There’s a million-dollar prize for that Innovation prizes have become quite the hot thing in recent years, as groups like the X Prize have proven the efficacy of offering a bounty to work on outrageous goals. (TED even launched one!) The Longitude Prize is the UK’s version, with details just released of six challenges in fields such as food, fl...

The TED community is busy with new projects and news — below, some highlights. A virtual reality dance party at Sundance. Musician and comedian Reggie Watts and artist Kiira Benzing debuted their new project “Runnin’” at the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier exhibit. “Runnin’” is an “immersive, interactive music video” backed with ...

"You're about to participate in the largest collective VR viewing in history," said Chris Milk in his talk on virtual reality at TED2016. "We are all going to watch something at the exact same time, together." A Google Cardboard and pair of Urban Ears headphones sat on every chair in the theater. We assembled the viewer, downloaded a spec...

You’re standing on a small platform: Someone snaps you into a heavy vest, and pulls a clunky helmet over your eyes. Before you can adjust to the extra weight, suddenly the world has a strange echo, and all other noise falls away. Your surroundings are now a rumbling Tomb Raider-themed universe, and you are its hero. You’ve entered THE VOI...

For all the hoo-hah and fanfare around next-generation technologies like Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard, it’s still early days for virtual reality. Sure, we've come a long way from clunky simulators (even ones with wind machines that blew back your hair), but the field is still pretty much open for all comers. Filmmaker Chris Milk (TED Talk: H...

Oculus VR may have won the headlines today by, you know, being acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. But last week it won the hearts and minds of the TED crowd. First, former NFL punter Chris Kluwe showed footage of a guy wearing an Oculus Rift headset and riding a virtual rollercoaster (video shown, bottom -- jump to the 1:10 mark to watch t...

What does augmented reality—and football—have to do with empathy? A lot, says Chris Kluwe, former NFL punter and author of the book Beautifully Unique Sparkle Ponies. "Augmented reality is not science fiction," he says."Augmented reality will happen in our lifetime. And it will change our lives as much as the Internet." Kluwe is wearin...

The Raspyni Brothers are a delightfully irreverent pair who also happen to be world-class jugglers. At TED2014, they riff on Einstein’s dancing skills, reality TV and texting -- all while juggling and balancing drum heads, wooden eggs and glasses of water with perfect coordination. As six-time TED speakers, the Raspynis also take a sec to...

On September 12, TED welcomed its latest class of the TED Residency program, an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas. Residents spend four months in the TED office with fellow brilliant minds who are creatively taking on projects that are making significant changes in their communities, across many different fields   The new Resident...

With TED2015 wrapped, attendees, speakers and journalists alike are sharing their reflections on the experience. Below, some highlights: David Rothkopf was an open critic of TED, calling our talks “chicken nuggets for the brain.” But the experience of attending TED2015 and speaking during Session 1 changed his mind. The Washington icon now ...

For week 3 of TED2020, global leaders in technology, vulnerability research and activism gathered for urgent conversations on how to foster connection, channel energy into concrete social action and work to end systemic racism in the United States. Below, a recap of their insights. Audrey Tang, Taiwan's digital minister for social innovat...

Two years ago, a prototype VR experience re-imagined the way we interact with virtual reality by interweaving the digital and physical space -- and one year ago, it held its lines-out-the-door premiere at TED2016. Today, THE VOID has locations in Times Square, New York; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Salt Lake City, Utah (where it was conc...

Before there can be momentum, you need a spark to set it off. In the first session of TEDWomen, we hear from speakers with crackling ideas — from re-imagining an irksome weed as something useful, to helping technology sense and react to our emotions. Short recaps of these talks... A weed, transformed. The water hyacinth looks like a be...

By making the Internet as weightless and as frictionless as possible, we made our lives easier. But now, the whole world is suffering the consequences, says Jaron Lanier. In the early days of the popularization of the Internet, there was a debate about whether to make online digital experiences seem either casual and weightless or serious with ...

Today, we're excited to bring the world of TED Talks further into your home with the new TED Talks skill for Amazon Alexa! Available on devices with Amazon Alexa including the Echo and Echo Dot, TED fans can now listen to the latest ideas from the world's greatest thinkers by voice command. For existing Alexa users, enable the skill by s...

