Top Talk Videos from TED, The Life and World Conference

TED started as Technology, Entertainment & Design and is now a very broad conference covering talks about Life and the World in general, this has included insights into the Human Mind, notes from Africa, World changing Ideas, Adventures, on Designs and Visualization and many more. TED speeches are typically 15-20 minutes and a lot of them are available for viewing online or can be downloaded at http://www.ted.com

I first got a glimpse of it when I watched the documentary, The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED It was a great experience, and I learnt about many things outside my current world.

So this year when the TED 2008 was going on, I attended a virtual TED conference of my own, watching speeches from previous TED conference.

Here are the Top Presentation Videos from TED, The Life and World Conference:

• Ben Saunders: Three things to know before you ski to the North Pole

To explore the limits of our potential. The title says it all, he did it solo.

• Gever Tulley: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do

Very practical, loved it. Few worth noting, let kids dismantle appliances and learn to handle fire

• Dan Gilbert: Why are we happy? Why aren’t we happy?

Insights and experiments into synthetic happiness(being happy with what you get) and how it is same as real happiness. Too many choices will reduce your chances at synthesized happiness.

• Burt Rutan: Entrepreneurs are the future of space flight

On why Joy is defendable and what inspiration for kids changes a field.

• Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen

Outstanding visualization of changing status of developing countries like India over the previous five decades.

• Majora Carter: Greening the ghetto

On a project to create a park in New York.

• Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce

Why there is no perfect spaghetti sauce and what it teaches us about creating products

• Neil Gershenfeld: The beckoning promise of personal fabrication

Making things

• Jeff Han: Unveiling the genius of multi-touch interface design

The idea for new form of interacting with computers that we see in the iPhone.

• Jeff Bezos: After the gold rush, there’s innovation ahead

Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos on what Internet industry is like the Electrical one.

• Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights

When creating something, when working for somebody, target it at people(customers) who care and it just might take off.

• Jonathan Harris: The Web’s secret stories

Projects on datamining and visualizing people interacting on the Web

• Rives: “If I controlled the Internet” (a poem)

A humorous poem

• Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Motivation talk. Some points. Seek to create and thereby get to achievement. Then up the ante and do it faster, better. Grow or stagnant. Use uncertainity to stay out of boredom.

• Jeff Hawkins: Brain science is about to fundamentally change computing

Using the human brain’s prediction methods for computing

• Roy Gould, Curtis Wong: WorldWide Telescope

A telescope controlled by anyone.

• Dan Dennett: Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes

Ideas such as Freedom, Capitalism, Religion are Memes. Memes are viruses, spreading, affecting everyone, changing the world, killing scores of people.

• Moshe Safdie: What makes a building unique?

An architect and his buildings including Exploration Place, Wichita, Kansas, Children’s Memorial at Yad Vashem, Israel and Khalsa Heritage Memorial Complex, Anandpur, India

• Ray Kurzweil: How technology’s accelerating power will transform us

On how technology grows at a increasing rate.

• YouTube – Frozen Grand Central

Do watch a few which call out to you.