Exploring openness in radical video: Jason Silva at TEDGlobal2012. Photo: James Duncan Davidson Jason Silva is a “performance philosopher” driven by the concept of awe. Inspired by Buckminster Fuller and Timothy Leary, his background of film and philosophy has given him the tools to create movie trailers for ideas — what he calls “philosophical shots of espresso.” In his eyes: Awe is ecstatic rapture. It is the antidote to existential despair. Awe makes you gawk at everyday wonders you are taught to ignore. Awe is an experience of such perceptual vastness that you are forced to reconfigure your mental schema. In terms of his videos, their aesthetics, music and presentation all matter — because Jason believes we want to be transformed. Best Of TED 2011 : Pictures, Videos, Breaking News. Tony Robbins asks why we do what we do. Home.
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Conversations | All Conversations. Thomas Barnett draws a new map for peace. 5 all-time favorite TED talks for their 5th birthday, 7 must-read books on data visualization & more. Hey David Cline! If you missed last week's edition – how limitless choice limits social change, a peek inside great creators' notebooks and more – you can catch up right here.
And if you're enjoying this, please consider supporting with a modest donation. Happy 5th Birthday, TED Talks: 5 All-Time Favorite Talks Democratizing knowledge, the meaning of life, and why everything we know about creativity is wrong. Today marks the fifth anniversary of TED talks becoming available to the world. I can't overstate how much TED has changed my life personally, and what a tour de force it has been culturally. Today, to celebrate the big occasion, I've tried to curate my five favorite TED talks of all time – operative word being "tried," since it felt a bit like asking a parent to pick her favorite child. When Elizabeth Gilbert took the TED stage in 2009, it didn't take long to realize her talk would be among TED's finest. Don't be daunted. That is our poetry. That is how innovation happens.
Ed Boyden: A light switch for neurons. Thomas Barnett draws a new map for peace. Dan Dennett on dangerous memes. Struggling with quantum logic: Q&A with Aaron O’Connell. On stage at TED2011, Aaron O’Connell talked about building the largest object ever put into a quantum mechanical state, a vibrating piece of metal (called a mechanical resonator) — work he completed in the lab of professors John Martinis and Andrew Cleland, and working closely with Max Hofheinz and many others. Now he’s interested in starting a science company with the potential for dramatic impact on the world.
The TED Blog talked with him about his research, the nature of physics, and the differences between academia and the corporate world. You made an object that’s an enormous breakthrough in physics, and then you have a huge challenge to try to explain to non-physicists why it’s a big deal. Where does that disconnect come from? A lot of the impact of the experiment is that it forces you to change your perception of the world, and in such a way that you need to develop a new logic system. That’s a really tough concept. This is something we have no intuition for. No, actually I don’t.