TED

by: Daniel De Groot

Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 22:15

Have you heard about TED? The Technology Entertainment Design conference has been held annually since 1990. It's a kind of Bildeberg group for smart people. It was pretty secretive until 2006 when they began posting selected talks from their invitation-only no media intimate conferences on their web site (I certainly hadn't heard of it!).

They're up to over 200 talks posted online and the subject matter varies greatly but there it is a goldmine of new thinking and leading edge innovation in a variety of fields. There's no overt ideology to the place, but the defacto alliance of science, empiricism and rationality with liberalism makes it pretty friendly for the most part from a progressive perspective. I think part of building a governing progressive majority in America involves linking up with progressives worldwide. I may write about this in future, but conservatives got a leg up on us through globalizing commerce and goods and leaving out civil rights and labour mobility. The answer is not to go protectionist and put the shields back up, it's to globalize our issues too. I think we were beating them domestically so they took the fight globally. I think if we do the same, we'll beat them globally too.

Below, a few talks I've seen and would recommend.

Daniel De Groot :: TED

Alex Steffen sees a sustainable future - Just fantastic on some of the hopeful signs that humanity can adapt so that everyone gets to live a prosperous life without needing several additional planets worth of resources. You'll love the device for detecting land mines.

Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen - I can't recommend this one highly enough. He makes a compelling visual and statistical case that the term "developing world" is outdated. After viewing this talk you will want to go here to play with his visual graphing tool. He has another TED talk too.

Richard Dawkins on our "queer" universe - He needs no intro from the likes of me.

Jane Goodall on what separates us from the apes - She's always worth watching.

Arthur Benjamin does "Mathemagic" - Watch this guy multiply 4 and 5 digit numbers in his head. Entertaining in a nerdy kind of way.

David Gallo shows underwater astonishments - Amazing marine life tricks. You won't believe it when you see the octopus appear. Astonishing.

Larry Brilliant makes the case for optimism - I always like seeing people make the case for hope. Cynicism and Panglossianism only lead to zero-sum me-first thinking. You can't be a progressive and a pessimist with much consistency.

Patrick Awuah on educating leaders - He founded an educational institution for leadership in Africa (I feel bad that I can't remember where, I watched this in December). He talks about the linkage between the endemic government corruption in Africa and the simple fact that many of their middle and upper management simply have no idea how else to function.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page on Google - They do a cool 3D holograph of the world showing real time Google searches.

Bill Clinton on rebuilding Rwanda - I confess I haven't watched this yet. I do know a bit about Rwanda's genocide and I have to believe Clinton feels some personal guilt over not doing more so I suspect he's done some genuine good here.

Al Gore on averting climate crisis - Should be old hat to most readers here, but I linked the Big Dog, his rightful successor in office deserves a nod too.

Carolyn Porco flies us to Saturn - For the space geeks (like me).

Discuss them, or recommend other TED talks I missed in the comments.

Tags: TED, progressive infrastructure, Innovation, creativitiy, (All Tags)

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TED | 8 comments

The Hans Rosling presentation was great! (4.00 / 2)

I'm going to go play with that website now!
Speaking of statistics, is everyone aware of the CIA World Factbook? I've always found it a useful resource.
https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...

"Don't hate the media, become the media" -Jello Biafra

by: LandStander @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 02:47:14 AM UTC

Yikes, why isn't Lawrence Lessig's TED talk on here? (4.00 / 1)

It's awesome!

http://www.ted.com/index.php/t...

by: fernacular @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 04:31:06 AM UTC

Photosynth (4.00 / 1)

This is from 2007 TED, but it's still jaw dropping:

Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo

by: tilthouse @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 04:31:22 AM UTC

I love Ted-Talks (0.00 / 0)

they are free on I-tunes... there is one about people's behavior that was fantastic.

by: cardboard @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 04:41:07 AM UTC

Use 'em for homeschool (0.00 / 0)

Seriously....I view these talks with my 6th grader on iTunes. Wonderful science and philosophy. He may not get all of it, but he gets a lot.

by: tysonpublic @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 12:24:05 PM UTC

TED is brilliant (0.00 / 0)

Of all the things you can see, read or hear on the internet, TED is the most wonderful. You can watch some of the most brilliant thinkers, researchers and creators of our time, just in your kitchen table. After a few hours of TED, the world is a much better place.

by: Stellaa @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 15:13:59 PM UTC

Jill Bolte Taylor (0.00 / 0)

So strange that you posted this, since just yesterday I was turned on to TED by my favorite aunt, who sent me a link to Jill Bolte Taylor's powerful talk describing her stroke. Sounds morbid, I know, but she's a brain scientist who observed the experience through professional eyes, but came away with a profound understanding of how the brain both connects and isolates us each as individuals.

What an amazing resource TED is.

by: ched @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 15:31:47 PM UTC

Edge (4.00 / 1)

For those that find the TED conference interesting, also check out Edge, which seeks out an intellectual "third culture", where the first two literary intellectuals and scientists.

The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.
In the past few years, the playing field of American intellectual life has shifted, and the traditional intellectual has become increasingly marginalized. A 1950s education in Freud, Marx, and modernism is not a sufficient qualification for a thinking person in the 1990s. Indeed, the traditional American intellectuals are, in a sense, increasingly reactionary, and quite often proudly (and perversely) ignorant of many of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. Their culture, which dismisses science, is often nonempirical. It uses its own jargon and washes its own laundry. It is chiefly characterized by comment on comments, the swelling spiral of commentary eventually reaching the point where the real world gets lost.

by: Mark Matson @ Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 17:07:20 PM UTC