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In a world in which information is like air, what happens to power?
New technologies and a closely related culture of collaboration present radical new models of social organisation. This project brings together leading practitioners and thinkers in this field and asks them to determine the opportunity for government
People that participated:
- Don Tapscott
- Lee Bryant
- Tom Steinberg
- Charles Leadbeater
- George Osborne
- Saul Albert
- JP Rangaswami
- Paul Miller
- Matthew Taylor
- MT Rainy
- Giles Andrews
- Clay Shirky
- Sane Kelly
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Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.
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When the dotcom bubble burst, hotelier Chip Conley went in search of a business model based on happiness. In an old friendship with an employee and in the wisdom of a Buddhist king, he learned that success comes from what you count. Chip references the Gross National Hapiness (GNH) index as the better alternative for the GDP metric.
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Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.
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Bestselling author, political adviser and ‘social and ethical prophet’ Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society.
Rifkin builds this case on his classification for the evolution of human consciousness that links energy and communication regimes. Accordingly, human-powered oral cultures nurtured a mythic consciousness and wood-burning script cultures a theological consciousness, while the coal-era print culture was an age of ideology. Our rapidly aging petroleum-based electronic culture evolved what he dubs a psychological consciousness, in which Freud, Jung and others pioneered new ways to conceive of our own identities and interrelationships. Now, he suggests that we are heading into a renewably powered digital and "dramaturgical" consciousness in which, to paraphrase Shakespeare, all the world will be our stage.
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A pioneer in research on play, Dr. Stuart Brown says humor, games, roughhousing, flirtation and fantasy are more than just fun. Plenty of play in childhood makes for happy, smart adults -- and keeping it up can make us smarter at any age.
Dr. Stuart Brown came to research play through research on murderers -- unlikely as that seems -- after he found a stunning common thread in killers' stories: lack of play in childhood. Since then, he's interviewed thousands of people to catalog their relationships with play, noting a strong correlation between success and playful activity. With the support of the National Geographic Society and Jane Goodall, he has observed animal play in the wild, where he first concieved of play as an evolved behavior important for the well being -- and survival -- of animals, especially those of higher intelligence. Now, through his organization, the National Institute for Play, he hopes to expand the study of human play into a vital science -- and help people everywhere enjoy and participate in play throughout life.
"Finally, a good excuse to goof off … Brown builds a compelling case for the importance of recreation to success and creativity -- and insists that grown-ups need it too." Discover Magazine
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The debate over foreign aid often pits those who mistrust "charity" against those who mistrust reliance on the markets. Jacqueline Novogratz proposes a middle way she calls patient capital, with promising examples of entrepreneurial innovation driving social change.
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The land of the free has become a legal minefield, says Philip K. Howard -- especially for teachers and doctors, whose work has been paralyzed by fear of suits. What's the answer? A lawyer himself, Howard has four propositions for simplifying US law.
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Child prodigy Adora Svitak (7 years) says the world needs "childish" thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids' big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups' willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.
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Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers -- and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling
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This video was created for the AARP U@50 video contest and placed second It is based on the Argentinian Political Advertisement "The Truth" by RECREAR.
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WAAR IS WOEDE: Documentaire van Bregtje van der Haak. De wereldeconomie is in crisis. Het afgelopen jaar werd duidelijk dat slechts een handjevol mensen de exorbitante vruchten plukt van het huidige financieel-economisch systeem, en dat wij - de gemeenschap- daarvoor uiteindelijk de gepeperde rekening betalen. Sindsdien lijkt er vooral sprake van een terugkeer naar de orde van de dag. Tegenlicht onderzoekt waarom er nog geen opstand is uitgebroken, hoe die er in deze tijd uit zou kunnen zien en welke alternatieven denkbaar zijn. Socioloog Manuel Castells en filosoof Peter Sloterdijk en de nieuwe Do-It-Yourself cultuur. Tegenlicht ging op zoek naar de tegenbeweging en vond moderne helden in actie in Barcelona, Tallinnn en Jakarta. Wat hen verbindt is dat ze niet wachten op politieke partijen om de wereld te verbeteren. Ze doen het gewoon zelf. Neem Enric Duran. Hij beroofde de Spaanse banken voor een half miljoen euro, gebruikte het geld voor een krant over Leven zonder Kapitalisme en werd in Spanje immens populair als de Robin Hood van de banken. Of Birgit Tolmann: Zij gebruikte de kaalslag van de crisis in Estland om samen met haar vrienden op internet een Geluksbank voor ruilhandel op te richten, met wereldwijde ambities. En Said Zaimi. Hij heeft in Jakarta een nieuwe, waardevaste munteenheid geïntroduceerd: de gouden dinar, geinspireerd op islamitische waarden
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Wangari Maathai is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, an environmentalist, a civil society and women's rights activist, and a parliamentarian. You can read about her life and her organization through her two books, Unbowed: A Memoir and The Green Belt Movement. You can also scan condensed versions of her life and achievements, including being awarded the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. Since winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai has become a spokesperson for a number of important initiatives.
