Whatever else we believe in, most of us believe in the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When Karen Armstrong won the TED Prize, she wished for the Charter for Compassion, a document that affirms this core belief. The Charter will prove that most people around the world […]
Via LiveScience, this report: An astounding batch of new deep-sea discoveries, from strange shark behavior to gigantic bacteria, was announced today by an international group of 2,000 scientists from 82 nations. The Census of Marine Life is a 10-year project to determine what’s down there. At their meeting in Spain this week, COML researchers will […]
Ushahidi is a crowdsourcing tool that lets ordinary people report the news via txt, email and the web — a crucial thing in fast-developing crises when there’s little mainstream media on the ground. Ushahidi was built in a few days earlier this year, in response to the chaos following the Kenyan elections. It’s become a […]
Looking for something to do with your spare energy post-Nov. 4? Find some inspiration in TEDTalks on: Social change, activism and fighting poverty >> Creativity and art >> Way-new education >> Suggest your own favorites in the comments below or via email to contact@ted.com.
Our TEDTalk today, from Ideo’s Tim Brown, comes from the 2008 Art Center Design Conference, wonderfully named Serious Play. Curated by the design legend Chee Pearlman, the Serious Play conference was held this past May at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. A nice benefit of holding a conference at a design school: […]
The great popularizer of hard science, Michael Crichton, died yesterday. In his books, millions of readers were introduced to scientific concepts such as cloning, the spread of new diseases, nanoassembly, deep-sea exploration, quantum computing and the discussion around climate change. From a note to fans on MichaelCrichton.net: Through his books, Michael Crichton served as an […]
CNN has a story today on the Magic Wall they’ve been using in their coverage of the US elections. The wall was built by TEDTalks star Jeff Han and his company Perceptive Pixel. From the story: Throughout the 2008 primaries and the general election, John King, CNN’s Chief National Correspondent, has stood before the now-familiar […]
This week, Rolex joins our family of sponsors who help us share TEDTalks with the world for free. Over the next 12 weeks, you’ll see new postroll videos from Rolex attached to selected talks, and on Rolex’s sponsor page on TED.com. (And in the TED tradition, Rolex’s video is a treat to watch — espcially […]
Rives writes in to tells us: “A few months ago a researcher at a French ad company was scouring the web, looking for ‘real people’ who could be featured in a European ad campaign … He comes across my ‘If I Controlled the Internet‘ poem on TEDTalks and figures: This is the guy.” See the […]
Blogging for the Demos think tank, Samuel Jones comments on a new piece by James Surowiecki in this week’s New Yorker. In the article, Surowiecki suggests that one of the root causes of today’s financial panic is that we simply have too much information coming at us. Jones makes an elegant suggestion: the problem might […]
That was the proposition under scrutiny at today’s Economist-sponsored debate at Gotham Hall. One of several events this weekend representing The Economist: Off the Page, the publication’s first ever series of events in New York City, the face-off pitted those who support corporate social responsibility against those who believe accountability for social needs should rest […]
Earlier this year at TED2008 in Monterey, California, the artist Siegfried Woldhek unveiled what he believes is the true face of Leonardo da Vinci — through an elegant piece of artistic detective work. Now Woldhek has produced this drawing at left, imagining Leonardo as a young, a middle-aged and an old man, in three-quarter view […]
Several people wrote to TED this week asking about a clip that’s been making the rounds recently — starring a gorilla and a bunch of kids tossing a basketball. If you got this clip from a friend, and you’re wondering why you can’t find it on TED, here’s the story: The gorilla/basketball clip was shown […]
Psychologist Daniel Goleman (watch his TEDTalk about compassion) has just released a series of conversations about social neuroscience, empathy, compassion and social connection, each one with an expert on the topic — George Lucas on education, socially intelligent computing with Clay Shirky, Naomi Wolf on ethical leadership … The audio series is available via download […]
From BoingBoing: TED alum, Segway creator and inventor of a groundbreaking prosthetic arm, Dean Kamen was interviewed recently by John Meigs, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, where he discussed his ideas about education and technology, and why it’s so important for kids to learn how to build and then stage elaborate death matches with 120-pound robots. […]
An article in the Association for Psychological Science’s AP Observer points out what TEDsters like Jonathan Haidt have known all along: Our psychology, and our emotions, likely play a larger part in how we cast our votes than any careful consideration of the issues. As Haidt reminds us in his 2008 TEDTalk, ideology, whether liberal […]