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Subscribe to RSSVideo introduces "The City 2.0," the initiative that won this year's TED Prize.
The annual TED conference brings thinkers and doers from around the world to Long Beach, Calif., to mingle and take part in a cornucopia of 18-minute lectures and other audiovisual delights. The program focuses on technology, entertainment and design (hence the acronym TED) but it takes in virtually any area of deep thought you can, um, think of.
Each year, TED awards $100,000 prizes for great ideas that could use a little help. One example is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which received support in 2009 in the form of a TED Prize to the SETI Institute's Jill Tarter. Just this week, the SETI Institute kicked off a new program called SETI Live, aimed at supplementing the 13-year-old SETI @ Home computer-based search by enlisting living, breathing humans to review radio data.
At this week's TED conference, the big winner was a concept, not a person: The City 2.0, a crowdsourcing clearinghouse that's backed by the Knight Foundation. The City 2.0 is designed to enable citizens to propose ideas to upgrade their own cities, and put them in touch with the resources that can turn those ideas into realities. The TED Prize was announced last December, but details about how the $100,000 in prize money were laid out for the first time during this week's conference. This June, the money will be awarded in $10,000 chunks to the 10 local projects that are judged "most likely to spur the creation of their City 2.0."
Video from some of the other TED events have already been posted to the Web. Check out the music-playing robo-copters that were featured during a TED talk by University of Pennsylvania roboticist Vijay Kumar, and then take a look at these other clips:
X Prize co-founder Peter Diamandis makes his case for the view that we're in an age of abundance.
Environmentalist-entrepreneur Paul Gilding does a reality check on techno-optimism.
Susan Cain, author of "Quiet: The Power of Introverts," talks about being an introvert in an extroverted age.
In addition to the online lectures, TED attendees were treated to a variety of treats, including a project to turn their genomes into a symphony, a "second-a-day" video project and a batch of virtual-reality cyber-illusions. To get a feel for the fun, check out this trio of videos — and for more, take a spin through the TED Blog.
TED attendees provided genetic samples that were processed overnight at Genentech, to produce a "genetic symphony" based on genetic markers. For more about the project, check out the Infinite Variations website as well as this webpage at the Personal Genome Project.
During his TED2012 talk, Cesar Kuriyama showed off "One Second Everyday - Age 30" from Vimeo.
Marco Tempest entertained the TED crowd with a new batch of cyber-illusions. Here's a shorter show-and-tell that Tempest presented last July at TEDGlobal.
Finally, here's a way-too-spooky video from the future: A clip of techno-industrialist Peter Weyland's talk at TED2023, put together to promote "Prometheus," the soon-to-be-released semi-prequel to the "Alien" movie series. Feel the hubris:
Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) gives a talk at TED2023 in a clip created to preview the movie "Prometheus."
More video to while away the minutes:
- Microscopic marvels star in movies
- Scientific visions that take the prize
- Must-see science videos of 2011
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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My name is James Baldington, and if you'll indulge me, I'll like to call bullsh*t! No way are we this advanced in just one decade.
That's the way the movies work ... they have to fit the "Alien" timeline ;-)
Paul Gilding's speech has been one of my personal favorites to share. I love how he points out that whatever the quibbles are over a particular area, the overall picture remains the same. It's a law of physics. The whole idea of unlimited economic growth on a planet with finite resources is ludicrous on it's face. We need to stop worrying so much about economic growth, and worry about taking care of each other.
Global and national economic growth is nearly unlimited but will continue to marginalize the classes. When a handheld device is smarter than an 8th grader, tremendous efficiencies will be realized as human workers are replaced over a couple of decades. Unfortunately this is going to once and for all wipe out the middle class. I can only imagine that some form of augmented capitalism / socialism will need to exist to take care of the 75% unemployment rate.
The future for lower class American earnings will be either provided by the government through corporate taxation, or by requiring all corporations to provide dividends and all citizens to hold stocks, or some combination of the two.
There will be tremendous wealth created but little to no trickle down otherwise. Combine this robotic technology with equal advancements in life-prolonging biotech, and population will only increase as employment decreases.
It is inevitable if something doesn't take down civilization in the next fifty years.
Not one word about using hydrogen fuel as a renewable, non pollutant fuel?
festus23,
Hydrogen cannot truly be called "non pollutant" until you develop a method to separate hydrogen without using electricity that is generated using fossil fuels.
Wind, solar, wave, geothermal. All these can be used to generate electricity to electrolyze water without the use of oil. And yes we would currently have to use oil to build these devices like any other product. But it's an empty argument to say lets not do it because it would take some oil to get us off of oil.
festus23 and Brian-546328,
Since we have no way to mine hydrogen, the best we can do is use it as a kind of energy storage device. Aside from the question of converting our infrastructure to support a new technology, there is the question of the ultimate energy density of hydrogen vs. other storage technologies.
Hydrogen has a significant problem in that it is a pretty low density fluid that should be stored at cryogenic temperatures and high pressure and is highly flammable...
The way that batteries are going at the moment, they completely outstrip hydrogen before anyone can convince people that hydrogen is worth the hassle.
Batteries are NOT an energy source. They are a storage device. The energy has to come from somewhere. Right now the energy comes from burning oil. And no, hydrogen cars are probably not the way to go. But hydrogen burning power plants, charging electric cars is one way. And the hydrogen itself should be looked at as a storage device to get green energy from places where it is easily generated to places where it is not. Of course a new modern smart grid could eliminate this need in places as well.
My point was that there are green ways to extract hydrogen. But no, I don't think it's going to be an all pervasive fuel of the future as some like to tout it. Just one link in a greener chain.
Of course I never said that batteries are an energy source, they (like hydrogen) are just an energy storage device.
There are green ways to charge batteries. The problem with batteries is that the materials they are made from are limited and the waste may be toxic. Future battery technology will certainly have higher energy density, but who knows what will happen with their environmental impact. in any case, battery recycling will be important.
Pretty fluffy for 'deep thinkers'.
I didn't keep watching to the fluffy parts, I stayed on the surface where it was still deep
So for those of us who write here, when will we have our Cosmic Log Foundation and annual think tank?
One of these summers, I'd love to have a Cosmic Log conference in the back yard of the Boyle plantation, or in a Seattle-area park. How much interest do you think there'd be?
I don't think quantity, numbers of interested persons, is what is important. We could get it started with just a small core group of dedicated thinkers who are consciously responsible in expressing their thoughts. If it is good, it will evolve.
Job Posting for Deep Thinkers!
These conferences are a real hoot! When you talk to them, they are real "out of the box" thinkers, but they know where they left their box! HaHaHaHa! When you can predict tornadoes and kill them, build houses that will stand up to a tornado, cheaper than conventional structures, or find the cause of Autism, get back to me!
Your focus on tornadoes scares me.
It shouldn't scare you, he probably had his house flattened by one recently.
notice that the headline is "deep thinkers take center stage" I bet you will never read the headline "deep thinkers elected to congress".