InfoCompanions

Fabian Hemmert: The shape-shifting future of the mobile phone

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:37:28 +0000

At TEDxBerlin, Fabian Hemmert demos one future of the mobile phone — a shape-shifting and weight-shifting handset that “displays” information nonvisually, offering a delightfully intuitive way to communicate.

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Julian Treasure: Shh! Sound health in 8 steps

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:34:51 +0000

Julian Treasure says our increasingly noisy world is gnawing away at our mental health — even costing lives. He lays out an 8-step plan to soften this sonic assault (starting with those cheap earbuds) and restore our relationship with sound.

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Rob Dunbar: The Threat of Ocean Acidification

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:21:49 +0000

Rob Dunbar hunts for data on our climate from 12,000 years ago, finding clues inside ancient seabeds and corals. His work is vital in setting baselines for fixing our current climate — and, scarily, in tracking the rise of deadly ocean acidification.

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Chris Anderson: How YouTube is Driving Innovation

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:20:25 +0000

TED’s Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation — a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness. And for TED, it means the dawn of a whole new chapter.

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Jessa Gamble: Our Natural Sleep Cycle

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:18:42 +0000

In today’s world, balancing school, work, kids and more, most of us can only hope for the recommended eight hours of sleep. Examining the science behind our body’s internal clock, Jessa Gamble reveals the surprising and substantial program of rest we should be observing.

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Nicholas Christakis: How Social Networks Predict Epidemics

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:17:35 +0000

After mapping humans’ intricate social networks, Nicholas Christakis and colleague James Fowler began investigating how this information could better our lives. Now, he reveals his hot-off-the-press findings: These networks can be used to detect epidemics earlier than ever, from the spread of innovative ideas to risky behaviors to viruses (like H1N1).

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Caroline Phillips: Hurdy-gurdy for Beginners

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 17:15:59 +0000

Caroline Phillips cranks out tunes on a seldom-heard folk instrument: the hurdy-gurdy, a.k.a. the wheel fiddle. A searching, Basque melody follows her fun lesson on its unique anatomy and 1,000-year history.

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Lisa Margonelli: The Political Chemistry of Oil

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 14:10:57 +0000

In the Gulf oil spill’s aftermath, Lisa Margonelli says drilling moratoriums and executive ousters make for good theater, but distract from the issue at its heart: our unrestrained oil consumption. She shares her bold plan to wean America off of oil — by confronting consumers with its real cost.

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Nic Marks: The Happy Planet Index

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 14:00:47 +0000

Statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation’s success by its productivity — instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. He introduces the Happy Planet Index, which tracks national well-being against resource use (because a happy life doesn’t have to cost the earth). Which countries rank highest in the HPI? You might be surprised.

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Johan Rockstrom: Let The Environment Guide Our Development

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:55:32 +0000

Human growth has strained the Earth’s resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine “planetary boundaries” that can guide us in protecting our planet’s many overlapping ecosystems.

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Derek Sivers: Keep Your Goals To Yourself

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:50:07 +0000

After hitting on a brilliant new life plan, our first instinct is to tell someone — but Derek Sivers says it’s better to keep goals secret. He presents research stretching as far back as the 1920s to show why people who talk about their ambitions may be less likely to achieve them.

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Rachel Sussman: The World’s Oldest Living Things

Himanshu Sharma — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:32:58 +0000

Rachel Sussman shows photographs of the world’s oldest continuously living organisms — from 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago’s coast to an “underground forest” in South Africa that has lived since before the dawn of agriculture.

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Kevin Stone: The bio-future of joint replacement

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 15:41:36 +0000

Arthritis and injury grind down millions of joints, but few get the best remedy — real biological tissue. Kevin Stone shows a treatment that could sidestep the high costs and donor shortfall of human-to-human transplants with a novel use of animal tissue.

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Susan Shaw: The oil spill’s toxic trade-off

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:39:03 +0000

Break down the oil slick, keep it off the shores: that’s grounds for pumping toxic dispersant into the Gulf, say clean-up overseers. Susan Shaw shows evidence it’s sparing some beaches only at devastating cost to the health of the deep sea.

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Julian Assange: Why The World Needs WikiLeaks

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:45:12 +0000

The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who’s reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED’s Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished — and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.

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John Delaney: Wiring an interactive ocean

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 15:36:12 +0000

Oceanographer John Delaney is leading the team that is building an underwater network of high-def cameras and sensors that will turn our ocean into a global interactive lab — sparking an explosion of rich data about the world below.

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Laurie Santos: How monkeys mirror human irrationality

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 15:34:23 +0000

Why do we make irrational decisions so predictably? Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in “monkeynomics” shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.

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Lewis Pugh’s mind-shifting Mt. Everest swim

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:55:58 +0000

After he swam the North Pole, Lewis Pugh vowed never to take another cold-water dip. Then, he heard of Mt. Everest’s Lake Imja — a body of water at an altitude of 5,300 meters, entirely created by recent glacial melting — and began a journey that would teach him a radical new way to approach both swimming and think about climate change.

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Legos for grownups

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:51:52 +0000

Lego blocks: playtime mainstay for industrious kids, obsession for many (ahem!) mature adults. Hillel Cooperman takes us on a trip through the beloved bricks’ colorful, sometimes oddball grownup subculture, featuring CAD, open-source robotics and a little adult behavior.

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The politics of fiction

Himanshu Sharma — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:49:37 +0000

Listening to stories widens the imagination; telling them lets us leap over cultural walls, embrace different experiences, feel what others feel. Elif Shafak builds on this simple idea to argue that fiction can overcome identity politics.

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