This year at Long Beach, our two official photographers, Robert Leslie and James Duncan Davidson, shot something like 40,000 photos; photographer Michael Brands at Palm Springs turned in another ~7K. (Thank you, burst mode.) TED’s photo editor Mike Femia has been editing things down into two gorgeous photo sets from TED2011 and TEDActive. He’ll be […]
At TED2011 in Long Beach, Grey asked people one simple question: “What are you wondering?” Here’s the result …
Above, Chris Fralic and friends take a tire-squealing ride in the Google self-driving car in spring 2011. Warning, profanity and lots of it. More video below. At TED2011, Sebastian Thrun from Google told us why he wanted to make a self-driving car: “Most automotive deaths are due to human error, not machine error. A driverless car can save lives.” Google’s […]
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/20660248 w=525&h=294] Aboard the Lennon Bus, a crew of TEDActive musicians created this lovely song — and a video! — in one week. Feel the vibe of TEDActive … Musicians on this track include Jill Sobule, Wendy Melvoin, Annie Clark, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Lisa Coleman and Aaron Sterling. Video created by Hiro Murai / Isaac […]
Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error: “We need to be able to look at the vastness and complexity of the universe and say, ‘Wow, I dunno. Maybe I’m wrong.’” John Hunter, creator of World Peace Games says, “I allow them to learn, in a bloodless way, how to do what’s […]
Jack Horner describes his work to recreate a living dinosaur from the genes of an unlikely ancestor: What we’re trying to do is take our chicken, modify it, and make a chickenosaurus. Rajesh Rao on deciphering the controversial Indus script: If it looks like a linguistic script and it acts like a linguistic script, then […]
At the final session of TED University, we learned how to draw mindmaps, predicted a future in which buildings are self-assembling, and heard a touching story about a passenger’s life after the Hudson River plane crash. Here were some of the highlights: Bill Gates talks about state budgets, corrupt processes, and what this means for […]
Shown onstage at TED2011: Wael Ghonim is the Google executive who helped jumpstart Egypt’s democratic revolution — with a Facebook page memorializing a victim of the regime’s violence. Speaking at TEDxCairo, he tells the inside story of the past two months, when everyday Egyptians showed that “the power of the people is stronger than the […]
America’s school systems are funded by the 50 states. In this fiery talk, Bill Gates says that state budgets are riddled with accounting tricks that disguise the true cost of health care and pensions and weighted with worsening deficits — with the financing of education at the losing end. (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in […]
Béatrice Coron is a paper cutter: “I visualize my story … and as my image is already inside the paper, I just have to remove what’s not from that story.” Sarah Kay shares her spoken word with TED and talks about the challenges and joys of poetry: “I show up to each new poem with a […]
Janet Echelman reshapes urban airspace with monumental, fluidly moving sculpture that responds to environmental forces. Daniel Tammet is a high-functioning autistic savant, has synesthesia, and has an astonishing brain. “Personal perceptions are at the heart of how we acquire knowledge.” Fiorenzo Omenetto has found game-changing uses for silk: “The answer to whatever you want to do […]
A video roundup of the third day of TEDActive 2011: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVGcr4DWhlg&w=525&h=325%5D
Edward Tenner, historian of technology and culture, shares the intrigue of unintended consequences: “I didn’t always love unintended consequences, but I have learned to appreciate them.” Eythor Bender brings out Amanda Boxtel, a wheelchair user wearing an astonishing new exoskeleton. She is walking. Eli Pariser reveals some frightening data about our online identities: “I call it […]
JR made his inspired TED wish: I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating a global art project. And together we’ll turn the world INSIDE OUT. Antony, musician and artist, played gorgeous songs of yearning to close out Session 7. (Photo: Robert Leslie / TED) Chris Anderson makes a […]
Posted from TED2011, happening now in California: JR, a semi-anonymous French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face, by pasting photos of the human face across massive canvases. At TED2011, he makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. Learn more about his […]
In an experimental Session 6, Bill Gates hosted and guest-curated the speaker lineup. David Christian charts our course from the Big Bang to today: “To understand complexity, you have to survey the whole history of the universe. So let’s do it.” Amina Az-Zubair on the UN Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria: “We are making progress. […]