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19 Mar, 2015

‘The price of shame’

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Lewinsky delivers a talk on cyber bullying and calls for a more compassionate internet at TED 2015 conference.

When my story broke it broke online. It was one of the first times that the traditional news had been usurped by the internet for a major news story. I went from being a private figure to being a publicly humiliated one worldwide. There were mobs of virtual stone-throwers. I was branded a tart, a slut, a whore, a bimbo. I lost my reputation and my dignity and I almost lost my life. Seventeen years ago there was no name for it, but now we call it cyberbullying or online harassment.

Every day online, people – especially young people who are not developmentally equipped to handle this – are so abused and humiliated that they can’t imagine living to the next day. And some don’t.

The price of shame | Monica Lewinsky | TED

Jul 2014

Jill Shargaa

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Jill Shargaa, comedian and designer, presents a talk to challenge her audience to reconsider the usage of the word “awesome”. She points out that we are no longer using it properly in the English language. Shargaa seeks to return the “awe” back into the word.

So when you use the word “awesome” to describe the most mundane of things, you’re taking away the very power of the word. This author says, “Snowy days or finding money in your pants is awesome.”

Jill Shargaa: Please, please, people. Let's put the 'awe' back in 'awesome'

15 Jul, 2014

Dan Barasch

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Dan Barasch gives a talk on a project that he is working on with his partner, James Ramsey. Together they have taken an abandoned trolley terminal in underground New York City and have begun to design a park that will thrive there. With the help of modern technology to bring the sunlight into the underground, this park and its vegetation will be able to live even in winter.

If my grandparents and my parents were really focused on building the city up and out, I think my generation is focused on reclaiming the spaces that we already have, rediscovering our shared history, and reimagining how we can make our communities more interesting, more beautiful and more just.

Dan Barasch: A park underneath the hustle and bustle of New York City

Jul 2014

Joi Ito

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Ito, head of MIT Media Labs, leads a discussion on the concept of being a “now-ist”. As en entrepreneur and an investor in some of the biggest social media outlets on the internet, Ito tells future entrepreneur-hopefuls to stop looking towards the future and conceptualizing on what it might be and instead choose to focus on the here and now.

The amount of money and the amount of permission that you need to create an idea has decreased dramatically.

17 Jun, 2014

Simon Anholt

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Anholt poses the question “Which country does the most good?” In his talk, the policy advisor ranks countries on how much “good” they do in the ever-expanding process of globalization. This is part of an international survey that he calls “The Good Country Index”. It is Anholt’s hope that this will help inspire countries to cease living like their own little island and instead decide to reach out and expand for the good of humanity.

Your reputation is only rented. And if you find ways to keep paying the rent, it helps you to stay where you are.

Which country does the most good for the world? | Simon Anholt

Renata Salecl

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Philosopher Salecl states that in a modern, capitalist driven world, we are trained to take our own personal choices too seriously. She lectures that personal choices can allow us to be lead to feelings of guilt, uncertainty and inadequacy. In a world focused on obtaining perfection, these feelings cause us to become politically immobile and self-centered. Rather than become focused on these negative feelings towards ourselves, Salecl insists that we start focusing more on the choices we are making as a collective society.

Why do we still rely on the idea of the self-made man, which capitalism is based on? As psychoanalysts know, people don’t have a passion for knowledge; they have a passion for ignorance.

Renata Salecl: Our unhealthy obsession with choice

Jun 2014

Heather Barnett

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Barnett presents a talk on creating a semi-intellgent slime mold using Physarum polycephalum. While this single celled organism has no brain nor central nervous system, it shows a primitive form of memory, problem-solving skills and the apparent ability to make decisions.

It is also quite beautiful and makes therefore for a great creative collaborator. Although ultimately I cannot control the final outcome, it is a rather independent organism.

Heather Barnett: What humans can learn from semi-intelligent slime

May 2014

Kwame Anthony Appiah

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Appiah, philosopher and cultural theorist, asks the question “Is religion good or bad?” He begins by challenging his audience to consider whether religion is even a thing at all.

What I want you to think about next time somebody wants to make some vast generalization about religion is that maybe there isn’t such a thing as a religion, such a thing as religion, and that therefore what they say cannot possibly be true.

Kwame Anthony Appiah: Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question)

Ruth Chang

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Chang, a philosopher, challenges the way we look at and make hard decisions in our lives. She outlines a way to take a new perspective so that we can view these difficult decisions in a more pleasing light.

Far from being sources of agony and dread, hard choices are precious opportunities for us to celebrate what is special about the human condition, that the reasons that govern our choices as correct or incorrect sometimes run out, and it is here, in the space of hard choices, that we have the power to create reasons for ourselves to become the distinctive people that we are. And that’s why hard choices are not a curse but a godsend.

How to make hard choices | Ruth Chang

Naomi Oreskes

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Oreskes, a historian of science, presents a talk on why it is that we should trust scientists. She presents the question of Faith vs. Science and then outlines three main problems that can be found in the world of scientific inquiry and how these issues can and should be addressed.

