bookmark_borderGot TED?

Have you heard of the TED conference? (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design)

No? It’s been going a while now, and got started back in 1984

…out of the observation by Richard Saul Wurman of a powerful convergence between Technology, Entertainment and Design. The first TED included demos of the newly released Macintosh computer and Sony compact disc, while mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to map coastlines with his newly discovered fractals and AI guru Marvin Minsky outlined his powerful new model of the mind.

As well as the conference they share some of the sessions on the internet (freely under Creative Commons license). The quality of these sessions remains high with some of the brightest minds of current times talking about some mind-blowing things and I remain constantly fascinated by the crossover of ideas from one distinct stream of thought to another.

Personally the TED sessions have prompted me to buy several books and dig deeper into some of the topics, I’ve learned a lot.

So, when Adrian McEwen said he’d pulled together a downloadable taster pack of some of the best bits, and was looking for a little help with some bandwidth, I figured it would be good to give something back. Included in the torrent file he’s put together (which will nicely fit on a DVD once you’ve downloaded it), are:

  1. Dan Gilbert asks “Why are we happy?”
  2. Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce
  3. Sir Ken Robinson say schools kill creativity
  4. Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen
  5. Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice
  6. Gever Tulley on five dangerous things for kids

So, don’t just sit there, fire up your Torrent application of choice (I prefer uTorrent) and GRAB IT WHILE YOU CAN.