The theme of TED2018 is The Age of Amazement, and these speakers’ books are bursting with wonders of every kind: intellectual, scientific, urban, technological, economic, historical, aquatic, even extraterrestrial. TED2018, our biggest conference of the year, takes place April 10 through 14 in Vancouver. The talks from the conference will be re...

Laurence Kemball-Cook on his Pavegen at TEDYou during TEDActive 2012, March 1, 2012. Photo: Michael Brands / TED TEDActive's TEDYou Session 2 has it all: smiles, education (reform) reform, dances for disability, interrupting cows, kung fu and robotic twins. Leigh Rowan, “The Zaniness of the Frequent Flyer”: Leigh Rowan, COO of Moderne Co...

The second day of TED2016 brought wisdom for within and discoveries from without. Below, highlights for you following at home. Procrastination works ... for some. Session 4 speakers Tim Urban and Adam Grant take two positions on procrastination: The former thinks it can be a huge, crippling problem; the latter realized his "pre-crastinati...

James Patten creates physical interfaces for technology -- producing rich, captivating experiences for the user. Your studio explores new ways physical objects relate to digital information. Why is that mission important to you? The way the human body and human mind are set up, we’re incredibly good at using physical objects and interactin...

TED speaker Virginia Postrel swears by the app Anti-Social when she needs to focus on her writing. Jon Gosier considers his iPhone 5 “the Swiss Army knife of electronic gadgetry,” and relies on Waze for “directions and avoiding speeding tickets.” Meanwhile, Heather Barnett never reads a single book at a time — she usually has “a pile of books by...

Day five of TED2016 contained one session filled with big ideas, but also an opportunity to look back at the conference as a whole. Below, the major themes that ran through the course of the week. We’re ready for our moonshot moment. The most-evoked image of the conference? Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon. Speakers including Dan P...

Pop-Up Magazine is "something like a reading," only not. This unique show brings the glossy pages of a general interest magazine to life, telling real-life stories in a vortex of sight, sound and spectacle. And they have curated Session 8 of TED2015. A tour of the 11 stories woven on the TED stage: Believe in Magik*. The lights went up, b...

This session is dedicated to those who weave fantasies and force change. From a speaker on the cusp of virtual reality storytelling to a playwright who appears as a hologram, many surprises are in store. Recaps of the talks in Session 11, in chronological order. The last storytelling medium? Chris Milk’s story begins with music, the me...

Last year the awe-mazing writer Benjamin Rosenbaum said something great about first-world problems, and specifically the #firstworldproblems tag, used on Twitter attached to complaints about dumb little things that bug us: This whole #firstworldproblems meme, you know that one? It’s supposedly an exercise in humility and perspective, but in f...

Over the past 10 years, TED Talks videos have tracked our ever-tighter relationship with technology -- including the tools we use to access it, our interfaces ... from keyboards and mice to magic wands and sensory vests. For our guide to this evolving field, we start with MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte’s talk from the very first TED, ...

The image itself looks laid back enough — a 20-year-old man in a hoodie and jeans, walking through New York City. Except that this image is 150 feet tall and pasted on a plaza near the Flatiron Building. Cabs and cars flow around him while pedestrians scamper past. This image, created by TED Prize winner JR, is on the cover of The New Yor...

The speakers and performers who’ll be a part of TEDWomen 2015 know a bit about “Momentum.” Each of them has pushed forward fascinating research, created something out of a bold idea or moved the needle on a cause that’s central to them. The 34 speakers on our lineup — soon to be joined by a few more — range from former presidents (yes, plural...

When it comes to note-taking, it’s easy to try to get it all instead of just the important takeaways. Sketchnoting, a process that favors the use of image, forces you to look for the big picture. At this year’s TED, sketchnoters crossed the digital line in a big way. Over at Moleskine’s exhibit, Brad Ovenell-Carter took crib notes on the ...

Forget memorial plaques, tombstones and traditional funerals. High-tech ways to celebrate life and death are emerging, and they’re using your digital data. “What happens to your digital presence after you die?” Only a short while ago, no one had to consider what would become of the long trail of personal data we leave all over the internet. Now...

Just a few of the intriguing headlines involving members of the TED community this week: Around the globe without a drop of fuel. What has the wingspan of a Boeing 747 but weighs only about as much as an SUV? The answer is Bertrand Piccard’s Solar Impulse 2, an airplane fueled entirely by solar energy that landed in California on April 24 aft...