Mind-boggling science and undertakings that overwhelm the senses are in store at a Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference to inspire the brilliant and accomplished to change the world for the better.
Technology titans, artists, scientists and celebrities will be among those taking part in the annual event that has transformed from an elite gathering into an Internet platform for “ideas worth spreading.”
TED is renowned for a thought-sparking swirl of viewpoints, revelations and creative presentations delivered by vaunted personalities asked to pack the talk of a lifetime in an 18-minute punch.
Videos of “TED Talks” are made available free online at Ted.com.
TED Talks have legions of followers and have spread to television stations around the world through an “Open TV Project” launched last year.
The week-long TED conference starting in Long Beach, California, today will reach a new high, literally, with a greeting from US astronaut Cady Coleman at the International Space Station, which will be getting a live stream of the event.
“Our whole goal is to lift people out of their everyday world,” TED media executive producer June Cohen said.
“We’ve gone far afield to find great moments of wonder to infuse you with ideas and provocation,” she said.
The TED program includes a lesson in leadership from US General Stanley McChrystal, former head of International forces in Afghanistan, and a view of the Middle East from al-Jazeera network director-general Wadah Khanfar.
Khanfar is to speak about the political upheaval and how to bridge the divide between the Muslim and Western worlds.
Surgeon Anthony Atala, a pioneer in organ and limb regeneration, will bring to the TED stage a device that actually prints live human tissue.
“We are not certain what organ he will make during the session,” Cohen said. “We hear an ear or a liver ... I still can’t believe he can do that.”
Composer and conductor Eric Whitaker, who orchestrated the first “virtual choir” on YouTube, is to premier a new work at TED that weaves together the voices of 250 people from around the world.
Architect and engineer Carlo Ratti will share his latest creations in the world of tiny robots that swarm with hive-like purpose.
The chiefs of US carmaker Ford and beverage titan PepsiCo are part of a roster ranging from puppeteers and a magician to physicists, film-makers and philanthropists.
In a new TED twist, retired Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will “guest curate” a set of talks, with his speaker choices mirroring his devotion to technology, education and eradicating malaria.
A mysterious French artist that uses bleak streets in cities around the world as frames for his photos will be awarded a coveted TED Prize.
Organizers of TED, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to cultivating ideas and innovation through its prestigious conferences, described the man known only as “JR” as a “true humanitarian,” whose art inspires people to look at the world differently and want to work to make it better.
“He’s putting a human face on some of the most critical social issues, while redefining how we view, make and display art,” TED Prize director Amy Novogratz said.
JR has mounted his enormous black-and-white photos on buildings in slums around Paris, on walls in the Middle East, on dilapidated bridges in Africa and on homes in Brazilian shantytowns.
The prize includes US$100,000 and a wish that “Tedsters” are urged to help realize.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts