Algorithms play a big part in our day-to-day lives. From search engines to architecture, explore how these formulas affect the way we view and interact with the world around us.

You work at the college library. You're in the middle of a quiet afternoon when suddenly, a shipment of 1,280 books arrives. The books are in a straight line, but they're all out of order, and the automatic sorting system is broken. How can you sort the books quickly? Chand John shows how, shedding light on how algorithms help librarians and sea...

Search engines have become our most trusted sources of information and arbiters of truth. But can we ever get an unbiased search result? Swedish author and journalist Andreas Ekström argues that such a thing is a philosophical impossibility. In this thoughtful talk, he calls on us to strengthen the bonds between technology and the humanities, an...

As director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Gerard Ryle is one of the key figures behind the Panama Papers.

Bill Gross founded Idealab, an incubator of new inventions, ideas and businesses.

Peter Norvig is a leading American computer scientist, expert on artificial intelligence and the Director of Research at Google Inc.

Damon Horowitz explores what is possible at the boundaries of technology and the humanities.

Dan Cobley is a marketing director at Google, where he connects customers and businesses, helping both navigate digital space to find what they need.

An early employee at Google, Matt Cutts works to modernize the US government as an administrator at U.S. Digital Service (USDS).

About this event: A look at how we now connect, communicate and educate in this evolving digital age of computers and personal devices. In this ever changing world we are using the web for more and more aspects of our personal and business lives. How does this affect us for better or worse? Enjoy TEDTalks and discussions that will make you think about the use...

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.

Finding answers to complex questions on the Internet is often a challenge, as a simple search can sometimes lead you down a rabbit hole of impersonal data. In A Haystack Full of Needles: Cutting Through the Clutter of the Online World to Find a Place, Partner or President, Jim Hornthal explores groundbreaking new approaches to discovering the ...

Monolingual volunteers can help spread the ideas in TEDx talks by transcribing them! Why transcribe? Transcribers create original-language subtitles for TEDx talks. Transcribed talks can reach a wider audience because they are... accessible to Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers indexed on search engines like Google able to be translated by TED ...

Ray Kurzweil returns to the TED stage to explain his new (kind of old) theory of the mind. He first wrote his theory as a paper 50 years ago, but today there’s a plethora of new evidence to support it. First, a refresher on the story of the neocortex, which means “new rind.” Two hundred million years ago the thin layer covering the brains...

On August 31, 2009, politician Malte Spitz traveled from Berlin to Erlangen, sending 29 text messages as he traveled. On November 5, 2009, he rocked out to U2 at the Brandenburg Gate. On January 10, 2010, he made 10 outgoing phone calls while on a trip to Dusseldorf, and spent 22 hours, 53 minutes and 57 seconds of the day connected to the i...

We encourage all TEDx organizers to create an official website for their event. This will serve as their online hub for event info, updates, blog posts, videos, and more. Your website’s domain name Here are the general things to keep in mind when getting a domain name or URL for your TEDx event website: Get your domain name You aren't require...

We're in the dawn of a new space revolution, says engineer Peter Beck: the revolution of the small. In a talk packed with insights into the state of the space industry, Beck shares his work building rockets capable of delivering small payloads to space rapidly and reliably -- helping us search for extraterrestrial life, learn more about the sola...

As Edward Snowden is linked to one country after the next, the media has its eye fixed on where he will next request asylum. (Today, it's Russia.) Meanwhile, back at US headquarters, as NSA officials speak in a House Judiciary Committee hearing, the agency is still doing what it's doing. To get more information on exactly what that means, the TE...

For a broader take, consider looking at its Wikipedia entry in another language -- particularly in a language culturally closer to the subject. You'll open yourself up to a world of perspectives, says Daniel M. Russell, online search expert and Google research scientist. This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of whic...

Google, Facebook, Amazon and others make their profits in two main ways: by collecting as much data as possible from us and by controlling what we pay for, says online security expert Bruce Schneier. And what does this all depend on? A vulnerable internet. Flaws in technology are not the only reason we have such an insecure internet. Another im...

If you’d like trust to develop in your office, group or team -- and who wouldn’t? -- the key is sharing your weaknesses, says business writer Daniel Coyle. At some level, we intuitively know that vulnerability tends to spark cooperation and trust. But we may not realize how well this process works, particularly when it comes to group interactio...

From the director Whenever we talk about the origins of the Open Translation Project, we are always quick to give you most of the credit. Before there was ever an OTP, viewers like you were writing us and volunteering to translate talks by speakers like Jill Bolte Taylor, Hans Rosling and Sir Ken Robinson. You wanted to share their ideas with pe...

About this event: In a recent article in Internet Computing, Dr. Charles Petrie, senior researcher at Stanford university, sketches a theoretical draft of the social-economic evolutions that root in the new technological possibilities of recent years. According to Dr. Petrie, the future of our businesses is in what he calls emergent collectives. These emergent co...

At TED2014, we asked speakers and attendees to riff off the conference's theme ("The Next Chapter") and tell us what might radically change society, life, technology and so on in the next 30 years. From funny and wry to deeply insightful, the answers will surprise you. "One of the things about learning how to read -- we have been doing a lot ...

In the eight session of TED2017, hosted by TED’s Head Curator Chris Anderson, eight speakers -- and one unforgettable live jetpack demo -- showed us that there's wonder all around us, from the bugs that live in our backyards and on our skin to the dreams that live inside our minds, waiting to be unleashed. Below, recaps of the talks from Sess...

About this event: What secrets are hidden beneath Jupiter’s veil of clouds and massive storms? Can exploration of Jupiter reveal the origins of water and life on Earth? Join us 6-9pm Monday 9 May 2011 at Hotel Beacon NYC, Broadway Room, 2130 Broadway (74th/ 75th Sts.), New York, NY 10023. Light refreshments, videos, speakers, discussion. Tickets: http://www...

Power drives everything. Whether it's political, economic, online -- power makes the rules and makes things move. At Session 2 of TED2019, we explore how different centers of global power are dramatically playing out across the world stage. The event: Talks and performances from TED2019, Session 2: Power, hosted by TED's Chris Anderson an...

Invisible to the eye and undetectable by most sensors, the small frequency of light called terahertz has eluded scientists for more than a century. That is finally changing -- and revealing amazing visuals in the process. In 2011, Albert Redo-Sanchez and his colleagues made an extraordinary discovery. Using terahertz technology, a recent additi...

Formula E racing, the darknet, a potential fountain of youth, and beheadings. At TEDGlobal>London — a two-session event curated and hosted by Bruno Giussani on June 16, 2015, at the Royal Institution of Great Britain -- the talks ranged from a wildly hopeful future to stern warnings about the present. Enjoy these recaps of the talks in th...

Recent events have highlighted, underlined and bolded the fact that the United States is performing blanket surveillance on any foreigner whose data passes through an American entity -- whether they are suspected of wrongdoing or not. This means that, essentially, every international user of the internet is being watched, says Mikko Hypponen. An...