This Tip is about TED talks, where TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and “ideas worth spreading” is the focus.
Lifelong Learning with TED
So, what is TED? The answer is drawn directly from the TED website.
Chris Anderson is the curator of TED (which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design). He has described it as the place you go to discover how what you do relates to the rest of the world of knowledge that’s out there. Anderson says it shares powerful ideas, from some of the greatest thinkers alive. The caption on the website is: “Ideas worth spreading.”
TED History
design master mind Richard Saul Wurman created TED in 1984. Longtime TEDsters (as they call themselves) remember the early years as a sort of platonic ideal of a dinner party. Wurman would invite every person he would ever want to meet so they could talk, share ideas and get to know one another. From the beginning, it was also a place for serious business. The first TED unveiled the Macintosh computer, and gave Wired magazine its first seed money.
In 2001 Wurman sold TED to tech-publishing multi-millionaire Chris Anderson’s Sapling Foundation. This is a philanthropic venture that originally aimed to share great ideas for solutions to global crises in public health, the environment, and other areas. Now Sapling’s focus is on magnifying the impact of TED. To accomplish this, he hired June Cohen to create podcasts and then design the website around the talks.
Live TED Conferences
A live TED conference is held every year. They usually hold presenters to a strict limit of 18 minutes for their talks. However, you don’t have to attend to benefit from TED. Hundreds of TED talks are now available for free, and several more are added each week. Not only can you watch them, you’re free to download them, post them on your own Web site, or burn a DVD and share them with friends, family and whomever else you want.
Audience Size
Since the first videos became available, the audience has grown to more than 30 million online from around 1,500 a year at the live conference. “We knew that people would be interested. However, we really didn’t anticipate that the size of the audience would be so huge, or that the talks would touch people so deeply,” Cohen told Live & Learn.
Speakers talk about the planet’s cultural diversity, the inner workings of the brain, or why we should let second graders play with knives and fire. Clearly, TED is not afraid to be at the cutting edge, to grapple with groundbreaking, even controversial, topics. The show talks fall under technology, entertainment, design, business, science, or global issues.
Talk Ratings
Ratings for the talks include:
- jaw-dropping,
- persuasive,
- courageous,
- ingenious,
- fascinating,
- inspiring,
- beautiful,
- funny, or
- informative.
They are all considered “riveting talks by remarkable people.”
Recent Talks (2010)
Among the most recent talks posted on 2/25/2010, you will find:
- Bill Davenhall on “Your health depends on where you live;”
- Richard Dawkins on “Growing up in the universe;”
- Anthony Atala on “Growing new organs;”
- Robert Sapolsky on “The uniqueness of humans;”
- Matt Weinstein on “What Bernie Madoff couldn’t steal from me;”
- Edwidge Danticat on “Stories of Haiti;”
- Lalitesh Katragadda on “Making maps to fight disaster, build economy;”
- Sivamani on “Rhythm is everything, everywhere;
- Kiran Bir Sethi on “Teaching kids to take charge;” and
- Charles Fleischer on “All things are Moleeds.”
Next week, we will have one more item about lifelong learning that has recently come to my attention. Then we’ll move on to other topics.
May your learning be sweet.
