Articles related to TED2006

16 April 2007

The New TED.com launches today Monday April 16th

Tedcom_homepage_screenshots_sir_mar This morning we are proud to announce the debut of our brand-new TED website. The site has been completely redesigned to focus on our award-winning TEDTalks, video and audio recordings of great presentations from TED Conferences by speakers including Malcolm Gladwell, Jane Goodall, Julia Sweeney, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett Bono, Bill Clinton, Jeff Bezos, Stefan Sagmeister,  Eve Ensler, Nicholas Negroponte, Peter Gabriel, Al Gore, Tony Robbins, Anna Deavere-Smith, Hans Rosling, Jeff Han and 90+ others, including 30 talks never available to the public until today.

Please check out the new user interface, listen to, watch or download new talks and create your own profile on our member profile pages. It's all free. And if you like what you see, tell your friends via email or via your blog. If you have critiques, issues, feedback or suggestions, please contact us.

June Cohen, Director of TED Media led an incredible team of people including TED's Jason Wishnow, Director of Film and Video and the incredibly talented Emily McManus, Marla Mitchnick and Michael Glass; and the web design firm Method.

We are grateful to BMW, who returns as our inagural sponsor of the new TED.com, bringing a message about its vision of a world powered by hydrogen.

The complete TED.com announcement press release after the jump...

Continue reading "The New TED.com launches today Monday April 16th" »

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21 March 2007

Google and TED sword-swallowing demographer team up to think outside the X and Y axes

Google has acquired Hans Rosling's Trendalyzer software, which the Swedish demographer and his team at Gapminder have developed since 2005 to generate more useful visualizations of facts and figures. Rosling has met the Google founders at TED2006, where he gave a thought-provoking speech on the nature of statistics and the general misinterpretation of them (see short summary and video of that speech). At TED2007 ten days ago he gave another insightful speech, ending it with the now-famous sword-swallowing moment (yes, Rosling is a serious demographer but also -- another deadly serious activity -- one of the few sword-swallowers active in Sweden). Photo Robert Leslie/TED:

Ted07hansroslingsword

Marissa Mayer of Google comments the acquisition on their blog: "Gathering data and creating useful statistics is an arduous job that often goes unrecognized. We hope to provide the resources necessary to bring such work to its deserved wider audience by improving and expanding Trendalyzer and making it freely available to any and all users capable of thinking outside the X and Y axes." The Trendalyzer team will join Google in Mountain View to work on developing the tools; the non-profit Gapminder Foundation -- whose goal is to "to promote a fact-based worldview by bringing statistical story-telling to new levels" -- will instead continue operating out of Stockholm.
(Via IHT Metamedia)

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16 February 2007

Gore's SOS - Save Our Selves

Along the social absorption route, there is always a point where complex issues and inconvenient messages percolate into the pop-culture sphere and start being considered self-evident, possibly triggering changes in behavior and other individual or collective responses.

For the climate crisis that point may be nearing. It may even have a precise date: this year's 7th of July (7/7/7). A group of environmental activists surrounding former US vice-president Al Gore (see his speech at TED2006) has just announced plans for a worldwide event, called LiveEarth, featuring big live concerts in cities on seven continents (another "7") broadcast on television, radio, online (by sponsor MSN) and on cell phones (yes, one of the concerts will be broadcast from Antarctica, that will be a first) to mobilize global action to face the climate crisis. 777liveearth The initiative will use as its identifier the international SOS Morse code (three dots, three dashes, three dots - see logo at right), re-interpreting it as a continuous distress call where SOS stands for "Save Our Selves". "The climate crisis will only be stopped by an unprecedented and sustained global movement", Gore said announcing the initiative (watch the video), which he called "a mass persuasion campaign" that will also outline (through the websites) ways in which individuals, companies and politicians can take action.

LiveEarth is of course modeled on the 1985 LiveAid (to raise funds for famine relief) and the 2005 Live8 (to raise pressure for debt relief and eliminating poverty) international concerts. It was imagined by Kevin Wall, who produced Live8. More than 100 artists will appear - including Sheryl Crow, Bon Jovi, Red Hot Chili Peppers, local acts (to attract local audiences), etc.

