Top 10 TEDTalks of all time

http://www.ted.com/talks/top10

by rms • 18 years ago

53 26 18 years ago

andr• 18 years ago

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.

Hexstream• 18 years ago

Can't wait to see your list!

rms4• 18 years ago

It's the top 10 videos by pageviews.

pchristensen• 18 years ago

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.

dreish• 18 years ago

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.

petervidani• 18 years ago

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.

dcurtis• 18 years ago

Yeah, his is one of my favorites too: "ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble, ramble... and that is why I design toothbrushes."

peakok3• 18 years ago

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

asdflkj• 18 years ago

That's just, like, your opinion, dude. And the ferocity with which you put it forth, in absence of any argument to support it, only emphasizes that.

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

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

I think New York is pretty awesome. It's not ugly, it's intensely functional. With the density of services, a life can be lived on any given street. You can find a town's worth of people that share any given common interest. Despite being immense, it feels cozy and organic in a way that DC does not. It has thriving art and theatre scenes and hundreds of subcultures. Does any European city come close to its beauty? I'm asking honestly here, not rhetorically. New York is the most awesome city I've ever seen, but I've not traveled much.

menloparkbum• 18 years ago

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.

alaskamiller• 18 years ago

Picking a list is like favoring a child.

jfornear• 18 years ago

My favorite is http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_dem...

Photosynth is pretty amazing

rms4• 18 years ago

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

swombat2• 18 years ago

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.

rms4• 18 years ago

Which ones?

nazgulnarsil• 18 years ago

DMT, hard to make.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine

swombat2• 18 years ago

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.

herdrick2• 18 years ago

> no brain damage

Doubtful.

rms4• 18 years ago

No, it's really not.

noodle• 18 years ago

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...

mrduncan• 18 years ago

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everyth... - Certainly one of the most enthusiastic and entertaining talks I've seen on TED

Top 10 TEDTalks of all time

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