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 […]
Play at http://www.thehumantype.org. Director’s statement: “An online application that allows strangers to talk to each other using a new typeset alphabet made entirely out of people. A tribute to typography, craftsmanship and relations between humans, people.” — Giuliano Garonzi Production: Peter Lundgren – T-Post – http://www.tpostmag.com Concept / Direction / Design: Giuliano Garonzi – http://www.giulianogaronzi.com […]
Click to watch the session-opening animation The promise of a globalized world is that we can talk to anyone, anywhere in the world. But how do we engage with people we’ve never met in person? Can you talk to strangers? Should you? Session 8 at TEDGlobal 2012 delves into one of the hardest problems of human […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson. Via the TED Fellows blog: Usman Riaz closed out the Wednesday sessions of TEDGlobal with an extraordinary performance on his percussive guitar, delighting the audience. Then he was joined onstage by his hero, Preston Reed, the inventor of the style, for a fast-moving and poignant duet, bringing down the house. Here’s […]
By now we’re all pretty familiar with the theory of presentations. Slides need to be bold, beautiful. They need to go easy on the amount of text they’re asking the audience to compute in a hurry. Speakers should speak to slides but not read slavishly from them. Still, sometimes a presentation comes along to show […]
TEDGlobal Fellow Usman Riaz is an innovative musician who plays with vim and verve. He’s taken to the stage to enchant the assembled crowd with a virtuoso round of percussive guitar. But that’s not all. After one song, out comes the guy who invented percussive guitar playing– Riaz’s personal hero–Preston Reed. Um. His playing has the audience […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson The old adage goes: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. However, speakers during Day 2 of TEDGlobal 2012—the annual conference where thinkers in a variety of fields present their ideas—made it clear that there’s a lot out there in need of fixing. Giving a range of examples — from the […]
Susan Solomon is an advocate for more research into a promising treatment for many conditions: human stem cells. “They are our bodies’ own repair kits, because they are pluripotent — they can morph into any cells in our bodies.” We can use them to model and study disease, but she hopes for much more. She hopes, and […]
Hassine Labaied is here to talk wind. Specifically, wind power. “Wind is clean, free, perpetually renewable and widely distributed across the globe,” he says. “Yet the current main wind technology, the turbine, is still based on a windmill system.” And existing turbines are terribly inefficient: 70% of wind power is simply lost, while the devices are also expensive […]
“Fifteen years ago, it was widely assumed that the vast majority of brain development takes place in the first few years of life,” says professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, who heads up the Developmental Group at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. “Back then we didn’t have the ability to look inside the living human brain and track development […]
Fuel without fossils Jonathan Trent set out to understand if there was a way to develop biofuels that would compete with fossil fuels, but not compete with agriculture. His proposed solution is extraordinary: Make an enclosure with plastic and let algae grow in sunlight in the ocean, taking in wastewater from cities. Generated heat will be […]
Vicki Arroyo knows a thing or two about climate change. A lawyer by training, she is the executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center, which works on policies to help government leaders (and the world) deal with climate change’s inevitable disruptions. But that’s not the only reason she’s familiar with climate change. As she tells us, she also […]
Today, we begin to write a whole new chapter for the TED Prize. There are three key shifts: + Historically, the TED Prize was awarded to individuals who then made a wish. Starting in 2013, it will be awarded to individuals with a big wish already in mind. + Individuals can self-nominate or nominate someone […]
Brief: People are similar to any good idea. It goes through an adventure to become mature. Director’s statement: “We drew a character with a massive pile of hair containing bits of his world. We see bits and pieces of his widening and deepening life until we reach his older self.’ – Hobson-Chant Direction and Illustration: […]
Click to watch the session-opening animation The balance between “long-term” and “short-term” has become a critical focal point of discussion in many fields, from the economy to the environment. In fact, accusing someone of short-term thinking is probably the quickest way to start a brawl. In this session, we attempt to focus on the far-off, […]