for a more formal job title, a mentalist. A mentalist is someone who blows people’s minds by doing things that just can’t be explained through science or reason and Gerard is exactly that. Be it his hands-off approach to smoking a cigarette, his […]
Anthropologist and academic Gabriella Coleman starts her talk with a simple-sounding question: “Who is Anonymous?” She promptly confesses that even after “exhilarating and extremely frustrating” years of studying the group, she still finds this question difficult to answer. First of all, it’s not an organization with one or even a few leaders at the helm. It’s a […]
What’s going wrong with democracy? Iavan Krastev is a political scientist to speak about crisis in Europe. Not, in his words, an inspiring topic. And he’s here to talk about some of the problems with openness, in contrast to most of the talks. “You people in the church of TED,” says Krastev, “are very optimistic. You believe […]
As curator Chris Anderson says, politicians don’t generally turn up on the TED stage. This year, there are two in a row, as Alex Salmond is followed by Malte Spitz, a member of the Green Party in Germany. “A mobile phone can change your life and give you individual freedom,” says Spitz. “With a mobile phone you […]
In this taste of TEDGlobal, Massimo Banzi, the inventor of Arduino, offers an inspiring word on open-source creativity: “You don’t need anyone’s permission to create something great.” Watch Massimo’s TEDTalk >>
Brief: Stylistic, symbolic and metaphoric forms creating a visual poem about Radical Openness. Director’s statement: “In our shades of openness introduction, we tried to hint at some of the factors we are culturally faced with today. The ever watching eye of both corporations and government, the secrets behind closed doors, and a continual mistrust of […]
Alex Salmond is interested in the role of small countries in the world. And, “As the leader of a small country that’s had a big impact on the world, it’s something of a specialist subject of mine.” Indeed! Salmond was the First Minister of Scotland. He points to a remarkable moment at the height of the […]
Click to watch this session’s opening animation Too often, we view “openness” as an unmitigated Good Thing. Yet, as we’ve seen up close over the past decade or so, transparency comes with consequences. Reality is neither black nor white, and until we can learn to take a nuanced view of the problems with which we are […]