“It looks like it’s holding up the clouds.” “It’s like a sky jellyfish.” “I love how the light moves across it along with the sound.” These were some of the comments heard at TED2014 about Skies Painted with Unnumbered Sparks, a collaboration between sculptor Janet Echelman and data artist Aaron Koblin. This monumental sculpture stretched […]
What do a British chef, an education technology professor and a pioneering ocean researcher have in common? They’re all winners of the TED Prize – a cash award of $1,000,000 that’s given annually to a forward-thinking individual with a fresh, bold vision for sparking global change. The Prize begins with a big wish – one that will motivate people […]
This year’s packed conference came to a close on March 21, 2014: Day 5 at TED2014. Here are some highlights from this Friday: Mark Ronson ruled the dance floor On Thursday night, Mark Ronson DJ’d for TEDsters. Bent over the mixing board under a neon green TED sign, he tied all the music back to […]
TED2014 has been a mind-bending experience. We looked back at the past 30 years of progress, and started writing “The Next Chapter” of the 30 to come. Here, a look at the days of the conference in image form.
The extraordinary and eloquent Andrew Solomon closes TED2014 with a talk that brought the theater to its feet. Popular wisdom, begins Solomon, is that we find meaning, that it is an external truth to seek. But after a lifetime as a student of adversity, he has found that meaning, in fact, is forged. Solomon recalls […]
In a naked grab for the new TED/XPRIZE, Julia Sweeney has spent the last day and a half building an AI. It rolls onstage to give a convincing simulacrum of a TED Talk — until Sweeney herself runs out from backstage to chastise the rogue intelligence. She’s actually here to wrap up TED2014, in her […]
In January 2011, US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head in an attack on her entourage at a constituent meeting near Tucson. Six people died and thirteen others were injured. She survived, and her recovery has been a remarkable story. At TED2014 she took the stage with her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, for a […]
A surprise superquick talk from wordnik Erin McKean, who reads from her magic notebook the top 10 words of this TED. The full list follows; here are four highlights: tokamak, a doughnut-shaped fusion reactor whose name comes from a transliteration of the Russian токамак. rockism, which Mark Ronson describes as “like racism, but for rock music.” […]
Shai Reshef believes higher education is a right, not a privilege. In January 2009, he founded University of the People, a nonprofit, tuition-free, online university dedicated to opening up higher education to anyone in the world with a high school diploma and a willingness to learn — “regardless of who they are, where they live […]
On March 10, 2011, Joi Ito was in the MIT Media Lab, in discussions about whether he should be the next director of the mythical innovation space, when he heard that a major earthquake had hit the Pacific coast of Japan. “My wife and family were in Japan,” he says. “As news was coming in, […]
As we celebrate the last three decades of ideas at TED, we’re looking ahead and asking ourselves: what’s next? Each of the speakers in this session looks boldly toward the future, from a media visionary to an entrepreneur reimagining education to two powerful talks on overcoming a difficult past. Here are the speakers who appeared […]
If you walked up the twisting mahogany staircase of the Vancouver Club on Tuesday, past an ominous portrait of a man in a kilt and an empty ballroom with its curtains dancing in the wind, you’d happen upon a dimly lit room filled with TED2014 attendees. Here, about 100 gathered to hear Neil Gaiman read […]
With 12 mainstage sessions and 5 sessions of All-Stars, there wasn’t much time for exploring Vancouver during TED2014. As a great prequel to the conference, Car2Go offered up vehicles so attendees could enjoy a spin around the city. It also provided a map of some spots to check out, featuring locations selected by five TED Fellows: Kitra Cahana, Alex Macdonald, […]
Sergeant Kevin Briggs recently retired from the California Highway Patrol after 23 years of service, the majority of which included patrolling the southern end of Marin County, which includes the Golden Gate Bridge. And that means that he has frequently responded to suicide attempts. The bridge, while an iconic structure, has also been the site […]
Why do so many people today experience parenthood like a kind of crisis? That’s the question Jennifer Senior sets out to answer on the final day of TED2014. The parenting section of Barnes & Noble is packed with books for eco-friendly kids, gluten-free kids, science-minded kids. For Senior, those shelves don’t seem helpful — they […]
Sarah Jones is an actor and monologuist who comes on stage to explain her own diverse background. “I grew up in a family that was multi-everything, black and white, Caribbean, Irish American, German American, there was Dominican music playing from the stereo, Christians and Jews (that’s a long story).” But then, before we quite know what’s happening, […]