Top 10 TED Talks about tech

February 07, 2017

We all love watching TED Talks. These interesting and often inspiring videos on technology, entertainment and design can be endlessly entertaining. And with over 2 400 TED talks now available online we are definitely spoilt for choice!

 

No one knows what the most remarkable tech innovation of 2017 is going to be yet. So, to kick off the year, we thought we’d share with you some of our favourite TED Talks about great innovations in technology and some of the future possibilities that are just around the corner.

 

1. Mick Mountz: What happens inside those massive warehouses?

In this fascinating talk, Mick Mountz explains how robots are turning warehouses into massively parallel processing engines. This video brilliantly visualises how IoT enabled interconnected devices can assist in solving problems.

 

 

2. Raffaello D’Andrea: The astounding athletic power of quadcopters

In a series of demonstrations, Raffaello D’Andrea shows the incredible technical sophistication of flying quadcopters and how they can ‘think like athletes’ to solve physical problems.

 

 

3. Stephen Petranek: Your kids might live on Mars. Here’s how they’ll survive.

Ever dreamed of living on Mars? Think it seems impossible? Stephen Petranek believes that people could be colonising Mars within the next 20 years.

 

 

4. Jamie Bartlett: How the mysterious dark net is going mainstream

Ever wondered about what goes on in the mysterious ‘dark net’? Jamie Bartlett gives some insight into the world of the dark net and why you might be visiting it sooner than you think.

 

 

5. Dan Bricklin: Meet the inventor of the electronic spreadsheet

Meet the inventor of the spreadsheet. This video is a great history of the development of the excel spreadsheets we use and take for granted every day, by the inventor himself.

 

 

6. George Tulevski: The next step in nanotechnology

George Tulevski researches the unseen and untapped world of nanomaterials. Now he asks if nanomaterials could hold the secret to the next generation of computing?

 

 

7. Erik Hersman: How texting helped Kenyans survive crisis

In 2009, Erik Hersman presented the insipring story of the Ushahidi platform that was used to help Kenyans report and track violence via cell phone texts following the 2008 elections.

 

 

If you want to learn more about Erik’s work you can also watch his talk from Net Prophet 2016.

 

8. Todd Humphreys: How to fool a GPS

Todd Humphreys envisions the potential next leap in technology that millimetre-accurate GPS will have in terms of IoT technology for tracking all your devices (or all your possessions) and augmented reality applications. This talk is from 2012, think about how much closer we are to these technologies now, just five years later.

 

 

9. Margaret Gould Stewart: How giant websites design for you (and a billion others, too)

Facebook’s ‘like’ and ‘share’ buttons are seen 22 billion times a day, making them some of the most-viewed design elements ever created. Margaret Gould Stewart reminds us of the importance of good design for digital experiences.

 

 

10. Neha Narula: The future of money

If you’re fascinated by the potential of new cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, then this talk is for you.

 

 

Michael Jordaan and Marcus Swanepoel went deeper into what this means for South Africa during their discussion at Net Prophet 2016.

 

BONUS

11. James Veitch: The agony of trying to unsubscribe

A little reminder from comedian James Veitch, that when life gets frustrating remember to ‘find the game.’

 

 

If you want to see even more TED Talks take a look at TED’s playlist of their most popular talks of all time.