Speakers Ayah Bdeir: Engineer and artist
Ayah Bdeir is an engineer and artist, and is the founder of littleBits and karaj, an experimental art, architecture and technology lab in Beirut.
Why you should listen to her:
Ayah Bdeir is the creator of littleBits, an open source system of preassembled, modular circuits that snap together with magnets – making learning about electronics fun, easy and creative. An engineer, inventor and interactive artist, Ayah received her master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab and undergraduate degrees in computer engineering and sociology from the American University of Beirut. Ayah has taught graduate classes at NYU and Parsons and taught numerous workshops to get non-engineers – particularly young girls – interested in science and technology. She is also the founder of karaj, Beirut’s lab for experimental art, architecture and technology. littleBits was named Best of Toyfair, has won the editor’s Choice award from MAKE magazine, and has been acquired by MoMA for its collection.
Quotes by Ayah Bdeir
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“Instead of having to program, to wire, to solder, littleBits allow you to program using very simple intuitive gestures.”
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“We want to make every single interaction in the world into a ready-to-use brick.”
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“LEGO has essentially taken the concrete block, the building block of the world, and made it into the building block of our imagination.”
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“The transistor was a small plastic unit that would take us from a world of static bricks piled on top of each other to a world where everything was interactive.”
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“We want to encourage a world of creators, of inventors, of contributors. Because this world that we live in, this interactive world, is ours.”
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Ayah Bdeir: Building blocks that blink, beep and teach
- 05:27 Posted: Mar 2012
Ayah Bdeir on the Web
Related Speakers
Conferences
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- TED2012