Search Results for: ted

Marcus du Sautoy at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 6

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Mathematician and science communicator Marcus du Sautoy began his talk with the story of Evariste Galois, a Paris revolutionary who died in his brother’s arms. The night before, Galois had stayed up all night trying to explain his mathematical ideas before his duel the next day. He was trying to explain symmetry. Symmetry helps us []

David Deutsch at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 5

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Unedited running notes from TEDGlobal 2009. Our ancestors wondered what stars are. Humans have always yearned to know more — it is a survival instinct. “How can I be warmer, cooler, safer, in less pain?” Prehistoric cave artists may have wished to draw better. But although they wished for more knowledge, for progress, they failed. []

Manuel Lima at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 5

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Unedited running notes from TEDGlobal 2009. An interaction designer at Nokia, Lima looks at how complex interconnectedness can be understood. He is compelled by the divide between information and knowledge. So he looks at information visualization. He built a visualization tool called Blogviz that helps display how word-of-mouth information travels from person A to person []

Henry Markram at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 5

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Unedited running notes from TEDGlobal 2009. Henry Markram is leading the Blue Brain Project, which hopes to create a realistic digital 3D model of the whole human brain within the next 10 years. (The simulation promises to do all the things that real human brains can do, including consciousness.) He’s done a proof of concept []

Rebecca Saxe at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 5

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Unedited running notes from TEDGlobal 2009. Rebecca Saxe talked about “the problem of other minds.” One of the most complicated things the mind does is try to comprehend what other people are thinking. But the problem she researches is not what you might think — not “why is it so hard to know other minds?” []

Beau Lotto at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 5

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Unedited running notes from TEDGlobal 2009. Beau Lotto began with a simple game for the audience, based on an illusion. He showed two panels covered with large dots of a variety of colors. The backgrounds of the two panels were white and black, respectively. He then surveyed the audience to find which dots across the []

Lewis Pugh at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 4

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Seven years ago, Lewis Pugh went to the Arctic for the first time, and since then he says he has seen it change “without description.” To bring awareness to the issue of climate change, Pugh decided that he would swim across the North Pole, in waters at -1.7 degrees Celsius. Today, on stage, Pugh describes []

Mathieu Lehanneur at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 4

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Mathieu Lehanneur is a designer who is fascinated with science, and it shows. He explains that his fascination is quite unique in his field, as rules of marketing say he should simplify but science embraces complexity. He’s impressed by science’s ability to investigate the human being; after all, he designs for the human being. Then, []

Cary Fowler at TEDGlobal 2009: Running Notes from Session 3

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Cary Fowler is archiving biodiversity, and more specifically crop diversity. As this unassuming man begins his time on the TED stage it’s quickly evident how important and relevant his work is to us all. After reading from The Apples of New York, a catalog of all the varieties of apples in the state that was []

Carlos Ulloa at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 3

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Carlos Ulloa, founder of Papervision3D, is also here to present a stunning demo. He brings to the stage interactive, three-dimensional worlds, all created using ubiquitous Flash technology. He starts his demo with an brilliant undersea landscape. Ulloa switches perspective, looking at the seabed from the top, then the bottom, and waiting quietly as a shark []

Aza Raskin at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 3

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Aza Raskin is the head of user experience for Mozilla Labs (the people who created Firefox), and today he’s giving us a demo of a whole new kind of Internet browser. Instead of asking us to become computer literate, he’s making the browser learn our language. In Raskin’s new browser you can type straightforward commands []

Stefana Broadbent at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes from Session 3

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Technology anthropologist Stefana Broadbent analyzes how we text, IM and talk. Today, she says these new methods of communication are helping us break out of old institutions and bringing us closer together than ever before. She’s speaking with a backdrop of constantly refreshing, beautiful black and white portraits, always of two people seated together. She []