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 […]
15-year old Julia Bluhm is a ballet dancer and body image activist. That’s right. Ballet, an activity that conjures images of super slim prima ballerinas gracefully passing up french fries in favor of pirouettes. And body image activism, where passionate advocates remind us all that we’re beautiful just the way we are. You might see […]
No one is exactly sure who invented thumb wrestling. According to Wikipedia, Julian Koenig — the advertising copywriter who helped coin the slogan “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking” for Timex — claimed to have invented the game in 1936 while at summer camp. Meanwhile, author Paul Davidson says that his grandfather was […]
Juliana Rotich didn’t grow up in Nairobi, but the Kenyan capital has been her official full-time home since 2011. Now, she describes the city as “another node in my network.” It’s a suitable metaphor for a woman who’s immersed in the technology business, from her work at the nonprofit data and mapping collective, Ushahidi, to […]
Juliana Rotich was not expecting our interview to end in tears. Neither was I. But on reflection, we were both completely ok with it. After all, that’s what happens when terrorism becomes personal. For Rotich, that happened at the end of September, when al Shabaab terrorists attacked the Westgate Mall in the northwestern part of […]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQBuZVQruRY&w=640&h=360] By tracking social media, it turns out, we can get much better at recognizing pandemics early. Solving epidemics has been the goal of physician Larry Brilliant’s career — and the basis for his 2006 TED Prize wish, which he updated this year in a talk at TED2013, above. His wish called for an “International System […]
In today’s talk, Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo describes how China’s growing presence in Africa is challenging a centuries-old tenet of Western political thought. For more than 200 years, Moyo argues, liberal democracy has ruled the roost. Particularly in the West, it’s long been considered the political system most likely to deliver economic success and […]