“I make noises for a living, and on a good day it’s music,” says Peter Gabriel in today’s talk. “I work with a lot of musicians from around the world. Often, we don’t have any common language at all. But we sit behind our instruments and suddenly there’s a way to connect and emote.” This […]
Charmian Gooch, co-founder of anti-corruption NGO Global Witness, tracks money to expose deep-rooted global corruption. In yesterday’s talk, Gooch demonstrates that dirty money goes all the way to the top, and more sinister is that these cases of corruption are well-known to leaders and corporate elites. Nobody — banks, big oil, government leaders — is […]
“Like snowflakes, no two pieces of wood can be the same anywhere on earth,” says architect Michael Green in today’s lyrical TED talk, “Why we should build wooden skyscrapers,” in which he lays out his thesis for designing and engineering the world’s tallest buildings from one of its oldest materials. “Mother Nature has fingerprints in […]
In the most recent issue of Scientific American, Pawan Sinha shares the eye-opening experience that shook his worldview. When riding through the streets of New Delhi one night in 2002, Sinha’s cab slowed for a red light by a struggling family sitting on the side of the road. Both of the children, emaciated and barefoot, […]
Gamers, unite! Today, July 8, is officially known as Video Games Day. Whether you lose hours to your Xbox or stay glued to your smart phone to play, today is dedicated to all those games that rile you up and drive you crazy. These days, the most riveting video games use motion sensors, animation and […]
In 2005, Bjorn Lomborg bounced onto the TED stage in Monterey to challenge the assembled audience to think about “the biggest problems in the world.” Author of the book The Skeptical Environmentalist and the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, Lomborg promptly advised the somewhat startled audience to forget about global warming. If we really want to make an impact on the serious […]
Interesting, informative, bizarre. Here’s a round-up of interwebs reading from the past few weeks: Mushrooms are not at the top of my favorite foods list but, above, see why they are now at the top of my favorite things to watch a timelapse video of. Shot by cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg (watch his TED Talks) and starring mushroom […]
Jonny Mizzone didn’t come from Alabama with a banjo on his knee. No, this 11-year-old virtuoso hails from the state of New Jersey, where he and his two older brothers discovered the magic of bluegrass legends J.D. Crowe, Ralph Stanley, Clarence White and Earl Scruggs through YouTube. When he was eight years old, Mizzone posted […]
Computer visionary Doug Engelbart died on Tuesday evening, at age 88. One of the pioneers of the Internet and graphic user interfaces, Engelbart is perhaps best known for inventing the computer mouse. Above, watch him lead what’s been described as the “mother of all demos” in 1968, when he showed off that first mouse and […]
[ted id=1518] Today, several US-based internet communities — including 4chan (watch Christopher “moot” Poole’s TED Talk), Mozilla (watch Gary Kovacs’ talk), Fark (Drew Curtis has given a TED Talk too), and Reddit (Alexis Ohanian has given a talk and created a TED playlist) — are rallying against NSA surveillance of the internet, as revealed by a whistleblower in June. Visit any of […]
In her 2007 TED Talk, “This is Saturn,” planetary scientist Carolyn Porco blew some minds with images taken by Cassini, the robot spaceship launched in October 1997 to study and photograph Saturn and its accompanying moons. Gleaning “oohs” and “aahs” from the assembled TED audience, she concluded with a stunning shot of a backlit picture […]
“Throughout the history of computers, we’ve been striving to shorten the gap between us and digital information, the gap between our physical world and the world in the screen,” interface designer Jinha Lee says in today’s talk. Lee points out that the gap has become shorter and shorter—it’s now “less than a millimeter, the thickness […]
It may be the age of big data, but it’s still very hard to know how many children were born in Bolivia or Botswana last year, or to know something as simple as which clinics in the developing world have medicine and which don’t. Until recently, there was only one way to find answers to […]
“When I was growing up, I was told a story that explained all I ever needed to know about humanity. It went like this,” says Eric X. Li in today’s provocative talk, given at TEDGlobal 2013. “All human societies develop in a linear progression, beginning with primitive society, than slave society, than feudalism, capitalism, socialism […]
By Yasheng Huang Earlier this year, economist Yasheng Huang (watch his 2011 TED Talk) sparred with Eric X. Li in the pages of Foreign Affairs on a similar topic to today’s TED Talk. The TED Blog asked Huang to expand on his argument in his ongoing conversation with Li. Imagine confusing the following two statements from […]
The TED community was deeply saddened to hear that Rita Pierson, whose powerful, funny, heartfelt talk kicked off TED Talks Education just a few months ago, died today in Texas, at age 61. It was truly an honor to help share her message with the world. Hers is truly an idea worth spreading: that every child, rich […]