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Queen Rania of Jordan starts a Youtube initiative to breakdown stereo types. She invites people to sent their video's about what they consider to be stereo types. It is also a good example on to use Youtube to create social interaction and how world leaders can close the distance to society.
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Rice University professor Richard Baraniuk explains the vision behind Connexions, his open-source, online education system. It cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share and modify course materials freely, anywhere in the world
Rice University professor Richard Baraniuk has a giant vision: to create a free global online education system that puts the power of creation and collaboration in the hands of teachers worldwide. He's realizing that vision with Connexions, a website that allows teachers to quickly "create, rip, mix and burn" coursework -- without fear of copyright violations. Think of it as Napster for education.
Connexions' open-source system cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share course materials, modify existing work and disseminate it to their students -- all for free, thanks to Creative Commons licensing. Baraniuk envisions Connexions as a repository where the most up-to-date material can be shared and reviewed (it's far more efficient than waiting for a textbook to be printed); it could become a powerful force in leveling the education playing field. Currently encompassing hundreds of online courses and used by a million people worldwide, Baraniuk's virtual educational system is revolutionizing the way people teach and learn. -
In this brief talk from TED U 2009, Jonathan Drori encourages us to save biodiversity -- one seed at a time. Reminding us that plants support human life, he shares the vision of the Millennium Seed Bank, which has stored over 3 billion seeds to date from dwindling yet essential plant species
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Tech enthusiast Kevin Kelly asks "What does technology want?" and discovers that its movement toward ubiquity and complexity is much like the evolution of life.
[KEVIN KELLY:] The main question that I'm asking myself is, what is the meaning of technology in our lives? What place does technology have in the universe? What place does it have in the human condition? And what place should it play in my own personal life? Technology as a whole system, or what I call the technium, seems to be a dominant force in the culture. Indeed at times it seems to be the only force - the only lasting force - in culture. If that's so, then what can we expect from this force, what governs it? Sadly we don't even have a good theory about technology.
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Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. "We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. Robinson's TEDTalk has been distributed widely around the Web since its release in June 2006. The most popular words framing blog posts on his talk? "Everyone should watch this."
A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements. His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009.
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The varieties of wheat, corn and rice we grow today may not thrive in a future threatened by climate change. Cary Fowler takes us inside a vast global seed bank, buried within a frozen mountain in Norway, that stores a diverse group of food-crop for whatever tomorrow may bring.
Tucked away under the snows of the Arctic Circle is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Sometimes called the doomsday vault, it's nothing less than a backup of the world's biological diversity in a horticultural world fast becoming homogenous in the wake of a flood of genetically identical GMOs.
For Cary Fowler, a self-described Tennessee farm boy, this vault is the fulfillment of a long fight against shortsighted governments, big business and potential disaster. Inside the seed vault, Fowler and his team work on preserving wheat, rice and hundreds of other crops that have nurtured humanity since our ancestors began tending crops -- and ensuring that the world's food supply has the diversity needed to stand against the omnipresent threats of disease, climate change and famine.
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By piecing together a complex ecological puzzle, biologist Willie Smits has found a way to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans -- and creating a thrilling blueprint for restoring fragile ecosystems.Willie Smits has devoted his life to saving the forest habitat of orangutans, the "thinkers of the jungle." As towns, farms and wars encroach on native forests, Smits works to save what is left.
Willie Smits works at the complicated intersection of humankind, the animal world and our green planet. In his early work as a forester in Indonesia, he came to a deep understanding of that triple relationship, as he watched the growing population of Sulawesi move into (or burn for fuel) forests that are home to the orangutan. These intelligent animals were being killed for food, traded as pets or simply failing to thrive as their forest home degraded.
Smits believes that to rebuild orangutan populations, we must first rebuild their forest habitat -- which means helping local people find options other than the short-term fix of harvesting forests to survive. His Masarang Foundation raises money and awareness to restore habitat forests around the world -- and to empower local people. In 2007, Masarang opened a palm-sugar factory that uses thermal energy to turn sugar palms (fast-growing trees that thrive in degraded soils) into sugar and even ethanol, returning cash and power to the community and, with luck, starting the cycle toward a better future for people, trees and orangs. -
If you've learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let's watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons: A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he's doing is so simple, it's almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow! Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it's not about the leader anymore - it's about them, plural. Notice he's calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.
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Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure -- and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work. Through his witty and literate books -- and his new School of Life -- Alain de Botton helps others find fulfillment in the everyday
In 2008, de Botton helped start the School of Life in London, a social enterprise determined to make learning and therapy relevant in today's uptight culture. His goal is (through any of his mediums) to help clients learn "how to live wisely and well."
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While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.
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In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning -- creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish. Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence
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Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for "practical wisdom" as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world. Barry Schwartz studies the link between economics and psychology, offering startling insights into modern life. Lately, working with Ken Sharpe, he's studying wisdom.
