For the penultimate session of TED2020, an exploration of amazing forces shaping the future — from cancer-fighting venom to spacecraft powered by lasers and much more. Below, a recap of the night’s talks and performances. Amanda Gorman, poet Big idea: We all have the power to end the devastation of climate change. Let’s get to […]
Immigration can be a deeply polarizing topic. But at heart, immigration policies and practices reflect no less than our attitude towards humanity. At TED Salon: Border Stories, we explored the reality of life at the US-Mexico border, the history of the US immigration policy and possible solutions for reform — and investigated what’s truly at […]
El 26 de abril tuvo lugar el primer evento de oradores de TED en Español, presentado por TED en su oficina de Nueva York. El evento, completamente en español, contó con ocho oradores, una presentación musical, cinco cortometrajes y 13 charlas de un minuto dadas por miembros de la audiencia. El evento en Nueva York […]
Thursday marked the first-ever TED en Español speaker event hosted by TED in its New York City office. The all-Spanish daytime event featured eight speakers, a musical performance, five short films and fifteen one-minute talks given by members of the audience. The New York event is just the latest addition to TED’s sweeping new Spanish-language […]
The stars of your favorite TED Talks have been busy over the past week. Below, a few newsy highlights. Inside the mind of a murderer. What makes murderers do what they do? A BBC piece revealed that some murderers have reduced activity in their prefrontal cortex, which controls emotional impulses, and over-activity in their amygdala, […]
By Liz Jacobs and Helen Walters It’s often said that good design is invisible design — it makes things easy and delightful without us realizing it. But as host Chee Pearlman reminds us at the top of the session, we’re here to honor the “D” in “TED.” From the artistic to the architectural to the […]
Ed Boyden is the head of the Synthetic Neurobiology group at the MIT Media Lab, where he works on tools to map, control, record — and maybe even someday build — the brain. Boyden has worked on optogenetics, a technique which deploys light-sensitive molecules to the brain and then applies light to them to “turn […]
At concerts, lighters once swayed in the air during poignant moments, the audience belting out lyrics together in a moment of catharsis. Today, the group sing-alongs still happen, but the air shines with a different glow: the light of cell phones. Last week, while seeing a favorite band, I couldn’t help but notice the sea […]
“I’m not arguing that this stuff shouldn’t exist,” says Juan Enriquez. “I’m saying that precisely because this stuff is so powerful, we should be careful and think about what we’re doing, instead of treating it like a lark, thinking if we post something at 2am that no one will care.” The Boston-based entrepreneur and many-time […]
Writing on Darwin’s 200th birthday last week, Lise Buyer offered this commentary about today’s TEDTalk, Juan Enriquez’ “How Mind-Boggling Science Will Outlast the Crisis.” From the story: … In his talk at TED, Enriquez said the fact that we are the only living species of humans is an anomaly — or at least out of […]
“Juan Enriquez” “night vision” “robot horses”
Here’s a persuasive op-ed in today’s Boston Globe co-authored by regular TED speaker Juan Enriquez … uttering a word neither candidate dare utter: WITHIN THE billions of sentences about the financial bailout there is one word notably absent, austerity. All talk is of payments, supports, subsidies, incurring more debt, stimulus packages. The thesis seems to […]
WIRED‘s Thomas Goetz fumes about a development in the world of genetic testing: California health regulators have demanded that several genetic testing start-ups halt operations until they prove they meet quality and reliability standards. Goetz writes, To my mind, genetic information is a new sort of personal information that the state and even the physician […]
Many TEDTalks speakers have answered the 2008 Edge Foundation question: What have you changed your mind about? Why? Among the more than 160 essays from leading thinkers — scientists, philosophers, artists — look for Wired’s Chris Anderson, Nick Bostrom, Stewart Brand, Richard Dawkins, Aubrey de Grey, Juan Enriquez, Helen Fisher, Neil Gershenfeld, Daniel Gilbert, Daniel […]
Biologist and futurist Juan Enriquez talks about the potential of bioenergy. Our current energy sources — coal, oil, gas — are ultimately derived from ancient plants — they’re “concentrated sunlight.” He asks, Can we learn from that process and accelerate it? Can we get to the point where we grow our own energy as efficiently […]
News.com’s blog reports on how much oil we have left, in the estimate of Chevron CTO Don Paul: About 1 trillion gallons that we can extract, and another trillion that, for now, we can’t. In a hallway conversation with a News.com reporter, Chevron’s Paul estimated that we will have consumed half of all the oil […]