Edinburgh, Scotland
July 11-15, 2011
Edinburgh, Scotland
July 11-15, 2011
The audience watches in awe as the robotic SmartBird -- powered simply by the motion of its wings -- takes flight over their heads in the TEDGlobal theater. "We try to mimic nature," said designer Markus Fischer.
In a stunning demo, Harald Haas reveals (for the first time in public) a desk lamp which uses light, instead of radio waves, to transmit an HD video data stream.
"You have been digitally preserved," Ben Kacyra told the audience, who were 3D scanned during his talk. His CyArk project uses the same technique to document the contours of world heritage sites. "Our heritage is much more than our collective memory. It's our collective treasure," he argued. "We owe it to our children, grandchildren and generations we will never meet to save our heritage, and pass it along."
"Religion's ideas are so intelligent, so subtle, they are not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone," said Alain de Botton, in a thought-provoking talk on bringing religious culture and traditions into secular life. Could a religious framework -- without a supernatural aspect -- help atheists live more meaningful, emotionally connected lives? Most of the TEDGlobal audience seemed to think so -- the talk drew a thunderous standing ovation.
Now live on TED.com: Actor Thandie Newton talks about her success, and her progress as a person -- which she credits, in part, to an initial feeling of "lack of self" as a young woman. "When I'm acting a role, I inhabit another self and give it a life for a while. For when the self is suspended -- so is divisiveness," she said.
Now live on TED.com: Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. In this sparkling talk from TEDGlobal 2011, he asks us to embrace our randomness and start making better mistakes.
Now live on TED.com: Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist extremist, looks at why extremist organizations succeed where democratic movements have a harder time taking hold. He calls for new grassroots stories -- and global social activism -- to spread democracy in the face of nationalism and xenophobia.
Now live on TED.com: Rebecca MacKinnon argues that the Internet isn't as free as you might think: Private companies have become "sovereigns of cyberspace," making arbitrary decisions that undermine access, privacy and free speech. She asks: "How do we design the next phase of the Internet with accountability and freedom at its core, rather than control?"
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