TED Blog
08 May 2012
Revealed! Speaker lineup for TEDGlobal 2012: Radical Openness
Today, we’re thrilled to announce the TEDGlobal 2012 speaker lineup — exploring the theme “Radical Openness.”
As the world becomes ever more interconnected, the ways we relate, the means by which we learn about one another and develop mutual understanding, and the rules about what we hide and what we share are changing. That’s the inspiration for the theme — and it’ll be explored by scientists, artists, technologists, students and visionaries from around the globe. Explore the full program guide, or scroll down for the full lineup …
TEDGlobal 2012 takes place June 25-29, 2012, in Edinburgh, Scotland — and it’s watchable around the world through the TED Live membership.
06 May 2012
The color of x: Seeing red in this photo set from TEDxSummit
Our pals at What Took You So Long sent over a set of treated photos from TEDxSummit with an accent on TED red … explore on our +TEDx page.
Photos by Alicia Sully, Sebastian Lindstrom and Pedro Julio Ramirez Paz.
06 May 2012
Interesting: The languages Google Translate doesn’t translate yet
From the Atlantic, this fascinating essay on Google Translate at an interesting point in its growth:
Last week Google Translate announced that it now has more than 200 million monthly users. As Alexis Madrigal noted, this means that Google is now translating as much in a day as all professional human translators combined complete in a year — an amount of text equivalent to a million books.
Google Translate is far from perfect … but it is one Google products for which one can unequivocally say that it does more good than harm. Because of Google Translate, millions of people access ideas that would have once remained impenetrable.
Google Translate handles 65 languages now. But as it grows, the essay suggests, it’s time for it to add more regional languages and dialects, going beyond each country’s official language (and/or its shared lingua franca) to unlock ideas and connect minds from all communities.
As TED translator Anwar Dafa-Alla comments: “In Sudan, there are 600 different ethnic groups who speak more than 400 languages and dialects. Adding more local and national languages to Google Translate is very important for the future of our humanity.”
05 May 2012
How midwives can save lives in the Horn of Africa: Edna Adan Ismail at TEDxRC²
From TEDxRC² comes this moving story of midwife Edna Adan Ismail. We share in honor of the International Day of the Midwife, May 5, 2012.
Edna Adan Ismail is a nurse, midwife, UN diplomat, French Legion of Honour recipient and former foreign minister of Somaliland — an unrecognised, self-declared state that has been going it alone for the past 20 years. The tireless 74-year-old has poured everything she has, including her pension, into providing much-needed health care to a population with one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world — a situation that’s been exacerbated by Somalia’s long civil war, which led to the death or departure of nearly all of the country’s health care workers. In her talk at TEDxRC², Edna shared her vision for saving many more lives across the Horn of Africa, proving that “if it can happen in Somaliland, it can happen anywhere.”
Learn more about Edna Adan Ismail’s hospital
Read Nicholas Kristof’s Mother’s Day 2011 columnm, featuring Edna >>
04 May 2012
Imagination is not a luxury: Fellows Friday with Gabriella Gomez-Mont
You’ve said that being a TED Fellow messed with your mind. Why?
Tóxico Cultura — the independent art lab and cultural salon I founded in 2007 — is very much about exploring the unmapped gray areas between artistic disciplines, creating experimental territories and temporal states of exception, since creativity and imagination have a way of becoming unbound in those types of spaces.
But since the TED Fellowship I have come to realize that I was defining “multidisciplinary” within the scope of arts and culture itself — art, design, film, literature, music, and so on. Now, because of TED, it’s become a bit more wild and untamed. Among the Fellows there are writing doctors and filmmaking scientists and space economists and space archeologists and do-it-yourself neurologists, and the list goes on and on — so many inspiring and madly creative people reinventing the edges of their own worlds.
So I’ve become fascinated by what it means to amplify and to make even more complex a multidisciplinary bridge-building platform, and what it could mean to take it further and to help generate a creative ethos in Mexico City that traverses many different territories.
So it’s blown open what art means to you.
Yes. Art at the edge of other things. And it’s blown open what it means to create multidisciplinary projects, and what it means to work in a multidisciplinary manner, what we could learn from each other if we learn to import thought structures from elsewhere, and learn to “speak” in different languages, if you will. As Wittgenstein once put it: the limits of our language are the limits of our world. And the question is how to sometimes untie those languages, limits and boundaries. There is a certain comfort in defining ourselves tightly and safely, but it also stops us from exploring what lies outside of the things we already know and who we already are.
My time with the TED Fellows has also made me become avidly curious about people and projects in Mexico focused on other areas of knowledge. I have started doing in-depth interviews and mapping different fields, and suddenly I’m seeing that there’s so much creative thought outside of arts and culture, and so many links to be made between different disciplines and people, both locally and internationally. So many things could be possible with a nudge here and there.
So that is what Tóxico will focus on: helping certain conversations catch fire by putting the right people in touch and creating meeting points, or building knowledge structures through talks, seminars or workshops around different subjects — human rights and censorship in journalism, to name one upcoming example, an urgent conversation in Mexico nowadays — all on intimate territory because I am a huge believer in the power of small encounters that lead to larger repercussions through chain reactions. I am reworking the way Tóxico functions as a catalyst, an intoxicating agent…
This all happened because of the TED Fellowship?
