The Internet is a wonderful place, and one of the most wonderful parts of it is a little place called TED.com. Besides Chud (and the necessary daily stuff like google, meebo, etc), I would say it is my favorite website.
From the wiki:
Basically, they have brilliant people talk about cool things, and recently they've started to put it on the web for all of us. There are talks from the big names mentioned above, and also Malcolm Gladwell, Will Wright, Richard Dawkins, and even JJ Abrams, but the best presentations are from the people you've never heard of. Poke around and you'll probably find some greatness (which I'd hope you'll post in this thread for our enjoyment), but I'll start it off with a few of my favorites:
TED | Talks | Theo Jansen: The art of creating creatures (video)
This guy and his team of artists and scientists have built new "forms of life" out of simple tubes and bottles. They're not robotic or electronic - the goal is to get the creatures to "survive" through physical, Darwinian processes, without a computer controlling anything.
TED | Talks | Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law (video)
A nice, surprisingly level-headed talk on copyright and its relation to the Internet and its amateur creators. Not as entertaining as most of the videos, but a great and clear explanation of an important issue.
TED | Talks | Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight (video)
Taylor recounts her story of waking up one morning and realizing she's having a stroke. Funnily enough, she's a neuroscientist, so she knows a bit about what's going and is able to learn even more as it happens. But this goes beyond that interesting premise and turns out to be one of the more emotional videos on the site.
From the wiki:
Quote:
| TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is an annual conference held in Monterey, California and recently, bi-annually in other cities around the world. It defines its mission as "ideas worth spreading", and indeed the best talks given at TED are made available to the public for free on its website. Its lectures cover a broad set of topics including science, arts, politics, global issues, architecture, music and more. The speakers themselves are from a wide variety of communities and disciplines[1][2] and have included such people as former US president Bill Clinton[3], nobel laureates James D. Watson[4] and Murray Gell-Mann[5], Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales[6] and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page[7]. The TED Conference also has a companion conference, TED Global, held in varying locations. |
TED | Talks | Theo Jansen: The art of creating creatures (video)
This guy and his team of artists and scientists have built new "forms of life" out of simple tubes and bottles. They're not robotic or electronic - the goal is to get the creatures to "survive" through physical, Darwinian processes, without a computer controlling anything.
TED | Talks | Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law (video)
A nice, surprisingly level-headed talk on copyright and its relation to the Internet and its amateur creators. Not as entertaining as most of the videos, but a great and clear explanation of an important issue.
TED | Talks | Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight (video)
Taylor recounts her story of waking up one morning and realizing she's having a stroke. Funnily enough, she's a neuroscientist, so she knows a bit about what's going and is able to learn even more as it happens. But this goes beyond that interesting premise and turns out to be one of the more emotional videos on the site.
