Above: Reggie Watts demonstrates the littleBits SynthKit For the last week, the internet has been grooving to the video above of Reggie Watts making some funky noise with the newly launched SynthKit — the latest offering from littleBits electronic building block company, and the product of a three-way partnership between littleBits, Watts and world-renowned synthmasters KORG. The […]
New Zealand is located on a continental plate boundary, so earthquakes aren’t unexpected. But no one was ready for the quake that hit at 12.51 pm on February 22, 2011. “Everyone in Christchurch will never forget that moment,” says Danny Squires, who lives in the city with his wife and four children. Even though they’d […]
Christchurch-based Danny Squires is director of Space Craft Systems and co-founder of WikiHouse/NZ, a global project aiming to make it possible for anyone to design, download and “print” houses. Squires was going about his daily business in Christchurch on February 22, 2011, when a 6.3-magnitude earthquake ripped through the city, causing horrific damage and killing […]
Andreas Raptopoulos and his colleagues at Matternet are attempting to create a network of drones that operate like the internet, only for tangible objects. This company — which sprung out of an idea surfaced at Singularity University in 2011 — aims to deliver items wherever they are needed, even if no usable roads go there. […]
Marc Goodman
is the founder of the Future Crimes Institute and chair for Policy, Law and Ethics at Singularity University. At TEDGlobal in Edinburgh in 2012, Goodman shared a sobering look at the dark side of technology in his talk, “A vision of crimes in the future.” The TED Blog asked him to share his latest thinking on […]
For the fourth year, TED is searching for the 10 most innovative, idea-driven ads of the year, with the help of TED speakers like Sarah Kay and Charlie Todd, as well as some of the advertising world’s biggest stars. Today, TED AdsWorth Spreading reveals the 20 Advocates and 5 Nomination Teams who will help find and nominate […]
Is sharing the solution to our global challenges? Twice, Robin Chase has stood on the TED stage and offered powerful visions for a green, and shared, transportation future. At TED2007, the Zipcar founder suggested that car sharing could be the solution to global warming, while also helping drivers without cars. She also posited an even […]
PW Singer studies the future of warfare. A political scientist specializing in international relations, he’s the author of the bestselling Wired for War, which explores the evolution of robotics in armed conflict; Children at War, about the spreading use of child soldiers; and the forthcoming Cyber Security and Cyber War: What Everyone Needs to Know. He is a senior fellow […]
David Blaine, the magician, illusionist and endurance artist, is back on prime time TV tonight with the special, David Blaine: Real or Magic. Traveling around the world, the TED speaker (watch his talk, “How I held my breath for 17 minutes“) performs magic and elicits astonished reactions from people on the street — as well as from […]
Unmanned aerial vehicles — that is, drones — have a lot of people (and entire countries) hot under the collar. Every few days it seems a new report comes out about the death of another group of “faceless” people, whether it’s suspected terrorist leaders or civilians. With little transparency from the governments launching drone strikes, […]
Happy International Men’s Day, all! While at first, it might seem a little strange to have a holiday that celebrates, well, approximately half of the world’s population. But the goals of this holiday — “focus[ing] on men’s and boy’s health, improving gender relations, promoting gender equality, and highlighting positive male role models” — are worthwhile, […]
Earth has been around for over 4.5 billion years, and modern humans have inhabited it for the past 200,000. Yet in all that time, we’ve learned surprisingly little about the planet’s landscape and the animals that live on it. This is especially true of remote areas such as the Amazon’s dense jungles, the ocean’s vast […]
“Kill Decision is a fantastic techno-thriller,” wrote Alexander Rose, executive director of The Long Now Foundation. “As someone who has designed combat robots myself, I found the technology depicted both accurate and chilling.” Former Wired magazine editor-in-chief (and drone enthusiast) Chris Anderson added, “Suarez’s fiction is closer to reality than most people think.” Here, an exclusive excerpt from Kill […]
Science-fiction author Daniel Suarez spoke about drones this summer at TEDGlobal 2013. In his talk “The kill decision shouldn’t belong to a robot,” he talked about the rise of drones, automated weapons and AI-powered intelligence-gathering tools. Here, he goes further, describing no less than a coming “automation revolution.” Drones are in the news these days. […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILHIYi8aeHc&w=640&h=360] This week, we’ll be taking a deep dive into a provocative topic: drones. For all the rhetoric, you might think think that this is a zero sum game: Drones will either destroy the world, or they’ll save it. The truth, of course, is that, well, they’re set to do both. Sophisticated developments see extraordinary […]
How did human emotions evolve to help us survive? For the last decade, cultural anthropologist Chelsea Shields Strayer has studied the indigenous healing practices of the Ashante people of Ghana, discovering that emotional pain serves useful purposes — including the relief of physical pain. In this conversation with the TED Blog, she tells the fascinating […]