Oh, definitely. Before the TED Fellowship I was really happy with our projects. It’s already a large world in itself, right, working between the different disciplines that make up the arts, plus also doing my own personal projects, consulting and designing multidisciplinary art programs, guest editing international magazines, curating, writing and now directing film. But it has been so intensely inspiring to see what other Fellows are doing that I have become utterly captivated with what it means to help create an innovative and creative society across disciplines.
It has also made me ponder on the place of culture in the whole scheme of things. I still believe in art for art’s sake, of course, but I also find it really interesting to think both about how art can be provoked by other areas, as well as how other disciplines can benefit from incorporating artistic thought processes into their inner workings. What I find most alluring about the art world — the reason why I got into art in the first place, in fact — is that it manages to create territories composed of a mix between so-called fiction and so-called reality: inject life with imagination and create symbolic narratives that then have the possibility of creating worlds unto themselves. Art can become a blueprint for reality in that way, and a hypothetical playground for minds let loose.
04 May 2012
“The Pursuit of Happiness” — listen now to TED Radio Hour Episode 2
Now live online: The new episode of TED Radio Hour, a program from NPR and TED. “The Pursuit of Happiness” is available online now on NPR.com — and will air online on many US NPR member stations; check your local listings.
In Episode 2, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” host Alison Stewart talks with Barry Schwartz and Kathryn Schulz — and we meet Howard Moskowitz, the hero of Malcolm Gladwell’s classic TEDTalk on the perfect spaghetti sauce.
You can find the full hour-long episode, as well as each individual segment (yes, they’re each 18 minutes long), related TEDTalks and more in-depth content on n.pr/TEDradiohour and on NPR’s mobile apps.
Subscribe to the iTunes podcast to get TED Radio Hour Episode 2: “The Pursuit of Happiness” >>
02 May 2012
May 19 is Food Revolution Day
We’ve heard the statistics. Obesity has more than doubled worldwide since 1980. For the first time in history, being overweight is killing more people than being underweight. At least 2.8 million adults die each year as a result of being overweight or obese. Where do we begin to tackle such an immense problem?
There is not one single solution, but there are two key paths: getting moving and eating better. We must change our habits and promote better living.
On May 19, Food Revolution Day is a day for people who love food to get back to the basics. To become a conscious community and understand our daily food choices. Learning to cook from scratch is at the heart of the movement. Food Revolution Day can empower everyone to start.
People around the globe will connect with their community through events at homes, schools, restaurants, local businesses, and farmers’ markets. Already 100+ food events and 200+ dinner parties are planned. You can join them or arrange your own. Do you want to bring the revolution to your company or your school? Check out the toolkits.
Learn more about Food Revolution Day >>
Below, watch Jamie Oliver’s video message to TEDxers, announcing Food Revolution Day:
01 May 2012
Building a museum at Ground Zero: Steve Rosenbaum on the TED Blog
TED Blog exclusive video: Steve Rosenbaum takes us on a private tour of the 9/11 Museum, under construction now at the site of the World Trade Center towers. Below, he talks about why he joined the effort to create a memorial of the people and events of September 11, 2001.
Why did you decide to document the curation and construction of the 9/11 Museum?
On the day the towers fell, I was standing on my roof at 28th and 5th — and and I ended up working with a team of amazing filmmakers to record the day, and the week that followed. I made a film called “7 Days In September” and it always felt unfinished to me. Yes, there was 9/11 — but it seemed to me that history would care more about what happened next. So I just felt a strong call to go back, and be there with a camera to record what would happen and how the city would turn the anger into something important.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve seen so far?
The Museum is underground, built to allow visitors to see the architectural heart of the story — the foundation of the Twin Towers. The space underground is massive, it’s a seven-story space, with 80,000 square feet of exhibition space. Visitors will see the crushed remains of FDNY Ladder 3, the towering “Last Column” and a number of other large artifacts. But I think the most surprising thing for me are the smaller artifacts and the human stories. I thought I’d heard every story possible, but time and time again the memories of those we lost are still haunting.
How do you think people will feel when they leave the museum?
I think that it will be a very emotional journey — and certainly painful at some points. But also inspirational in some ways that may surprise you. The Memorial Team talks a lot about building a living institution, and I think they’re accomplishing that. People will come from around the world. Adults who were teens ten years ago will come. People with different religious beliefs, different cultural perspectives, and different political and social backgrounds. The museum needs to speak to all of them, and tell the story without bias or an agenda. It’s huge complex task — but everything I’ve seen tells me that they’re accomplishing that.
When will it open, and when will your film be done?
There is no firm date, but the latest estimates I’ve seen say mid-summer 2013. There’s no doubt that the project has had to overcome some speed bumps and sort out some funding debates. But this isn’t something that should be rushed, or opened prematurely. It’s important they get the story right. The film has become more than a documentary — it’s a digital record of the process of the Museum’s construction and curatorial process. The people at the Museum have been generous and given me the opportunity to witness the complex and emotional construction process. And I’ve committed to not rushing the filmmaking. So, once the Museum is open, we’ll wrap our production and start post production. Probably a year or more after that.
01 May 2012
It works!
'Shake 7, 8, 9, 10...and fold'. Just put @TEDNews 'How to dry your hands with one paper towel' talk to the test and it works. *astonished*
—
Lisa Ellwood (@LisaEllwood) April 30, 201229 April 2012
Video: Sir Ken Robinson, what’s in the school of your dreams?
Watch as four student reporters hand Sir Ken Robinson a “blank check” and say: Design a learning place of your dreams. It’s a three-part video series — and definitely do watch through to Part 3, where things get a little bit silly.
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Watch the 4-minute video A Taste of TED2012:
