Click to watch the session-opening animation The world is becoming global — that’s an idea that has been around for many years now. But what effects will that have? What does it mean for the small countries? And the large ones? And just how global is it anyway? Session 4 at TEDGlobal explores these questions […]
When you hear the word “innovation,” an image may pop to mind of an intrepid inventor toiling in isolation — Benjamin Franklin flying his kite in a storm, or the Wright Brothers testing their flying machine on the beaches of Kitty Hawk. But during the first day of TEDGlobal 2012, speaker after speaker touted the […]
Those of us of a certain age remember when Macy Gray first rasped her way onto the scene. The 1999 release of her debut album, On How Life Is, together with its insidiously catchy single “I Try,” sparked a multi-award-winning career which has seen Gray sell over 15 million units. A somewhat unlikely pop star, Gray […]
A story of fear In 1819, off the coast of Chile, 20 American sailors watch their whaleship, the Essex, fill with seawater. It had been struck by a sperm whale. They took to their small boats, with limited equipment and little food and water. This story, from Stove by a Whale, the narrative of Owen […]
Eddie Obeng runs Pentacle, an online business school where he teaches “new world management.” He also has more energy than seems quite feasible in one human being. Soon after his arrival onstage, it’s clear why he won the unofficial award in rehearsals for “most words per minute.” Hold tight. This is quite a trip. Obeng starts off […]
Science and perception Beau Lotto starts with a game. He asks the audience, “Read what you see,” and he shows what looks like words with holes missing. Wh a e ou rea in ? The audience reads whole words (What are you reading?), but Lotto points out we’re not really reading the letters. Instead we’re […]
Shimon Schocken is a professor and founding dean of the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science at IDC Herzliya in Tel Aviv. He starts out with some of his life story, introducing us to his grandfather, Salman Schocken, who dropped out of school aged 14 to help feed the family. He went on to found “a […]
Schools out of reach Daphne Koller is a third-generation PhD, and in her own words, she is certainly one of the lucky people. Most people, of course, are not. In some parts of the world, quality education is simply not available. In South Africa, for example, the higher education system was designed during Apartheid, and […]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai5eSpiQHU4&w=560&h=315%5D Mission statement: Ideas are born in different shapes, colors and ways to build our shape-shifting world. Director’s statement: “The idea is to build an abstract paper world made of boxes. Out of each box an idea is born and spreads across the world. A side lifts up and voilà! Out comes the ‘idea.’” […]
Click to watch the session-opening animation It’s a truism that everything we know or think is the result of our past and our previous experiences. Yet it’s on these building blocks that we build our chances of achieving real progress and change. In this session, we wanted to introduce some of the world’s pre-eminent educators. […]
Photo: Ryan Lash Remember Y2K? Jamie Drummond starts by taking us back to the most anticipated year in human history: 2000. “Remember that? Y2k, the dotcom bubble… the deep-down inchoate yearning that our millennium moment should mean more than a two and some zeros.” Incredibly, he says, our leaders agreed, and as a result produced […]
It’s really difficult to describe Kathy Hinde‘s work in any kind of elegant or simple way. Saying that she mixes live video and audio doesn’t really cover it. At the moment, she is on the TEDGlobal stage, projecting video of birds onto the inside of an old upright piano. It’s as weird as it sounds […]
Born in London in 1950, Antony Gormley is one of Britain’s most treasured artists. Winner of the Turner Prize, the South Bank Prize, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture, he is an OBE, an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, an honorary doctor of the University of Cambridge and fellow of Trinity and […]
Catarina Mota has many friends. One of her friend’s fathers, when her friend was a kid, built a vehicle out of a bicycle and washing machine, because the family couldn’t afford a car. Culturally, we used to know how to make and fix everything. As the 20th century progressed, we lost that ability, but thanks […]
Photo: James Duncan Davidson “Wouldn’t it be amazing if our phones could see the world the way we do?” That’s the basic question that Matt Mills asks to introduce a demo of extraordinary technology from the new company Aurasma. He holds up a painting of Robert Burns, and his colleague Tamara Roukaerts points a phone […]
Lee Cronin is a chemist at the University of Glasgow. At TEDGlobal last year he took the stage to describe his audacious idea to create inorganic life. This year, he is presenting a short talk on another ambitious idea: a 3D printer that, instead of printing objects, prints molecules. The question he starts with is, “Could we make a […]