Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demo SixthSense

More inspiring videos from the TED conferences. Dreams of seamless information at your fingertips comes a step closer with this MIT research which does away with today's physical interfaces. Using gestures and the environment around us, the portable projection device gives users the freedom to interact with the physical objects that surrounds us. Impressive stuff.

TEDGlobal 2009 : Thursday

More thought provoking talks from the live video streams of TEDGlobal in Oxford yesterday courtesy of Wieden & Kennedy. The TED website has become such a global phenomenon of spreading ideas that they have now added a translator covering up to 40 different languages. With Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Arabic being the most popular.

Paul Romer, a new-growth economist, suggests building more cities to reduce the human footprint. His argument is that cities are higher concentrations human populations. Currently, humans populate 3% of the world's arable land. Any extra billion people would only take up another 1% if housed in cities. Hong Kong is a perfect model for a successful economy as a special administrative region which should be copied in places such as Guantanamo Bay.

Michael Pritchard, an inventor, has created a new syringe whose plunger breaks after use to prevent infection from spreading through reuse. Apparently, 64% of all injections in India were considered unsafe because of badly recycled syringes. Another notable invention is his new water bottle called the LifeSaver, that can filter elements as small as 25nm. The Polio virus is about 50nm. The global cost to provide the world with clean drinkable water is $20bn. The UK alone spends $12bn on foreign aid.

Rob Hopkins of transitionnetwork.org, an open source network of ideas. He champions resilience as being more important than sustainability. The globalisation of the world has concentrated our dependence on a few elements making us very vulnerable to any sudden changes in climate or economy. He suggest a spread of this risk through microeconomics.

Tim Brown of IDEO wants a return of big design which should inclusive of people by asking the right questions.

Misha Glenny, an BBC journalist says one industry bucking the trend of the credit crunch is organised crime, which accounting for 16% of the world's GDP.

Loretta Napoleoni, a Macroeconomist, says organised crime launders $1.25 trillion globally, double that of the UK GDP. She says that there is no escaping our relationship with crime which has permeated our society and economy.

The moving story of Emmanuel Jal, from a war child soldier to Hip Hop artist.

Ross Lovegrove, an Industrial Designer, references nature to create minimally efficient & organic design. The new design discipline of Bio-mimicry.

Nick Veasey's amazing X-Ray photography shows the hidden beauty of everyday objects from clothing to Jumbo Jets, the later of which took 2 painstaking months to complete.

Eric Giler, of MIT: 40 billion disposable batteries are made every year to satisfy our need for mobile energy. WiTricity hopes to change this with wireless power using Resonance Energy Transfer.

Parag Khanna, a geopoliticalist: a 100 new countries have been formed since the end of WW2. Contrary to current beliefs, the world is actually fragmenting due to artificial borders collapsing. But he suggest that conflict can be overcome with shared cross-border infrastucture.

TEDGlobal 2009: Wednesday

Phew! Just got back from the live streaming event in East London hosted by the very nice people of Wieden & Kennedy showing the talks of the unsung heroes of forward thinkers in this world. Well, where do we start?

Jonathan Zittrain, a specialist in internet law, spoke of his belief in the humanity shown in the self-regulation people used on the internet where collective groups have organised themselves to democratise content, citing Wikipedia, amongst other sites.

Evgeny Morozov, an internet scientist, who counters that for every democratic action the internet provides, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Examples of draconian governments learning the transition of censorship to propaganda is much more constructive in appeasing the populace.

Aza Raskin, an interface designer for Mozilla, on a lateral solution to browser usage with Ubiquity, a language based web tool which allows the user to command the browser to perform tasks simply by typing in commands in any language.

An inspiring and entertaining talk from Rory Sutherland, of adverting giant Ogilvy, on the importance of unquantifiable perceived value versus material wealth.

Cary Fowler, a biodiversity archivist, on the importance of preserving all varieties of life so that we may learn what they can teach us, regardless of how trivial they may seem at the current time.

Janine Benyus, a science writer, reminds us that humans aren't the first creators on this planet, but were predated by nature's grand designs which have recently been exploited for various applications, from the shape of a Kingfisher's dive for the ergonomics of a high speed train, to the mimicking of a shark's skin to keep medical clothing bacteria free.

Elaine Morgan, an octogenarian scientist and writer of 'The Aquatic Ape', reminds us of our obligation to explore other avenues of thought and to not accept current scientific beliefs as set in stone, with her compelling theories that humans evolved from a watery environment.

These fascinating subjects were just a glimpse into what was discussed today.

TED: Technology, Entertainment, Design

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

Look through some of the videos on the site. There are some very inspiring talks and demonstrations.