For Gore, LiveEarth will be a spectacular way to extend the message of his film "An Inconvenient Truth" (which is nominated for an Oscar later this month) and of his Climate Project (training volunteers to give his slide show). But of course it won't go without controversies -- starting with the question of whether he's just building up a run for US President in 2008 (which he dismisses: "I have no intentions of running"). The other focus of criticism will be the environmental impact of the multicontinental concert (air travel, mass audiences producing mass waste, energy consumption, etc). Wall and Gore say they're using LiveEarth to design a "Green event standard" that could become a "model for carbon-neutral concerts and other live entertainment events".

(Cross-posted on LunchOverIP)

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10 January 2007

Photographer Phil Borges on TEDTalks

Phil BorgesPhotographer Phil Borges displays his remarkable portraits, documenting the world's disappearing cultures, from persecuted monks in Tibet to embattled tribes in the Ecuadorian Amazon. He also shares inspiring results from his digital-storytelling workshops, which give indigenous teenagers tools for cultural preservation and self-expression. A former dentist, Phil Borges rediscovered his passion for photography, and spent the last 25 years documenting indigenous cultures around the world. His work collected in several books, including Tibetan Portrait and Enduring Spirit. In 2001, he founded Bridges to Understanding, an organization that works with teenagers worldwide, promoting cultural preservation and exchange through digital storytelling. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:19)

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08 January 2007

Al Gore's Climate Project in full swing

At the end of his first speech at TED2006, Al Gore announced that he was going to train a thousand people to give the climate change presentation he gave there - and which is at the core of his movie An Inconvenient Truth. That has turned into the Climate Project, and three training sessions have already taken place in Nashville, with an amazing range of participants. Nick Seaver, one of them, tells how that went.

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04 January 2007

The cheeseburger footprint

TED2006 speaker Jamais Cascio has a very interesting way of considering cheeseburgers. He tries (in this post) to calculate their carbon footprint: how much carbon is produced in the process of cooking the burger, plus growing the feed for the cattle, growing and milling the wheat to make bread, growing the other ingredients, slaughtering and freezing the cattle for meat, pickling cucumbers, storing and transporting, driving to the fast-food restaurant, etc, not to forget, at the beginning of the chain, the methane emissions from the cattle. He details the sources of his data and his calculations in the post, and concludes that

the overall CO2-equivalent emissions from all the cheeseburgers consumed in the US [in a year] roughly equal the greenhouse output of 100'000 SUVs.

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07 December 2006

Peter Gabriel on TEDTalks

Peter Gabriel Musician and activist Peter Gabriel explains the personal motivation behind his work with human-rights organization Witness, which gives video cameras to ordinary citizens to document human-rights abuses, so the perpetrators may be brought to justice. He shares stories of citizen journalists in action, and poses the question: if injustice happens and a camera is there to capture it, can it be ignored? Gabriel first took the musical stage by storm with the band Genesis, but has enjoyed a successful solo career with hits like "In Your Eyes." In 1989 he founded the Real World label for global music and the Real World Studios in Bath, England. In 1992 he co-founded Witness.(Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 14:50)

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09 November 2006

Skeptic founder Michael Shermer on TEDTalks

Michael Shermer

Skeptic Magazine founder Michael Shermer takes us on a hilarious romp through the strange claims we humans put forth as truth - from alien encounters to Virgin Mary sightings on pizza pies, to hidden messages revealed while playing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards - and explains the evolutionary and cognitive basis for these lapses in reason. Don't miss the one-minute challenge testing your own observational skills... Shermer is the founder/publisher of Skeptic Magazine, and author of several books, including Why People Believe Weird Things. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 17:29)

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26 October 2006

Spaceship designer Burt Rutan on TEDTalks

Burt Rutan

In this passionate talk, legendary spacecraft designer Burt Rutan lambasts the U.S government-funded space program for stagnating ("Houston, we have a problem."), and calls for space entrepreneurs to pick up where NASA left off. Rutan won the $10M Ansari X-Prize for SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded craft to enter space twice in a 2-week period. He's now collaborating with Virgin Galactic to build the first rocket-ship designed for space tourism. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:16)

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03 October 2006

Jill Sobule & Julia Sweeney: An evening of songs and stories

JuliajillLast spring, I gushed about the magic that was made when Jill Sobule and Julia Sweeney shared a stage for the first time. The two met at TED2006, confessed to being long-time fans of each other's work, and resolved to collaborate on a show. The result was an uncategorizable delight, mixing stories and song. If you missed out the first time around, you have another shot: They'll perform together October 10th & 11th at LA's Largo, and October 23rd at Joe's Pub in New York. TED will definitely be in the house ...

