[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 […]
Roy Amara’s classic quote goes: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” In today’s talk from TED2013, Rodney Brooks invokes this law to talk about robots. While people panic about robots taking their jobs over the course of the next few […]
“If there is this big difference, with some people worth everything and other people worth nothing, where do you come?” So asks Richard Wilkinson in the trailer for the forthcoming documentary based on his influential book The Spirit Level. Wilkinson, an epidemiologist, spent his career examining health issues caused or worsened by poverty and inequality — […]
Death by gun and death by fungus. The thylacine, otherwise known as the Tasmanian tiger, and the gastric-brooding frog are two species that are now extinct, not by accident nor natural means, but by our own hands. In today’s talk, paleontologist Michael Archer explores the moral obligations we have in reviving a species whose demise […]
In the image above, one million handmade bones — made by schoolchildren and artists around the world — have been methodically laid across the National Mall in Washington, DC, from the US Capitol building all the way to the Washington Monument. The culmination of a five-year project from TED Fellow Naomi Natale (read our interview […]
Bob Mankoff lives and breathes cartoons. He’s drawn many himself — he’s had a contract with The New Yorker for more than 30 years and, in 1997, he became the magazine’s cartoon editor. It’s now his job to sift through the 1,000 or so “idea drawings” (as they’re called within The New Yorker‘s walls) that […]
Surgeon Peter Attia sees a disconcerting paradox at work when it comes to our health: while people are talking about eating healthily and exercising perhaps more than ever, we’re seeing no reduction in the rates of obesity and diabetes. As it stands, more than 8% of Americans are diabetic and an additional 26% are pre-diabetic […]
Before a ‘clue’ became a thing that excited a detective, the word referred to a ball of yarn. So how did this shift in meaning occur? Because in Greek mythology, Ariadne threw a ball of yarn to Theseus before he entered the minotaur’s labyrinth. Theseus unrolled the yarn behind him as he traveled into the deadly […]
Today, June 21, is Go Skateboarding Day, which is a perfectly good reason to celebrate this global culture of under-the-radar creativity and community. Below are four TED Talks in celebration of the innovation and flow of skating. Rodney Mullen: Pop an ollie and innovate! Beginning at age 10, Rodney Mullen been sharing his unique style […]
A Shinnecock Indian, Camille Seaman has spent her career as a photographer illustrating the interconnectedness of all life. When she was a child, her grandfather took her outside to play on a hot summer day. He pointed to the sky and said, “Look, do you see that? That’s part of you up there. That’s your […]