But it shouldn’t be blind trust any more than we would have blind trust in anything. Our trust in science, like science itself, should be based on evidence, and that means that scientists have to become better communicators. They have to explain to us not just what they know but how they know it, and it means that we have to become better listeners.

Naomi Oreskes: Why we should trust scientists

17 May, 2014

Ge Wang

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Wang, founding director of the Standard Laptop Orchestra and the Standard Mobile Phone Orchestra, shows an example of how computers and programming languages can be used to create music. With his program he is able to take household materials and turn them into instruments that musicians can then make music with.

Ge Wang: The DIY orchestra of the future

20 Apr, 2014

Stella Young

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Young, a disability activist, leads a talk on what she calls “inspiration porn” – society’s habit of making disabled people into inspirational figures. She challenges our culture to raise their expectations of what disabled men and women are capable of doing and to look upon disability as the “norm” and not the exception.

Disability doesn’t make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.

I'm not your inspiration, thank you very much | Stella Young

Mar 2014

Andrew Solomon

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Solomon, a writer on politics, psychology and culture, presents a talk on life’s adversities and how we can experience growth through the most difficult times in our lives.

The gay activist Harvey Milk was once asked by a younger gay man what he could do to help the movement, and Milk said, “Go out and tell someone.” There’s always somebody who wants to confiscate our humanity, and there are always stories that restore it. If we live out loud, we can trounce the hatred and expand everyone’s lives.

How the worst moments in our lives make us who we are | Andrew Solomon

Chris Kluwe

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Kluwe, a former Minnesota Vikings punter, talks  about a new version of augmented reality where the audience watching from home can get a sense that they are actually right there on the field with the players. He states that it is a new way for the fans to participate in the action, however, there are even more important uses for the technology.

But the question I ask you is, is that’s all that we’re content to use augmented reality for? Are we going to use it solely for our panem, our circenses, our entertainment as normal? Because I believe that we can use augmented reality for something more. I believe we can use augmented reality as a way to foster more empathy within the human species itself, by literally showing someone what it looks like to walk a mile in another person’s shoes.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgMOJC5R4F

Jon Mooallem

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Mooallem tells the story of how Theodore Roosevelt spared the life of a black bear and thus inspired the creation of what is now called the “teddy bear”. The author explains how stories like this effect the existence and survival of various animals around the world.

In a world of conservation reliance, those stories have very real consequences, because now, how we feel about an animal affects its survival more than anything that you read about in ecology textbooks. Storytelling matters now. Emotion matters. Our imagination has become an ecological force.

The strange story of the teddy bear and what it reveals | Jon Mooallem

Kitra Cahana

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Cahana, a photojournalist and self-proclaimed vagabond, presents a brief look into her life on the road where she uses her art to show the lifestyle of nomads, hitchhikers, vagrants and tramps.Through her eyes and her camera she gives her audience a small idea of what it is like to live a wandering existence.

Until we live in a society where every human is assured dignity in their labor so that they can work to live well, not only work to survive, there will always be an element of those who seek the open road as a means of escape, of liberation and, of course, of rebellion.

A glimpse of life on the road | Kitra Cahana

Stephen Friend

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Friend, an open science advocate, presents a talk on the reason why some family members will contract certain inherited diseases through genetics while others will remain healthy. He talks about the project he is currently working on – the Resilience Project – which is a massive effort to collect genetic materials that may help decode inherited disorders.

Most of us spend our lives, when it comes to health and disease, acting as if we’re voyeurs. We delegate the responsibility for the understanding of our disease, for the treatment of our disease, to anointed experts. In order for us to get this project to work, we need individuals to step up in a different role and to be engaged, to realize this dream, this open crowd-sourced project.

Stephen Friend: The hunt for "unexpected genetic heroes"

Sting

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Sting gives a presentation on the early life he spent in a shipyard and the way it would eventually come to influence his music as he found inspiration in the lives of his fellow shipyard workers. He also talks about his upcoming Broadway musical and presents several selections from the work.

The fact is, whether you’re a rock star or whether you’re a welder in a shipyard, or a tribesman in the upper Amazon, or the queen of England, at the end of the day, we’re all in the same boat.

Sting: How I started writing songs again

Ray Kurzweil

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Kurzweil tells about the evolution of the neocortex in mammals and how this part of the brain has helped to expand our way of thinking and reasoning beyond the point that our earlier ancestors would have been capable of. Now the neocortex is about to evolve again and he theorizes over what this new growth will bring about.

And so, over the next few decades, we’re going to do it again. We’re going to again expand our neocortex, only this time we won’t be limited by a fixed architecture of enclosure. It’ll be expanded without limit. That additional quantity will again be the enabling factor for another qualitative leap in culture and technology.

Ray Kurzweil: Get ready for hybrid thinking

Dan Gilbert

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Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, presents a talk on what he calls the “end of history illusion”. He believes that much in the same way as humans can be deceived by optical illusions, so too can we be deceived on what will make us happy in our future. He speculates that we are not as capable of predicting what will lead us to our own bliss as we think we are.

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our life is change.

The psychology of your future self | Dan Gilbert