One of the "Ten Faces of Innovation" described in Tom Kelley’s recent book is that of the cross-pollinator, who "can create something new and better through an unexpected juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts". Tom is the general manager of TEDPrize supporter IDEO. During a recent talk he mentioned as an example of cross-pollination […]
Every summer I escape California for Cape Cod in hopes of injecting my kids with a little bit of the East Coast. After settling in with the troupes, I quickly check the local papers to see what music and theater is playing during our stay. I’ve gotten pretty lucky in past years and this year […]
Sir Martin Rees is dismayed by the "worrisome lack of determination" shown last month in St Petersburg by the leaders of the G8 countries to accelerate the development of clean energy technologies. In an editorial published by the journal Science this week (only the abstract is available online), he calls for a significant increase in […]
Elevation Partners, a private-equity group of which U2 singer, make-poverty-history activist and TEDprize winner Bono is one of the 6 partners, has bought a "significant minority stake" (rumored to be of more than 40 percent, and worth US$ 250 to 300 million) in Forbes Media, which includes Forbes magazine and Forbes.com. Today’s International Herald Tribune […]
When my wife was pregnant with our first son and we began considering what to name him, I proposed Strad. To violinists (a group of which I at least once counted myself a member), Stradivarius is the epitome of perfection. While cries of horror from certain members of the family resulted in my son being […]
At TED2006, former MIT Media Lab Director Nicholas Negroponte outlined the challenges of producing the $100 laptop, which will be designed for — and only available to — children in the developing world. The key, he suggested, is scale. The economics will work when countries begin ordering them by the millions. Well, according to the […]
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the death of electric cars, but gearheads ’round the world are eagerly awaiting the July 20 arrival of a new electric sports car from a startup by the name of Tesla Motors. Yes, an electric sports car. Actually, when you think about a sports car as a […]
“I think I speak for all writers, when I say that I am delighted by marketing efforts of any sort.” — Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell, commenting in The Guardian on film-style trailers for books, being released online by publishers to build demand for new titles
Re-watching Majora Carter reminded me of another project committed to green spaces in the inner city; Guerrilla Gardening, people who go and garden in neglected public spaces, without permission but with generosity and humour. They find abandoned, unregarded bits of urban environment, sneak in at night and do some planting, some maintenance and eventually some […]
(From The Guardian)
Aubrey de Grey‘s claims that aging can be defeated, which he voiced at TEDGLOBAL last year and at TED2006, "exist in a kind of antechamber of science, where they wait (possibly in vain) for independent verification". While they "don’t compel the assent of many knowledgeable scientists", they’re also "not demonstrably wrong". That’s the overall (in)conclusion […]
From Wired‘s July issue: A charming Q + A with 2006 TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant, recently appointed Director of the $1B Google Foundation. Along with solving some of the world’s biggest problems, Brilliant cites another ambitious goal: changing the famous Google mantra ‘Don’t be evil’ to "Do something really, really, really good."
Today we add another voice to the TEDBlog: TEDster Russell Davies, who begins his TEDBlogging career with a post incorporating not one, but two past TED speakers (Edward Tufte and Hans Rosling), linking them to not one but two current events (Tufte’s new book, Rosling’s TEDTalk). Impressive. We’re great fans of Russell’s own blog, russelldavies.com, […]
Edward Tufte is deeply suspicious of presentation software. Hans Rosling makes it sing. And they’re both right. In the wrong hands PowerPoint can bore you, mislead you or far, far worse. In the right ones it can inform and illuminate. Mr Tufte (a TED veteran) makes his case and tells us much more in his […]
In the words of Swiss technophilosopher René Berger, "It’s becoming impossible not to visit with Google daily". But when you do, what do you visit exactly? In other words: what does a search engine really look like? It actually looks like this: This picture of Google’s new server farm in The Dalles, Oregon was published […]
Just got back from a screening of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” an entertaining documentary – opening this week in NY and LA – chronicling the remarkable story of the little car that couldn’t: the GM EV1. I had the privilege of visiting the film crew on location, in the summer of 2004, mere days […]