Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, presented a jaw-dropping talk on cheating and dishonesty at TED2009. We’re posting Ariely’s TEDTalk next Tuesday, and we asked him for his thoughts on the Bernie Madoff scandal unfolding now in New York: The first chapter of the Bernie Madoff fiasco has come to a close, with Madoff […]
-able, everyone’s favorite “can-do” adjective suffix, is enjoying a revival. 20-some years since its heyday, we’ve found it stitched to no less than six modern product names, deriving for them a certain adroitness that a lonesome noun mightn’t have provided. And two of these products, as it happens, have been demoed at TED. 1. Siftables: […]
Today, CERN’s been throwing a party to celebrate the 20th birthday of the web — which they date to the now-famous memo that Tim Berners-Lee wrote to his boss, sketching out a framework for a document-sharing system. As they tell it: Twenty years ago this month, something happened at CERN that would change the world […]
Cross-posted to the TED Prize blog: Last week, an amazing group of religious thinkers and leaders, the Council of Conscience, met outside of Geneva to finalize the Charter for Compassion. Previously called the Council of Sages, the group consists of individuals from the five major religions and almost every continent. The Councilors spent two days […]
For some more background on why today’s TEDTalk is especially appropriate today, read Scientific American‘s thorough and fascinating look at the birth of the web.
Watch Karen Armstrong make her audacious wish during the TED Prize session at TED2008:
Pranav Mistry is the MIT grad student behind Sixth Sense, a tool that connects the physical world with the world of data. He and his advisor at the MIT Media Lab, Pattie Maes, unveiled Sixth Sense at TED2009, and the Sixth Sense demo premiered yesterday on TED.com — and in both places, it has fired […]
Architecture for Humanity wants your ideas and designs for the classrooms of the future. Their 2009 Open Architecture Challenge invites students, teachers and architects to submit their designs for classrooms in the places that need them most. You don’t have to be a licensed architect, just submit the best possible plans and they’ll find you […]
Paola Antonelli is the design curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and a two-time TEDTalks star, with her TED2007 talk “Treating design as art” and her EG’07 talk “Design and the elastic mind,” a preview to the 2008 MOMA show of the same name. Today, SEED magazine premieres her next venture, a monthly […]
To celebrate March 8, International Women’s Day, we suggest these four TEDTalks gems from some amazing speakers — artists, scientists and economists who think deeply about the role of women. Author and activist Isabel Allende discusses women, creativity, feminism — and the power of passionate thinkers and doers: The former Finance Minister of Nigeria, Ngozi […]
Not without a struggle (and a measure of healthy angst), acclaimed pianist Eric Lewis is driving the next evolution of jazz — forging new musical alloys of classic blue note scuttles, delicate improvisations and heady alt rock hooks. Now, with a roster of sold-out shows and a growing list of celebrity supporters, his iconoclastic arrangements […]
In Willie Smits’ powerful TEDTalk, he describes his work to re-grow the rainforest in Indonesia — a triple-bottom-line effort that can benefit the local economy, the local orangutans and the green heart of the forest. The TED Blog asked Smits’ associate Richard Zimmerman, the director of Orangutan Outreach, to expand on the orangutan story: In […]
As many forms as outreach can take, it seems that today’s new TEDTalk luminary, Nalini Nadkarni, has done them all and then invented several of her own. This tireless champion of the canopy has embarked on projects involving poets, dancers, rappers, prison inmates and even Barbie dolls to bring attention to the plight of our […]
Willie Smits works at the complicated intersection of humankind, the animal world and our green planet. In his early work as a forester in Indonesia, he came to a deep understanding of that triple relationship, as he watched the growing population of Sulawesi move into (or burn for fuel) forests that are home to the […]
From a New Scientist photo gallery: Andrew Hicks used computer algorithms to generate the mirror’s bizarre surface, which curves and bends in different directions. The curves direct rays from an object across the mirror’s face before sending them back to the viewer, flipping the conventional mirror image. (Via Philebrity. Image by Andrew Hicks.)
Brenda Laurel spoke at TED in early 1998 — at a watershed moment. In 1997, she launched Purple Moon to make smart computer games aimed at girls. By 1999, the company had come to a much-publicized end. But between start and finish, Purple Moon marked a sea change in the girl-game market. The TED Blog […]