William Kamkwamba at TEDGlobal 2009, Session 7: July 23, 2009, in Oxford, UK. Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson William Kamkwamba took the stage this morning to tell the story of his young and remarkable life. He explains that two years ago he stood on the TED stage in Arusha, Tanzania and spoke about a […]
Michael Pritchard at TEDGlobal 2009, Session 7: July 23, 2009, in Oxford, UK. Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson Inventor Michael Pritchard‘s talk involves a strange prop — a large aquarium filled with cloudy water. After being introduced, he explains that he’s here to talk about water. He asks how the water at the conference […]
Marc Koska – MiniSlot at TEDGlobal 2009, Session 8: July 23, 2009, in Oxford, UK. Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson Twenty-five years ago, Marc Koska read a newspaper article that said one day syringes would be the main vehicle for spreading the AIDS virus and the thought of this preventable tragedy never left him. […]
Paul Romer is a Stanford economist with radical ideas for new global growth. The first to the stage this morning, he has a little difficulty with his slides and jokes, “My work is about how wonderful technology is.” When the first slide does appear he urges us look at the picture of African students doing […]
Why is the human phenotype so different from the chimpanzee, even though experts constantly point out how similar the genotypes are? Why are we bipedal while they walk on four legs? Why are we hairless while they are hairy? Elaine Morgan seeks to look beyond what she thinks are the utterly incorrect answers proposed by […]
Israelian explores distant objects in the universe using spectroscopy. By looking at the spectral signature of distant object, he can infer the qualities and behaviors of the objects. He thinks spectroscopy will be how we finally discover whether there is life elsewhere outside of our solar system. Israelian discovered that stars sometimes swallow their planets […]
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 […]
Here’s Session 5’s unedited running notes from our crack team of Open Translation Project translators, taken as they watch the live webcast of TEDGlobal 2009! Click through to view the running notes for Session 5 in … Hungarian – 繁體中文
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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?” […]
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 […]
Here’s Session 4’s batch so far of unedited running notes from our crack team of Open Translation Project translators, taken as they watch the live webcast of TEDGlobal 2009! Click through to view the running notes for Session 4 in … Hungarian
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 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, […]