Expose yourself to hours of great ideas

So, do you know TED?

Not some dude named Ted; it stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design.

Let me quote them on what it’s about:

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free.

As I write this there are 140 talks available to stream, embed, download for watching, and download for iPod watching. Most of the talks also have an audio only version you could grab for listening.

I’ve probably watched half of these, and I have the rest downloaded and queued up for times when I need a short break, or a short blast of interesting ideas.

They also have a blog, which is worth following just for the information on release of new talks.

Here’s a sample of one of the early talks. This is Daniel Dennett“Dan Dennett is our best current philosopher. He is the next Bertrand Russell. Unlike traditional philosophers, Dan is a student of neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and psychology. He’s redefining and reforming the role of the philosopher. Of course, Dan doesn’t understand my society-of-mind theory, but nobody’s perfect.”— Marvin Minsky, talking about dangerous memes, from 2002.

The full list of talks, which you can filter by theme, and sort in a number of ways, is here. Check it out. Even if Dennett isn’t for you, there will be something that is. The range of topics is impressive, to say the least.