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28 September 2006

Virgin Galactic unveils the rocket-powered ship to launch space tourism

VirginThis morning, Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson offered the first public look at
the rocketship expected to make space tourism a reality. The mock-up — revealed at WIRED/NextFest in New York — is based on the design of SpaceShipOne, the Ansari X-Prize-winning craft designed by Burt Rutan (TED2006). (Watch for Rutan's TEDTalk later this fall.) The first Virgin Galactic flight is tentatively scheduled for 2009; tickets are expected to cost £100,000 ($190,000).

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20 September 2006

BIGGER BOLDER TEDDER Than Ever Before!

Last week, Apple announced that its complete line of video iPods can finally handle Standard Definition (SD) television resolution of 640x480 pixels.

640x480_1

We're thrilled to announce the first batch of TEDTalks SD - four times the image size of regular TEDTalks - optimized for viewing on your computer - or playing back through your television.

Sd3

Download - Hans Rosling (2006) - 195 MB
Download - Jeff Han (2006) - 96 MB
Download - TEDTalks Trailer - 30 MB


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19 September 2006

Investing in the long term

San Francisco investor Peter A. Thiel (co-founder of PayPal) is putting $3.5 million into the antiaging research pioneered by TED speaker Aubrey de Grey (see past posts on him). The money will come in annual installments of $500,000 over the next three years for a pilot project, plus matching money for every dollar donated by others to de Grey's foundation.

It is not known whether there are strings attached to the donation. It seems to us, however, that consistency with the scope of de Grey's research would have Thiel transfer the money in installments of, say, $10 a day over the next 1000 years.

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06 September 2006

Jill Sobule's musical tribute to Helen Fisher

Jill_performingAt TED2006, Helen Fisher delivered an unforgettable talk (now available online) focusing largely on love: Its evolution, its vital importance to human society, and the science behind the stages of lust, infatuation, and long-term attachment. Inspired by Fisher -- and, well, slightly disturbed by the biochemical basis of it all -- singer/songwriter Jill Sobule penned a pensive tribute, which she began performing in clubs this spring.

We didn't want to wait for the next CD, so Jill recorded a special demo just for TED ... Here, timed with the release of Helen Fisher's TEDTalk, is Jill's lyrical response: The End of Love (MP3. Duration: 3:33).

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Helen Fisher on TEDTalks

Helen Fisher

Helen Fisher is an anthropologist with Rutgers University, specializing in gender differences and the evolution of human emotions. Her most recent book is Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. In this wide-ranging talk, she outlines the bio-chemical foundations of love (and lust), and discusses the natural talents of women, and their new significance in the modern world. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 24:13)

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29 August 2006

Mena Trott on TEDTalks

Mena Trott

Mena Trott is the 28-year-old founder of leading blog software company Six Apart (Creators of Typepad, Movable Type, LiveJournal and Vox). In this talk, she explores the personal side of blogging. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 17:30)

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Richard Baraniuk on TEDTalks

Richard Baraniuk

Richard Baraniuk is a Rice University professor with a giant vision: to create a free, global online education system. In this presentation, he introduces Connexions, the open-access publishing system that's changing the landscape of education by providing free coursework and educational materials to everyone in the world. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:18)

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15 August 2006

Ross Lovegrove on TEDTalks

Ross Lovegrove

Ross Lovegrove is an industrial designer, best known for his work on the Sony Walkman and Apple iMac. In this highly visual presentation, he presents his recent work -- from furniture to water bottles -- which is organic in form and inspired by nature. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:14)

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Amy Smith on TEDTalks

Amy Smith

MIT engineer Amy Smith designs ingenious low-cost devices to tackle tough problems in developing countries. She received a MacArthur "Genius" Grant in 2004, and was the first woman to win MIT's famed Lemelson Prize. In this talk, she explains the vision behind her inventions, which include eco-friendly charcoal and a laboratory incubator that doesn't require electricity. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 15:48)

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09 August 2006

Jennifer Lin on TEDTalks

Jennifer Lin

Jennifer Lin is an extraordinary young concert pianist, 14 years old when she appeared at TED. In this performance, she plays Joseph Hoffman's "Kaleidoscope," Robert Schumann's "Abegg Variations" and Jack Fina's "Bumble Boogie," as well as a dazzling improvisation based on a few notes chosen by a well-known audience member (Recorded February 2004 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 24:51)

