As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. Surface-level brain stimulation. The delivery of an electric current to the part of the brain involved in movement control, known as deep brain stimulation, is sometimes used to treat people with Parkinson’s disease, depression, epilepsy and obsessive compulsive disorder. […]
Lawrence Lessig may be running for President of the United States. But he isn’t looking to big donors to fund his exploratory campaign. Rather than do the usual candidate song and dance of courting wealthy donors and corporations, Lessig is using the Kickstarter method for his campaign. He’s collecting small donations from individuals through his website, […]
By Liz Jacobs and Ben Lillie Taking stock of our moment in history helps us better understand ourselves, our societies and the present moment itself — which often gets lost in the temptation to look backwards or forwards. And at TED2014: The Next Chapter we’re doing plenty of both. But we’re also designating this All-Stars […]
Larry Lessig is about to complete a 185-mile walk across the state of New Hampshire. He began this journey on January 11 and has walked despite rain, sleet, snow, ice and freezing cold, as the temperature in this state ranges anywhere from the lower thirties to the negative teens in the month of January. Lessig […]
When it comes to US politics, many are frustrated that gridlock and grandstanding so often substitute for the hard job of getting things done. Just 14% of Americans say they approve of the work that Congress is doing, according to a recent Gallup poll. (Which, as a recent TED speaker notes, is lower than the […]
“Once upon a time, there was a place called Lesterland,” Lawrence Lessig begins today’s talk. “Of its 311 million people, it turns out 144,000 are called Lester,” Lessig says. In Lesterland, this .05% of the population is granted extraordinary power. Each election cycle, there’s a general election, in which the people get to vote, and […]
Before we can tackle climate change, financial reform, education reform or, well, anything, there is a single issue that we in the United States must confront. As legal activist Lawrence Lessig says in today’s talk, before we can bring about change on any of the thousands of issues that matter to us, we must change […]
On Friday, Aaron Swartz — the 26-year-old internet innovator who helped create RSS and had a hand in the building of Reddit — was found dead in his apartment in an apparent suicide. Swartz, who suffered from depression, had reportedly found out just days before that a plea bargain deal with federal prosecutors had fallen […]
Larry Lessig gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, for this elegant presentation of “three stories and an argument.” The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the “ASCAP cartel” to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property […]