
Top 10 TEDTalks of all time - rms
http://www.ted.com/talks/top10
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swombat
To any brain surgeons out there: The "Stroke of insight" experience can be
accurately reproduced, with similar feelings of enlightenment but no brain
damage, via the ingestion of psychedelic drugs.

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rms
Which ones?

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swombat
Magic Mushrooms will do the job nicely and are generally easily available.
Make sure to read up on whatever you put in your mouth though.

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andr
IMHO The selection is rather poor. 4 of the 10 speeches are regarding a simple
technical product. While they might be cool, touchscreens and Wii remote hacks
are not going to change the world, while many other talks do just that. Only 3
or 4 of the talks are actually thought-provoking, and having seen almost all
talks I can think of at least 10 that were more inspiring.

~~~
pchristensen
Several of those (3,8,9) are among the first videos released. People (like me)
that have stumbled onto TED recently and start from the beginning will view
those first. Also, the iPhone, Photosynth, and WiiMote probably come up in
searches because they have Google juice.

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dreish
I discovered TED talks on the day of the iPhone keynote, searching for more
info about multi-touch. So I would guess that video got a lot of its hits from
other people doing that.

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mrduncan
[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everyth...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html)
\- Certainly one of the most enthusiastic and entertaining talks I've seen on
TED

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rms
<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/list> has some additional sorting options

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petervidani
My personal favorite comes from designer Philippe Starck:

<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/197>

Very inspiration for designers and engineers alike.

~~~
peakok
We often like to think we are morally superior and smarter than our ancestors,
yet the success of Philippe Stark (The Caliban, as nicknamed in 2100's History
books) is a clear sign of our own moronity - the moronity of our times as we
should call it - and will be the subject of mockery from our grand children.

The damage these people did (Starck and the architects in the same school,
wich are currently overwhelming) to our cities and landscape would have been
more than enough for a guillotine ride two centuries ago.

If you want to figure out what we have escaped from these people, look at this
nightmare :

"Until recently, European architects have either connived at the evisceration
of our cities or actively promoted it. Relying on the spurious rhetoric of Le
Corbusier and Walter Gropius, they endorsed the totalitarian projects of the
political elite, whose goal after the war was not to restore the cities but to
clear away the “slums.” By “slums,” they meant the harmonious classical
streets of affordable houses, seeded with local industries, corner shops,
schools, and places of worship, that had made it possible for real communities
to flourish in the center of our towns. High-rise blocks in open parkland, of
the kind that Le Corbusier proposed in his plan for the demolition of Paris
north of the Seine, would replace them. Meanwhile, all forms of employment and
enjoyment would move elsewhere. Public buildings would be expressly modernist,
with steel and concrete frames and curtain walls, but with no facades or
intelligible apertures, and no perceivable relation to their neighbors.
Important monuments from the past would remain, but often set in new and
aesthetically annihilating contexts, such as that provided for Saint Paul’s in
London."

If you want to learn about a real architect, you should start by Léon Krier :
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léon_Krier>

He says :

"“Humanity lives by trial and error, sometimes committing errors of a
monumental scale. Architectural and urbanist modernism belong—like
communism—to a class of errors from which there is little or nothing to learn
or gain. . . . Modernism’s fundamental error, however, is to propose itself as
a universal (i.e., unavoidable and necessary) phenomenon, legitimately
replacing and excluding traditional solutions.”"

The ugliness of US cities all has to do with the "modernist" rational approach
to architecture. Unlike the europeans brains, cities were not importable.

What is the point of living, sleeping and working in ugly places ? The damage
done in Europe was attenuated because of our patrimoine, aka the things that
our ancestors gave us, but we still have to fight against crooks like Starck.
They have success, they have recognition, they have money, and they are the
prominent icons of what we lack in our days of cultural relativism : taste.

Full article about Krier (a must read) : <http://www.city-
journal.org/2008/18_2_urb-leon_krier.html>

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menloparkbum
Philipe Starck is not a modernist. He's not even an architect! He's an
interior designer. His work has nothing to do with the likes of Le Corbusier
or Van der Rohe. Your timelines aren't even right. The modernists all died in
the late 1960s. Starck didn't become popular until the late 1980s. Calling him
a crook because he's associated with the modernist school of architecture
(which he isn't) is utterly beyond incorrect... it doesn't even make sense. In
fact, it so doesn't make sense, I feel like I'm the victim of a clever troll.
If that's the case - touche.

~~~
pg
He's not just an interior designer. He does design physical objects.

But you're right. Starck is about as far as you could get from totalitarian
city planning. Which incidentally would have been just as bad with or without
modernism. Speer's Berlin would have been at least as nasty as Le Corbusier's
Paris.

~~~
peakok
Starck designed several buildings wich are famous in France because of the
complaints of the people who have to work inside (one has a facade with no
windows at all, for "design" purpose). He designed many properties and led a
project wich theme was "One house for everybody" where he designed the
cheapest house possible so that "everyone could have one", packed in some
residences, and sponsored by the governement. You couldn't actually get more
totalitarian than this.

You don't hear a lot about this side of his work because most of them were
fiascos, a french TV (Canal +) even dedicated an investigation to the building
he designed, because of all the people complaining. I tought it was obvious
that Starck wasn't an architect stricto sensu, but "Architect", "Designer",
"Urbanist" and even "Modernist" are just labels, the only thing that matters
is what people actually do.

Ask the people who have to deal with his creations on a daily basis, or read
about these fiascos. This will be more interesting than playing with labels.

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jfornear
My favorite is
[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_dem...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html)

Photosynth is pretty amazing

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noodle
i think my favorite is theo jansen's beach creatures (and a pretty relevant
one to hackers, imo).

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/theo_jansen_creates_new_c...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/theo_jansen_creates_new_creatures.html)

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alaskamiller
Picking a list is like favoring a child.