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Sirena Huang on TEDTalks

Sirena Huang

Sirena Huang started violin lessons at four, and made her professional solo debut at age nine, with the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra. Now 11, she has won top prizes in numerous international competitions, delighting audiences worldwide with her virtuosity and musical imagination. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 25:25)

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01 August 2006

Jeff Han on TEDTalks

Jeff Han

Jeff Han is a research scientist for New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences . Here, he demonstrates — for the first time publicly — his intuitive, "interface-free," touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 09:32)

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Nicholas Negroponte on TEDTalks

Nicholas Negroponte

Nicholas Negroponte is former Director of the MIT Media Lab, and founder of the non-profit, One Laptop Per Child, dedicated to making the famed "$100 laptop" a reality. In this talk, he outlines some of the challenges of getting the laptop produced, and explains why he stepped down as Media Lab director to focus on the initiative full-time, "for the rest of my life." (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 18:21)

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28 July 2006

Nigeria orders first million $100 laptops

Laptop_orangeAt TED2006, former MIT Media Lab Director Nicholas Negroponte outlined the challenges of producing the $100 laptop, which will be designed for -- and only available to -- children in the developing world. The key, he suggested, is scale. The economics will work when countries begin ordering them by the millions. Well, according to the Nigerian newspaper, Vanguard, the first order is in: The Nigerian government has committed to purchasing at least one million. India, on the other hand, has declined. (Via VnuNet and PC Advisor.)

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25 July 2006

TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant on TEDTalks

Larry Brilliant

TEDPrize winner Larry Brilliant is an epidemiologist who presided over the last case of Smallpox on the planet. He also founded the Seva Foundation, which works to reverse cases of blindness, and co-founded several technology start-ups, including the legendary online community, The Well. He was recently named Executive Director of the Google Foundation.

In this talk, he explains in fascinating detail the key behind the successful WHO campaign to eradicate Smallpox, and then unveils his TEDPrize wish: to build a global system that detects each new disease or disaster as it emerges or occurs. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 26:34)

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TEDPrize winner Cameron Sinclair on TEDTalks

Cameron Sinclair

TEDPrize winner Cameron Sinclair is founder of Architecture for Humanity, and author of Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises. In this presentation, he demonstrates the need for a design response to natural disasters, and unveils his TEDPrize wish: to create a community that actively embraces open-source design to generate innovative and sustainable living standards for all. (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 24:12)

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13 July 2006

TED BookClub: Design Like You Give a Damn

Designlikeyou_coverDesign Like You Give A Damn
By Cameron Sinclair
Published by Metropolis Books
336 pages | List price: $35.00

I'm delighted to share with you the book created by one of this year's TEDPrize winners, Cameron Sinclair. Design Like You Give A Damn is just bursting with intriguing and often beautiful examples of how designers and architects around the world have created innovative housing for those most in need of it. You can't read it without feeling inspired... both by the individuals concerned, and by the power of design to make a difference.

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12 July 2006

The jury's still out on Aubrey de Grey's anti-aging claims

Aubreydegreytechreview Aubrey de Grey's claims that aging can be defeated, which he voiced at TEDGLOBAL last year and at TED2006, "exist in a kind of antechamber of science, where they wait (possibly in vain) for independent verification". While they "don't compel the assent of many knowledgeable scientists", they're also "not demonstrably wrong".

That's the overall (in)conclusion of the challenge put forth last year by the MIT Technology Review to scientists to disprove de Grey's "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" (SENS). Three submissions by scientists and groups of scientists have been analyzed by five judges - all the details in this previous post - and the magazine announced yesterday the results of the jury's work: "SENS is a collection of hypotheses that ... cannot rise to the level of being scientifically verified. However, by the same token, the ideas of SENS have not been conclusively disproved". The challenge remains open.

(Cross-posted on LunchOverIP)

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The jury's still out on Aubrey de Grey's anti-aging claims

Aubreydegreytechreview Aubrey de Grey's claims that aging can be defeated, which he voiced at TEDGLOBAL last year and at TED2006, "exist in a kind of antechamber of science, where they wait (possibly in vain) for independent verification". While they "don't compel the assent of many knowledgeable scientists", they're also "not demonstrably wrong".

