. At TED2007, artist Theo Jansen shared his work creating a new form of life — which can actually survive on its own — from plastic tubes and bottles. In this 3D-animation film, David Lance imagines Jansen’s creature walking through a park, morphing into metal and becoming a spider-like form that can jump cars, fly […]
In her TED 2007 talk, director Deborah Scranton detailed how she put cameras in the hands of soldiers fighting in Iraq to realize her acclaimed “The War Tapes” documentary. For her new film, “Earth Made of Glass“, which will premiere on April 26th at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York (Film’s trailer – Facebook […]
The legendary design team Charles and Ray Eames made films, houses and classic midcentury modern furniture. Eames Demetrios, their grandson, shows rarely seen films and archival footage in a lively, loving tribute to their creative process. Demetrios also talks about how his own work has been influenced by his grandparents’ legacy. (Recorded at TED2007, February […]
[ted id=161] Today, Erin McKean realized the idea that forms the base of her 2007 TED Talk with the launch of Wordnik.com, a dictionary that evolves as language does. On Wordnik, users can add new words and meanings, tag words with related expressions, see real-time search results for words from Twitter and Flickr, discover how many […]
TED took 20 minutes with Laurie Garrett this afternoon to follow up on her TED Talk from 2007, posted today, about pandemic flu. Garrett is the author of The Coming Plague, and a fellow on the Council for Foreign Relations who studied global health and emerging diseases. (As you can imagine, she is very busy […]
In 2007, as the world worried about a possible avian flu epidemic, Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, gave this powerful talk to a small TED University audience. Her insights from past pandemics are suddenly more relevant than ever. (Recorded at TED U 2007, February 2007, in Monterey, California. Duration: 21:05.) Watch Laurie Garrett’s […]
Via Mashable and ReadWriteWeb: Anand Agarwala’s Bumptop, a viral demo from TED2007, has gone live (for Windows). From Mashable’s report: Two years ago, a bright engineer, Anand Agarawala, gave a presentation at the TED conference about a new technology he and a team were working on that showed how they believed the desktop should work. […]
Photographer James Nachtwey, whose TED Prize wish was to raise awareness of TB and the mutant strain XDRTB, will speak in Rio de Janeiro today to mark World TB Day. The Stop TB Partnership is twittering live from the meeting, and it’s being webcast live, with yesterday’s sessions available for viewing as well. See James […]
At TED2007, Paul Rothemund gave TED a short summary of DNA folding (calling it a process akin to magic). Now, he lays out in clear, adundant detail the immense promise of this field — to create tiny machines that assemble themselves from a set of instructions. (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 16:24.) […]
Brain researcher Vilayanur Ramachandran talks about how brain damage can reveal the connection between the internal structures of the brain and the corresponding functions of the mind. He discusses three specific syndromes: phantom limb pain, synesthesia (when people hear color or smell sounds), and the Capgras delusion, when brain-damaged people believe their closest friends and […]
Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase investigates the ways we interact with technology — a quest that has led him from the villages of Uganda to the insides of our pockets. Along the way, he’s made some unexpected discoveries: about the ways illiterate people use their mobile phones, the new roles the mobile can play in global […]
Author and illustrator Maira Kalman talks about her life and work — from her New Yorker covers to her children’s books to her newest book for grownups, The Principles of Uncertainty. And yes, in person, she is as wonderful, as wise, and as deliciously off-kilter as her work. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: […]
Engineer Hod Lipson demonstrates and talks about a few of his cool little robots, which have the ability to learn, understand themselves and even self-replicate. At the root of this uncanny demo is a deep inquiry into the nature of how living beings learn and evolve, and how we might harness these processes to make […]
When Richard Branson was at school, his headmaster predicted he would wind up either a millionaire or in jail. Since then, he’s done both. He talks to TED’s Chris Anderson about the ups and the downs of his career, from his multibillionaire success to his multiple near-death experiences, from Virgin’s line of spacecraft to the […]
Updates from TED speakers: After a whirlwind of media speculation over the weekend following a story by The Guardian, biologist Craig Venter (watch his TED2005 speech) will announce today at the annual meeting of his institute in San Diego that his team has built a synthetic chromosome, using lab chemicals. “A giant leap forward in […]
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (watch her TEDTalks from TED2007 and TEDGlobal07), the crusading economist and former Finance Minister of Nigeria, has been appointed a Managing Director of the World Bank. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala will oversee the World Bank’s work in Africa, South Asia, and Europe and Central Asia. “Her commitment to the developing world is unparalleled,” said Robert […]