Photo Credit: Samyra Serin
I didn’t want to post two TED video’s back to back but I thought I would share one of the first videos I ever watched on TED and why it is important.
As most know, the iPhone was released around mid-2007. The video embeded below is where the technology came from. The interesting part is…the cost for that table you see in the video is roughly 50.00 if I remember my research correctly.
But how does this relate to me? To writing? TED celebrates innovation, thinking outside of ‘the box’ and mostly giving back to the world. Not only are there talks about business, but philanthropic ventures, old-world methods versus new world methods and new ways of looking at old things.
Okay, you still don’t get why I am saying that TED matters to me, as a writer. It’s the one place I can go to find technology, prototypes, ideas and concepts that haven’t made it into the ‘main stream’ yet. I saw this video before the iPhone came out and the first thing I said when I saw the iphone is ‘Holy Crap they Jacked up the cost on that!’ and now the iPhone goes for roughly 100.00 which is probably closer to cost considering it is a much smaller scale. My second thought was ‘I know who invented that, where the technology started’ and I was sold on TED.
Recently I watched a video about rain collection methods in the desert which I have used in my novel, Past Mistakes. In stumbling through TEDTalks, I have found an ‘old way’ to do something in my novel that will make a huge impact on the story.
So, TED is great for researching old methods and new methods. Its a great way to learn about people as they have extensive scientific talks on how people interact, animals, the brain and children. It is a valuable resource and I hope that you wander over and give a few talks a look. You will find yourself easily loosing track of time in some of the longer talks if you don’t watch the clock. Then again, I don’t think of that as a neccessarily bad thing.
So watch the video below and see the technology from the beginning and see what they left out – or is to come soon in full feature computers (cross your fingers!) because I would LOVE my coffee table to do this!
TEDTalks – Jeff Han demos his breakthrough touchscreen : Aug 2006
