NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, June 2011
Hundreds of Free Online “Talks” from TED
By Ira Wilsker, Radio Show Host,
Columnist, College Professor and deputy sheriff
iwilsker@sbcglobal.net
(click to email author)

WEBSITES:
http://www.ted.com
http://www.ted.com/talks
http://www.ted.com/pages/about

Sometimes we all need a little intellectual stimulation. I recently learned of a non-profit international organization that has posted nearly a thousand “talks” presented by hundreds of the top thinkers in the world. The talks are not all from eggheads and nerds, but from a diverse list of people prominent in the fields of technology, entertainment, and design, hence the acronym for the organization compiling these talks, “TED”.

TED was formed in 1984 as a small organization “… devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.” In the 27 years since its founding, TED has hosted numerous conferences in California, the UK, India, and many other localities around the world where notable speakers delivered talks on a variety of contemporary subjects. It is these talks that were video recorded, and are now freely available at http://www.ted.com/talks. Topics are as varied as the speakers, and cover politics, music, art, contemporary issues, history, medicine, business, and a variety of other subjects. Most of the talks available online are relatively short, 18 minutes or less, with many being as short as three minutes, and all are generally very stimulating in terms of their content and presentation.

Among the most recent additions to the talks online are: “Bill Gates: How state budgets are breaking US schools”; “Wael Ghonim (the controversial Google executive who spearheaded the revolution in Egypt): Inside the Egyptian revolution”; “Danny Hillis: Understanding cancer through proteomics”; “Elizabeth Lindsey (National Geographic): Curating humanity's heritage”; “Madeleine Albright (former Secretary of State): On being a woman and a diplomat”; “Cynthia Breazeal: The rise of personal robots”; “Thomas Goetz: It's time to redesign medical data’; “Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China”; “Deborah Rhodes (Mayo Clinic): A tool that finds 3x more breast tumors, and why it's not available to you”; and many others that most people may find very interesting.

The TED Talks page can be interactively sorted by topic, or by an unusual rating system based on the reviews of the talk, including, “jaw-dropping, persuasive, courageous, ingenious, fascinating, inspiring, beautiful, funny, or informative.“ Being somewhat of a fan of good comedy, I clicked on the “funny” category, and was presented with a listing of 81 talks where comedy and humor were used either as the primary subject, or as a way to get an intellectual point across to the audience.

In the entertainment category are 181 talks that cover music, comedy, theatre, television, and media related technology. In my first few minutes of browsing the entertainment category, I found three talks which were especially gratifying. The first was titled, “Ahn Trio: A modern take on piano, violin, cello” where cellist Maria, pianist Lucia, violinist Angella interpreted classical chamber music in a contemporary way such that it was very entertaining and enlightening. Second was “Heather Knight: Silicon-based comedy” where she used a robot aptly named “Data” as a comedian; Data was no ordinary robot spitting out classical one-liners, but an intelligent robot using a complex program to autonomously respond to the audience. In the talk, “Hillel Cooperman: Legos for grownups”, the classical building blocks are utilized to create spectacular projects designed with computers, CAD, and other forms of technology.

Being a grandparent, I was especially intrigued with the talk by Patricia Kuhl, where she spoke on “The linguistic genius of babies”. In her talk she presents her findings about how babies learn language by “…listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know.” Using lab experiments and brain scans, Patricia Kuhl shows “how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.” In her talk she demonstrates how babies and small children can easily learn a language through immersion, and why older kids and adults often find it difficult to learn a new language.

In “James Watson on how he discovered DNA”, the Nobel Prize winner tells the funny story about how he and his partner, Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA. This fascinating short talk was inspirational and demonstrated that some of the brightest nerds in the world are also quite human, and have distinctly human traits just like the rest of us.

TED is a non-profit headquartered in New York City, and has a who’s who list of corporate sponsors including AOL, AT&T, Autodesk, BlackBerry, Cisco, Coca-Cola, GE, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, and others. According to its website, http://www.ted.com/pages/about, the mission of TED is simple and brief, and that is “Spreading ideas.” The TED website says, “We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.” TED accomplishes these goals by sponsoring local, national, and international meetings where the sole function is spreading ideas through a series of short talks presented by individuals with a proven track record from the fields of technology, entertainment and design.

For anyone who may need inspiration, intellectual stimulation, or who may need to be entertained by a series of short talks by knowledgeable people, the website at TED.com would be a good place to visit.

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