As this amazing week of TEDGlobal 2013 winds to a close with Session 8: Altogether Now, the audience is still reeling from a shocking talk on the mighty roots of corruption by Charmian Gooch, founder of Global Witness. What better to help soothe the soul than the rich and sultry voice of Irish-born pop singer-songwriter […]
When we talk about corruption, certain types of individuals come to mind, says Charmian Gooch, co-founder of watchdog NGO Global Witness. She gives some familiar examples of the type. There’s the (former) Soviet megalomaniac — such as Saparmurat Niyazov, the all-powerful leader of Turkmenistan, whose indulgences included erecting a 40-foot-high gold-plated statue of himself that […]
“This was my cancer,” TED Fellow Salvatore Iaconesi begins his TEDGlobal talk, showing a slide of brain scans taken last summer, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer at age 39. Since the moment Iaconesi heard the word “cancer” come out of his doctors’ mouth, he noticed something — that the way people related to […]
Political philosopher Michael Sandel — the second “Michael from Harvard” this session — returns to TED in the last session of TEDGlobal, “All Together Now,” to address the marketization of our culture. These days there’s very little money can’t buy. If you ever wind up in jail in San Diego, CA, and you find your […]
TEDGlobal 2013 has come to a close, and we’ve reached the final session: All Together Now. Here a look at the speakers who appeared in the session. Click on the speaker’s name to read a recap of their talk. Michael E. Porter wrote the books on modern competitive strategy for business. Now he is thinking deeply […]
Tim Exile was a child violinist. But the first time he heard house music, his life changed. All he wanted to do was to make electronic music. “I learnt the key skills and sat behind a computer with a mouse,” he says on the TEDGlobal 2013 stage. “And I totally lost this intimacy of playing […]
Indian novelist Abha Dawesar explores the self and technology’s — ahem — impact on the self in the penultimate session of TEDGlobal, “Tech Impact.” Dawesar reflects on how time-warping technology, like social media and mobile devices, has changed our perception of our own personal narratives and perception. We live, instead, in what she calls the […]
“This is what happens when you take the addictive power of an LOLcat and apply it in a ceonsorship state,” says An Xiao Mina, a writer, technologist and researcher who studies Chinese memes. On the TEDGlobal 2013 stage, she shares the moment that led her to this unusual specialty. Two years ago, China’s government imposed a […]
Technology is such an integral part of everyday life, it can be hard to remember how far we’ve come — and how fast. This session at TEDGlobal 2013 introduces a cadre of technological innovators who are helping to change the world yet further–and thinking about the implications of technology on society at large. Here are […]
Pico Iyer is a man without a land. He is 100 percent Indian in blood and ancestry, but he was born and grew up in England; he has lived the last 48 years in the U.S., where he sees his doctor and dentist, but for the last 25 years he’s spent as much time as […]
Andras Forgacs is trying to grow meat. This is a concept he had to be talked into. See, Forgacs and his father, Gabor, co-founded Organovo, which 3D-prints human tissue. And as people found out what the company did, they would often ask: If you can grow human body parts, can you also grow animal products like meat and […]
“I read poetry all the time, I write about poetry frequently, and I take poems apart to see how they work,” says Stephen Burt as he takes the TEDGlobal stage. “I’m a word person. I understand the world best and most fully through words, rather than pictures or numbers. When I have a new experience, […]
When you’re an artist, everything you see can seem like a canvas, a blank page with the potential for something beautiful. Alexa Meade sees this quite literally, using actual people as both subject and canvas. Painting on a 1-to-1 scale, Meade takes real-life subjects and turns them into paintings, playing with the shadow and light […]
Why do clouds get such a bad rap? In English, when someone’s sad or depressed, they’re “under a cloud.” When there’s bad news in store, there’s “a cloud on the horizon.” It’s everyone’s default doom-and-gloom metaphor. But, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, has one message for you: Clouds are awesome. Whatever happened […]
Mathemagician Arthur Benjamin says that there are three reasons we learn math: calculation, application and inspiration. Yes, inspiration. Math is the science of patterns, and learning it teaches us not just logic but creative thinking, says Benjamin. So why, when math is beautiful and exciting, is so much of what we learn in school about preparing for […]
Beauty is always a key theme at TED, and in this session, Imagined Beauty, there’s something for everyone, with speakers including a couple whose professions have required the coining of new words. Meet the “cloudspotter,” the “mathemagician,” and the others who presented to us in this session of TEDGlobal. Click on their name for a […]