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Sergey Brin: Why Google Glass?
Sergey Brin: Why Google Glass?
It’s not a demo, more of a philosophical argument: Why did Sergey Brin and his team at Google want to build an eye-mounted camera/computer, codenamed Glass? Onstage at TED2013, Brin calls for a new way of seeing our relationship with our mobile computers — not hunched over a screen but meeting the world heads-up.
Sergey Brin is half of the team that founded Google. Now he’s leading the development of special projects like Google Glass.
WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HIM?
Sergey Brin and Larry Page met in grad school at Stanford in the mid-’90s, and in 1996 started working on a search technology based around a new idea: that relevant results come from context. Their technology analyzed the number of times a given website was linked to by other sites — assuming that the more links, the more relevant the site — and ranked sites accordingly. Despite being a late entrant to the search game, it now rules the web.
Brin and Page’s innovation-friendly office culture has spun out lucrative new products including AdSense/AdWords, Google News, Google Maps, Google Earth, and Gmail, as well as the Android mobile operating system. Now, led by Brin, Google is pursuing problems beyond the page, like the driverless car and the digital eyewear known as Google Glass .
Sean Hutchison: Global Challenges & Social Innovations
Sean Hutchison: Global Challenges & Social Innovations
Sean Hutchison, former U.S. Olympic coach and the inventor of IKKOS: a patented, brain-based movement learning system.
Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo
Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo
What if Andy Warhol had it wrong, and instead of being famous for 15 minutes, we’re only anonymous for that long? In this short talk, Juan Enriquez looks at the surprisingly permanent effects of digital sharing on our personal privacy. He shares insight from the ancient Greeks to help us deal with our new “digital tattoos.”
Juan Enriquez thinks and writes about profound changes that genomics will bring in business, technology, and society.
WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HIM?
A broad thinker who studies the intersection of science, business and society, Juan Enriquez has a talent for bridging disciplines to build a coherent look ahead. Enriquez was the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, and has published widely on topics from the technical (global nucleotide data flow) to the sociological (gene research and national competitiveness), and was a member of Celera Genomics founder Craig Venter‘s marine-based team to collect genetic data from the world’s oceans.
Formerly CEO of Mexico City’s Urban Development Corporation and chief of staff for Mexico’s secretary of state, Enriquez played a role in reforming Mexico’s domestic policy and helped negotiate a cease-fire with Zapatista rebels. He is a Managing Director at Excel Medical Ventures, a life sciences venture capital firm, and the chair and CEO of Biotechonomy, a research and investment firm helping to fund new genomics firms. The Untied States of Americalooks at the forces threatening America’s future as a unified country.
In his TED Book Homo Evolutis (written with Steve Gullens), Enriquez explores the far reaches of human change, and asks: Are we done evolving?
“Juan Enriquez will change your view of change itself.” Nicholas Negroponte
Keller Rinaudo: A mini robot — powered by your phone
Keller Rinaudo: A mini robot — powered by your phone
Your smartphone may feel like a friend — but a true friend would give you a smile once in a while. At TED2013, Keller Rinaudo demos Romo, the smartphone-powered mini robot who can motor along with you on a walk, slide you a cup of coffee across the table, and react to you with programmable expressions.
Keller Rinaudo is the co-founder and CEO of Romotive — makers of the small, covetable robot, Romo.
WHY YOU HOULD LISTEN TO HIM?
Keller Rinaudo founded Romotive alongside friends Phu Nguyen and Peter Seid. The startup makes Romo, an adorable miniature robot that harnesses the the powerful processor in every smartphone. Something between a personal robot and a pet, Romo has a personality thanks to controllable facial expressions and is able to roll around on a tank-like base. As CEO of Romotive, Rinaudo sets the strategic direction of the company, raises funds needed to scale quickly and focuses on growing the team through recruiting.
A 2009 Harvard graduate, Rinaudo worked with Dr. Yaakov Benenson and colleagues on biological computers — tiny devices made of RNA, DNA and proteins that, when implanted in the body, could work as molecular doctors signaling genes in need of treatment. Rinaudo is also a professional rock climber ranked top 10 in sport climbing. He has scaled alpine cliffs in France, underwater caves in Kentucky and the limestone towers of Yangshuo, China.
“That’s a lot of excitement for a smartphone toy robot. But, hey, this is a toy with big ambitions, and Rinaudo and his crew–though admittedly unsure about where this all might lead–are convinced they’re onto something.” CNET
Wearable tech to help focus, lose weight
Wearable tech to help focus, lose weight
Smartphone-connected bracelets and headbands help you use tech attached to your body to monitor what’s going on inside of it.
Stewart Brand: The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready?
Stewart Brand: The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready?
Throughout humankind’s history, we’ve driven species after species extinct: the passenger pigeon, the Eastern cougar, the dodo … But now, says Stewart Brand, we have the technology (and the biology) to bring back species that humanity wiped out. So — should we? Which ones? He asks a big question whose answer is closer than you may think.
Since the counterculture ’60s, Stewart Brand has been creating our internet-worked world. Now, with biotech accelerating four times faster than digital technology, Stewart Brand has a bold new plan.
WHY YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO HIM?
With biotech accelerating four times faster than digital technology, the revival of extinct species is becoming possible. Stewart Brand plans to not only bring species back but restore them to the wild.
Brand is already a legend in the tech industry for things he’s created: the Whole Earth Catalog, The WELL, the Global Business Network, the Long Now Foundation, and the notion that “information wants to be free.” Now Brand, a lifelong environmentalist, wants to re-create — or “de-extinct” — a few animals that’ve disappeared from the planet.
Granted, resurrecting the woolly mammoth using ancient DNA may sound like mad science. But Brand’s Revive and Restore project has an entirely rational goal: to learn what causes extinctions so we can protect currently endangered species, preserve genetic and biological diversity, repair depleted ecosystems, and essentially “undo harm that humans have caused in the past.”

