Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses mathematical analysis to predict (very often correctly) such messy human events as war, political power shifts, Intifada ... After a crisp explanation of how he does it, he offers three predictions on the future of Iran.
In a peek into their sprawling metaverse, Particle Ink dazzles with an interdimensional performance combining augmented reality, dance and video projected onto the TED stage.
During the 1600's, the exotic tulip became a nationwide sensation; some single bulbs even sold for ten times the yearly salary of a skilled craftsman. Suddenly, though, the demand completely plummeted, leaving the tulip market in a depression. What happened? Prateek Singh explains the peak of a business cycle, commonly referred to as a mania. [D...
Today's AI algorithms require tens of thousands of expensive medical images to detect a patient's disease. What if we could drastically reduce the amount of data needed to train an AI, making diagnoses low-cost and more effective? TED Fellow Pratik Shah is working on a clever system to do just that. Using an unorthodox AI approach, Shah has deve...
Amy Webb is a futurist and founder of the Future Today Institute, and is the award-winning author of three books, including “Data: A Love Story” and “The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream.”
When Nicolas Bourbaki applied to the American Mathematical Society in the 1950s, he was already one of the most influential mathematicians of his time. He'd published articles in international journals and his textbooks were required reading. Yet his application was firmly rejected for one simple reason: Nicolas Bourbaki did not exist. How is th...
Games are invading the real world -- and the runaway popularity of Farmville and Guitar Hero is just the beginning, says Jesse Schell. At the DICE Summit, he makes a startling prediction: a future where 1-ups and experience points break "out of the box" and into every part of our daily lives.
Amber Case studies the symbiotic interactions between humans and machines -- and considers how our values and culture are being shaped by living lives increasingly mediated by high technology.
A consultant to the CIA and the Department of Defense, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has built an intricate computer model that can predict the outcomes of international conflicts with bewildering accuracy.
MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte takes you on a journey through the last 30 years of tech. The consummate predictor highlights interfaces and innovations he foresaw in the 1970s and 1980s that were scoffed at then but are ubiquitous today. And he leaves you with one last (absurd? brilliant?) prediction for the coming 30 years.
Traveling is extremely arduous for microscopic sperm -- think of a human trying to swim in a pool made of...other humans. We can compare the journey of a sperm to that of a sperm whale by calculating the Reynolds number, a prediction of how fluid will behave, often fluctuating due to size of the swimmer. Aatish Bhatia explores the great (albeit ...
From 2016 to 2019, the world saw record-breaking heat waves, rampant wildfires, and the longest run of category 5 tropical cyclones on record. The number of extreme weather events has been increasing for the last 40 years, and current predictions suggest that trend will continue. So, is the increase in extreme weather due to random chance, or ch...
Given a range of integers from 0 to 100, what would the whole number closest to 2/3 of the average of all numbers guessed be? For example, if the average of all guesses is 60, the correct guess will be 40. The game is played under conditions known to game theorists as "common knowledge:" every player has the same information— they also know that...
In 132 CE, Zhang Heng presented his latest invention: a large vase he claimed could tell them whenever an earthquake occurred for hundreds of miles. Today, we no longer rely on pots as warning systems, but earthquakes still offer challenges to those trying to track them. Why are earthquakes so hard to anticipate, and how could we get better at p...
With surprising accuracy, Nicholas Negroponte predicts what will happen with CD-ROMs, web interfaces, service kiosks, the touchscreen interface of the iPhone and his own One Laptop per Child project.
Marc Koska wants to improve health care in the developing world by re-designing dangerous medical tools -- and offering education to practitioners in under-funded clinics.
Biophysicist Luca Turin studies the science of smell. He's the author of Perfumes: The Guide, and the subject of Chandler Burr's 2003 book The Emperor of Scent. His next project: developing an artificial nose.
TED Fellow Miho Janvier studies the the Sun -- in particular the origin of phenomena called "solar storms" which can impact planets in the solar system.
About this event: Sometimes, people need to stop and make recover without prediction or rejection. We don't want to interpret stopping as a helpless choice, but a kind of expectation for the recovery after dormancy, accumulated energy and power, or rumination after suspension.Recover is a kind of transformation.
Event details: Beijing, Beijing, China · December 5, 2020
About this event: Have you ever asked yourself before What the vibrant definition of creativity is. How to be creative with your way of thinking? Minds are always trying to identify how to be creative but creativity isn’t just some steps that are followed, it’s a way of thinking that is associated with imagination, passion, inspiration, prediction, innovation, an...
Event details: El zamalek, Al Qāhirah, Egypt · November 19, 2020
Australian researcher Mark Cook is testing an experimental tool that could take the fear out of epilepsy -- both for patients and for the rest of the world.
Imagine never knowing when and where you might black out. Maybe it could happen when you’re on the stairs or a busy street, or while traveling, working out, bathing. For people with epileps...