That's the overall (in)conclusion of the challenge put forth last year by the MIT Technology Review to scientists to disprove de Grey's "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" (SENS). Three submissions by scientists and groups of scientists have been analyzed by five judges - all the details in this previous post - and the magazine announced yesterday the results of the jury's work: "SENS is a collection of hypotheses that ... cannot rise to the level of being scientifically verified. However, by the same token, the ideas of SENS have not been conclusively disproved". The challenge remains open.

(Cross-posted on LunchOverIP)

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27 June 2006

Sir Ken Robinson on TEDTalks

Ken RobinsonSir Ken Robinson is author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. In this talk, he makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. [Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:02]

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Al Gore on TEDTalks

Al Gore 

Al Gore, in his own words, "used to be the next President of the United States of America" but has since changed professions. This talk is a follow-up to his now-famous presentation, featured in the movie, An Inconvenient Truth. In it, he outlines what we can do to avert a global climate crisis.
[Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 16:55]

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Majora Carter on TEDTalks

Majora CarterMajora Carter is the Macarthur-winning founder of Sustainable South Bronx, an organization dedicated to holistic community development, sponsoring projects that create jobs, protect the environment and bring beautiful green space to the inner city. In this charismatic presentation (which received a prolonged standing ovation), she explains her commitment to environmental justice and her vision for a renewed South Bronx. [Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:14]

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David Pogue on TEDTalks

David PogueDavid Pogue is the personal technology columnist for The New York Times, an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News, and one of the world's bestselling how-to authors. In this unconventional talk, he offers a sweeping (and unusual) view on the state of software, partially set to music. [Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 22:05]

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Tony Robbins on TEDTalks

Tony RobbinsTony Robbins is father of the life-coaching industry. In this talk, he explains how to unlock your true potential, and asks the audience (including former Vice President Al Gore) for a bit of high-level interaction. [Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 26:02]

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Hans Rosling on TEDTalks

Hans RoslingHans Rosling is a public health expert, director of Sweden's world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life. Here, with the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, he debunks a few myths about the "developing" world. [Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 20:34]

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19 June 2006

Aubrey De Grey: scientist or dreamer?

Could someone with the proper scientific credentials please stand up and tell us whether Aubrey de Grey's claim that we can defeat aging has any credibility? That's the challenge put forth by the MIT Technology Review last summer - and a few people did stand up. The dispute is not resolved yet, but the controversy is becoming red-hot. In the coming days, a "jury" will try (try) to settle it.

Aubreydegrey Flash-back: British biogerontologist and computer scientist Aubrey de Grey - who carries a resemblance to Gandalf - stunned and fascinated the attendees at both TEDGLOBAL and TED06, claiming that there is no reason why science could not figure out how to make us live until the age of 200 or beyond. De Grey says (I'm oversimplifying) that aging, like a disease, can be cured; that it is essentially a set of accumulating molecular and cellular transformations in our bodies, caused by metabolism, that eventually lead to pathology and kill us. Therefore, it could be approached "as an engineering problem": identify all the components of the variety of processes that cause tissues to age, and design remedies for each of them. He calls the approach "Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence" (SENS).

At TEDGLOBAL, Kari Stefansson, the founder of Iceland's DeCode Genetics, called the idea "peculiar": “Survival of the species is dependent on the death of the individual and on new generations; what matters is the presence of life, not the absence of death”. But clearly it takes more than that to debunk de Grey's theory. Turns out that a long profile of de Grey was one of the most widely-read articles in the MIT Tech Review last year, attracting thousands of letter and e-mails. Jason Pontin, the editor, went out searching for a biogerontologist who would take on de Grey's claims, "but while a number of biologists have criticized SENS to me privately, none have been willing to do so in public".

Why? It's possible that they just didn't want to waste their time on such a silly issue. Or could it be an immodest unwillingness to examine the details of SENS? Pontin wanted to find out, and last summer the Review announced a prize of US$ 20'000 for any molecular biologist who could demonstrate - in 750 words or less (plus annexes and footnotes) - that "SENS is so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate".

A few scientists had a go at it. Charles V. Mobbs, associate professor for neuroscience and geriatrics at Mt Sinai School of Medicine, developed his argument around the fact that SENS would treat the symptoms (damages caused by the metabolism) rather than the causes (full text; de Grey's rebuttal; Mobbs counter-response - all in PDF). Bret Weinstein, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, went on a full-frontal attack (full text; rebuttal; counter-response), as did 9 researchers from universities and private organizations: "SENS is pseudoscience ... The prefix pseudo means false", they write (full text; rebuttal;