Journalist Carole Cadwalladr explores how social media platforms like Facebook exerted an unprecedented influence on voters in the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-J9TLBembw&w=983&h=553] Last week, Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to Crimea, giving a controversial speech that posited Russia’s annexation of the peninsula as part of historical tradition. In March, when Crimea first voted to become a part of Russia, TED Fellow Ed Ou was there. He shared what he saw on the ground—Russian flags being […]
Del Harvey is watching what you’re doing on Twitter. Head of the Trust and Safety Team at the social network, she develops ways to keep Twitter’s 240 million-plus users safe. With that many people — sending 500 million tweets every day — dangerous things are bound to happen, she says at TED2014. For Harvey, the […]
There are two kinds of people who fly: those who want to talk to the person sitting next to them and those who want a quiet ride. Luckily, Delta has created a sensory experience for both kinds of travelers in their Connectivity Space, outside the theater at TED2014. For the connectors, we’ll start with a […]
If you’ve ever had the ending of your favorite TV show ruined by a spoiler-filled tweet, Jennie Lamere feels your pain. The 18-year-old tech whiz won the grand prize at Boston’s TVNext Hack event in April for inventing Twivo, a clever app that blocks all mentions of a show you’re waiting to watch until you’re […]
Stories of NSA spying have been rippling through the press in the past week or so, and Carnegie Mellon professor Alessandro Acquisti is here to tell us just how blurry the boundary between private and public has become in recent years. He begins by reminding us of the story of Adam and Eve, banished from the Garden of […]
In today’s talk, Intel engineer Maria Bezaitis brings up a fascinating point: why is the phrase “don’t talk to strangers” such a part of our cultural zeitgeist? “When we’re at our best, we reach out to people who are not like us because when we do that, we learn,” says Bezaitis, in this talk given […]
Are your endless tweets, status updates and Instagrams robbing you of enjoying what’s special about the moments you’re trying to share? Damon Brown fears they may. In the TED Book Our Virtual Shadow: Why We Are Obsessed With Documenting Our Lives Online, he lays out a compelling case for mindfully balancing your online presence with being present in […]
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 […]
By Damon Brown The morning of our wedding, my wife and I only had one major discussion: Should we bring our cell phones? She loved Facebook as much as I loved Twitter, and since we’ve lived and made friends all across the country, the social networks made it easier to stay connected to our loved […]
Once, Lakshmi Pratury says, she was deeply troubled by the public lives of young people on the Internet, but now she has hope — because the same kids who post their party pics online are also posting their political outrage. Her talk turns to a sad and shocking recent event: the gang-rape and torture of […]
Sharing is caring, and here at TED we do a lot of both — especially on social media. You can like our Facebook page, catch us on Instagram and follow us on 19 active Twitter handles. That’s a lot, we know, but sometimes good sharing means not oversharing. In other words, we want to make sure you get the information […]