Posting from TED2012

February 29, 2012

I totally forgot to mention that I was invited to be one of the live bloggers at this year’s TED conference. So I’m swanking it up in Long Beach this week, if by swanking it up you mean getting food poisoning, working crazy hours and desperately scrambling to understand and translate high-falutin concepts within minutes of first hearing them, which I do. So, not much else going on in my world apart from this. Here’s a quick recap of most of the talks I’ve seen and written about. Follow along at TED’s blog for live coverage, while I’ll add another recap at the end of the week:

Brian Greene is an expert in superstring theory. He also co-founded the World Science Festival and he gave an insight into “the multiverse in three parts.”

Peter Diamandis is chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation and Singularity University. Onstage, he made the case for optimism.

Andrew Stanton wrote the three Toy Story movies and was writer/director of WALL-E. His new film, John Carter, comes out in March, and he gave a masterclass on storytelling.

Michael Tilson Thomas is a conductor and music educator. He delivered a history of music in 18 minutes.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein writes novels that explore questions of philosophy, morality and being. Steven Pinker studies human nature. Together, the two delivered a Socratic dialogue on reason. (Yes, really.)

Julie Burstein is the brains behind PRI’s Studio 360, public radio’s premiere program about pop culture and the arts. She gave her take on the critical elements for creativity.

Jonathan Haidt studies how — and why — we evolved to be moral and examined the concept of self-transcendence.

Jack Choi is the CEO of Anatomage, a company specializing on 3D medical technology. He demo’ed a virtual (and “oops”-proof) touch table for teaching dissection to surgical students.

Donald Sadoway is working on an energy miracle — an inexpensive, efficient, three-layered battery that uses “liquid metal.”

Karen Bass has traveled the world to explore and capture incredible footage from every environment across the earth.

An anthropologist and ethnobiologist, Wade Davis is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. He spoke of his plea to save the Stikine River.

A legendary oil and gas entrepreneur, T. Boone Pickens is on a mission to enhance U.S. energy policies to lessen the nation’s dependence on OPEC oil.

Reid Hoffman is co-founder and executive chair of LinkedIn, and a partner with Greylock. He spoke about the networked economy.

Jennifer Pahlka is the founder of Code for America, a program she likens to “Peace Corps for geeks.” She talked about building better government—and possum problems.

Eduardo Paes is the mayor of Rio de Janeiro. He shared four commandments for cities of the future.

11:25pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dxHGvS9H
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(Notes: 11)