The TED community is brimming with new books and projects. Below, a selection of highlights. A powerful story of an American odyssey. Writer and business leader Casey Gerald has published a new memoir on his journey through American life. Titled There Will Be No Miracles Here, the book tells Gerald’s story from a childhood of […]
Shai Reshef’s nonprofit University of the People — which offers nearly tuition-free, accredited degrees online — today launches its first graduate degree, an MBA program in 12 courses. Although there are no tuition or textbook fees, there is a $200 testing fee per course, which means students can expect to pay $2,400 for their MBA (compare this to the average cost […]
By Liz Jacobs and Thu-Huong Ha Our brains work in mysterious ways. They make us laugh, they make us cry, and sometimes, they make us 19-year old geniuses. The 11 speakers in this All-Stars session specialize in areas of the brain as diverse as personality, trauma and gender, but they all agree: Our minds […]
No one is exactly sure who invented thumb wrestling. According to Wikipedia, Julian Koenig — the advertising copywriter who helped coin the slogan “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking” for Timex — claimed to have invented the game in 1936 while at summer camp. Meanwhile, author Paul Davidson says that his grandfather was […]
The old and tired stereotype: a 20-something man sits on the couch in his parent’s basement, his shirt untucked and chin unshaven, as he excitedly pounds the buttons on a video game controller rather than getting a job. The obvious truth: video game enthusiasts are men and women, of all ages, and the grand majority […]
Libraries are generally where you go to check out books; not where you go if you want to write one. This is an old assumption that Librii — a concept for a community-based, digitally-enhanced series of libraries in the developing world — would like to flip on its head. TED speaker Jane McGonigal has given […]
Game designer Jane McGonigal firmly believes that video games are not just about mashing buttons and getting to the next level. In fact, during her talk at TEDGlobal 2012, McGonigal gave several surprising statistics: that online gaming can be more effective than pharmaceuticals in treating clinical depression and that just 30 minutes a day is […]
Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how. (Recorded at TED2010, February 2010 in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 20:04) Watch Jane McGonigal’s talk […]