In the US, the press has a right to publish secret information the public needs to know, protected by the First Amendment. Government surveillance has made it increasingly more dangerous for whistleblowers, the source of virtually every important story about national security since 9/11, to share information. In this concise, informative talk, F...

Tech communities are booming all over Africa, says Nairobi-based Juliana Rotich, cofounder of the open-source software Ushahidi. But it remains challenging to get and stay connected in a region with frequent blackouts and spotty Internet hookups. So Rotich and friends developed BRCK, offering resilient connectivity for the developing world.

Want to help map the world? Community builder Rebecca Firth explains how the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is using open-source software powered by volunteers to put one billion people on the map in the next five years. (This ambitious plan is a part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)

Brewster Kahle is building a truly huge digital library -- every book ever published, every movie ever released, all the strata of web history ... It's all free to the public -- unless someone else gets to it first.

Forget about the hybrid auto -- Shai Agassi says it's electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.

The land of the free has become a legal minefield, says Philip K. Howard -- especially for teachers and doctors, whose work has been paralyzed by fear of suits. What's the answer? A lawyer himself, Howard has four propositions for simplifying US law.

At the TED2014 Fellows talks, Janet Iwasa's astonishing video -- which showed the process of molecular self-assembly -- went by very quickly, a flurry of green strands and fragments fluttering, before flying into the shape of a soccer ball. If you missed it, or if you'd like a more in-depth explanation of what is actually going on here, watch...

Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web 25 years ago. So it’s worth a listen when he warns us: There’s a battle ahead. Eroding net neutrality, filter bubbles and centralizing corporate control all threaten the web’s wide-open spaces. It’s up to users to fight for the right to access and openness. The question is, What kind of Internet do...

By now, you probably know that in mid-February, the FBI asked Apple to create software that could bypass encryption on an iPhone relevant to the San Bernardino mass shooting. Apple wrote a letter to customers explaining why they would not. What you might not know is why this matters to you -- and to everyone. I talked to some people who could sh...

Back in summer 2013, the Edward Snowden revelations got me thinking. How much of our lives are compromised when security agencies -- or hackers, or anyone else -- can read our emails? Emails paint an intimate narrative of ourselves -- the people we talk to, the books we read, the politics we practice. This information is powerful. When we los...

Jimmy Wales recalls how he assembled "a ragtag band of volunteers," gave them tools for collaborating and created Wikipedia, the self-organizing, self-correcting, never-finished online encyclopedia.

Much ado has been made in recent years over the quickly rising cost of healthcare in the United States. But the cost of college tuition and fees has skyrocketed at nearly twice that rate. Going to college today will cost a student 559% more than it did in 1985, on average. In an exciting talk given at TEDGlobal 2012, Stanford professor Da...

“I wanted to reframe the way we use information, the way we work together.” Such was the kernel of an idea from one Tim Berners-Lee, a software engineer working at CERN back in the 1980s. Working on this idea was a side project for Berners-Lee, one dubbed “vague but exciting” by his boss at the time. Yet today, the results of the experime...

Daring, bold, systems-disrupting change requires big dreams and an even bigger vision. For Session 5 of TED2020, the Audacious Project, a collaborative funding initiative housed at TED, highlighted bold plans for social change from Southern New Hampshire University, SIRUM, BRAC, Harlem Children's Zone, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), Proj...

Why government leaders should publish the data they're collecting -- and why citizens everywhere should push them to do so. Think about governments and data and your mind likely turns to secrecy, surveillance, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning. And it’s true: as long as we've had governments they've gathered data on us, and lots of it. Now a newi...

This year's annual TEDYouth event, themed "The Spark," is moving south. On Saturday, November 16, we'll bring together 400 middle and high school students at the Civic Theatre in New Orleans, Louisiana. Attendance is free, so if this sounds like something you'd be up for, you should apply to come join us » At the conference, more than 20 ...

At TED2009, military analyst P.W. Singer spoke about how drones are changing warfare. It was fascinating -- and sobering. This month, Singer directs our attention to a different way technology can intersect with malice in his new book, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, co-authored by Allan Friedman. Below, an excerpt tha...

In 2006, open-learning visionary Richard Baraniuk explains the vision behind Connexions (now called OpenStax), an open-source, online education system. It cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share and modify course materials freely, anywhere in the world.

When Salman Khan shared his vision for “a free world-class education for anyone anywhere” at TED2011, he turned the education world on its head. As he introduced Khan Academy -- a virtual classroom that uses video lessons to create an individualized, self-paced learning experience -- his alternative model fueled the nascent dialogue about online...

Today, TED is thrilled to announce the 25 new members of 2012's TED Fellows class and 12 new Senior Fellows. A Lebanese open-source hardware inventor, a French computational architect and the founder of Skillshare.com are among 25 members of 2012's class of new TED Fellows. Twelve new Senior Fellows from seven countries, selected for two mor...

Tech educator

With a vision for a free online encyclopedia, Wales assembled legions of volunteer contributors, gave them tools for collaborating, and created the self-organizing, self-correcting, ever-expanding, multilingual encyclopedia of the future.

Do you think you're good at spotting fake videos, where famous people say things they've never said in real life? See how they're made in this astonishing talk and tech demo. Computer scientist Supasorn Suwajanakorn shows how, as a grad student, he used AI and 3D modeling to create photorealistic fake videos of people synced to audio. Learn more...

Boyd Varty’s talk brings together many fascinating moments: a tribute to Nelson Mandela (who passed away just hours before Varty took the stage at TEDWomen 2013 last week), incredible footage of animals shot on the Londolozi Game Reserve (which Varty’s family transformed from a hunting ground to a game reserve in 1973, and where Varty curren...

Welcome the class of TED2017 Fellows! Representing 12 countries, one tribal nation and an incredible range of disciplines, this year's Fellows are all leaders in their fields who constantly find new ways to collaborate and bring about positive change. Among those selected are an Ecuadorian neurobiologist working to uncover the neural circuit...

What is the blockchain? If you don't know, you should; if you do, chances are you still need some clarification on how it actually works. Don Tapscott is here to help, demystifying this world-changing, trust-building technology which, he says, represents nothing less than the second generation of the internet and holds the potential to transform...

About this event: What will shape our futures? “Show me someone who doesn’t dream about the future and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t know where they are going” William Shakespeare Our Speakers "The next giant leap for mankind" Steve Menaa, a French man (originally from Tunisia) who lives in Ireland (Cork). The 45-year-old IT engineer has made a short- l...

Did you know that across the United States, cameras are automatically taking pictures of your car’s license plate as you drive by, recording your plate number and your locations over time? In a chilling talk given at TEDGlobal 2014, civil liberties lawyer and TED Fellow Catherine Crump called attention to the ubiquity of mass surveillance techno...

Through his organization, Baobab Health, Gerry Douglas has implemented a top-of-the-line electronic medical records system in Malawi. Many health centers in the developed world have not yet achieved what Baobab has. His secret weapons? Touch screen computers, super-high usability, and low power usage, just to name a few. Interactive Fel...

For Kellee Santiago, founder of thatgamecompany, video games are an interactive art form. Inspired by hiking, gazing at clouds, and even stories of religious conversion, her games invoke emotional responses, pushing the boundaries of video games as a communicative media. What was your first experience with video games? Well, I had played g...