Speaker Announcement – Thad Starner
August 21, 2013 Blog Ben Milnes
Thad Starner received a PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory, where he founded the MIT Wearable Computing Project. He has a massive head start on the rest of us when it comes to “wearable computing”. He’s been wearing computing, of varying types, since 1993, long before the rest of were struggling to come to terms with dial-up internet. You might think of “augmented reality” as a pretty newfangled concept, only really arriving alongside certain iPhone apps; Thad coined the phrase in 1990.
Not surprising, then, that he’s the founder and director of the Contextual Computing Group at Georgia Tech and the Technical Lead/Manager on .
Speaker Announcement – Graham Hughes
August 10, 2013 Blog Ben Milnes
Fact: your gap year travels weren’t as impressive as the trip Graham Hughes completed last year. Last November he returned from The Odyssey Expedition: visiting 201 countries, including every United Nations Member state in the world, without flying. Read More »
Why Bother Leaving The House?
August 5, 2013 Blog Ben Milnes
“Why bother leaving the house?” is the question Ben Saunders grapples with in his ten minute TED talk at TEDSalon. This one is a polished pleasure to watch, and a good shot-in-the-arm of inspiration too.
Ben’s achievements include skiing, alone, to the North Pole, and making the longest solo arctic journey to date by a Briton. In October he’ll set off on The Scott Expedition, in which he’ll attempt to complete the Antarctic trek that Scott didn’t quite make. Neither has anyone else, yet. What compels him to do these things? Read More »
Google Glass: Surmount the “Social Barrier”
July 21, 2013 Blog Ben Milnes
is here! Well not properly, but it has been knocking about in beta form, and people have been falling over themselves to pay $1,500 for the privilege of road-testing it.
You can watch Google co-founder Sergey Brin lay out the “philosophical argument” for Glass at TED2013. The first couple of minutes are a demo video of what it’s like to use Glass. This is proper feel-good, technology porn. “This is SOOO good,” it oozes at you, “how could anybody possibly not think this is the coolest thing ever?” It pulls you in in the same way lots of slick adverts do – with emotive “life is great” music splashed over the whole thing, selling a product by promoting an associated lifestyle. You might fork out for Google Glass when it becomes more widely available, but it won’t automatically make you a skydiver. Read More »
Local Interest: Wakeboarding in Salford Quays
June 17, 2013 Blog Ben Milnes
On Sunday 26th May, Salford Wake Park opened. Drinking cider from the sidelines at a safe distance were me and TED blog editor Michael Metcalf, there to find out what it was all about. Wanna go wakeboarding? Read More »
In the red corner: Twitter! In the blue corner: Your very ability to think!
June 6, 2013 Blog Ben Milnes
Rolf Dobelli wrote a paper called Avoid News which gives some really compelling reasons as to why news consumption is bad for you. I highly recommend it. Reason No 6 is that ‘News inhibits thinking’.
Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News items are like free-floating radicals that interfere with clear thinking. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes.
Dobelli goes on to talk about how news can badly affect our memory. He advocates reading books and longer articles – things that take a longer time to digest but also give our brains time to switch on and engage more deeply. Read More »
Reading Comics Is Not A Waste Of Time
May 10, 2013 Blog Ben Milnes
I watched Scott McCloud’s TED2005 talk on comics with interest. He examines comics as a form of storytelling, including a look at where they came from, and where they might be going. The delivery of his talk shares some elements with the way a story is told in a comic, with a snappy succession of images supplementing his words. But maybe there’s a more fundamental hurdle to leap before you can enjoy it.
Comics. They’re daft, aren’t they? They’re for kids, right? Read More »
Local Interest: Video Jam
April 15, 2013 Blog Ben Milnes
You can’t spend all your time indoors watching TED videos, you know. Sometimes you should watch some videos outside of the house.
I did that recently at Video Jam, “an experimental night of short films with a variety of live musical accompaniment”. The first Video Jam took place in January 2012 at Antwerp Mansion but the event is not confined to any one space and has appeared in various locations since. I went to the most recent one at Islington Mill. Read More »
The Sociability of the Short Distance Runner
March 29, 2013 Blog Ben Milnes
I know what you’re doing. You’re looking at a stack of Easter eggs, wondering which to devour first. We’re getting into dangerous territory now, fitness-wise. Your gym attendance/healthy eating New Year’s resolution died off around the end of January. You may have completed the Dryathlon, you may have given something up for Lent but face it: now we’re getting into that bit of the calendar year (often referred to as “most of it”) that will conjure up so much regret this December it will inspire a whole new set of self-flagellating New Year’s resolutions around Christmas 2013.
Step back from the cycle for a second: in 365 days time you’ll be staring at a stack of Easter Eggs again. Don’t worry about it. Here’s my two-step plan to a healthier you in general; using TED for inspiration. Read More »
Sharing is Scary
March 14, 2013 Blog Ben Milnes
There’s a man in Manchester who shows up at a park every weekend with some tools, and fixes people’s bikes for free. Why? What does he get out of it? It seems a natural question to ask, but maybe it’s also a bit of a depressing one.