Innovation through Open Standards
David Lindquist, CTO, IBM Cloud & Smarter Infrastructure discusses how the adoption of open standards helps customers avoid vendor lock-in and fosters innovation in their businesses.
A 40-year plan for energy
In this intimate talk filmed at TED’s offices, energy innovator Amory Lovins shows how to get the US off oil and coal by 2050, $5 trillion cheaper, with no Act of Congress, led by business for profit. The key is integrating all four energy-using sectors—and four kinds of innovation.
Why Bitcoin Is Here To Stay
Don’t bet on the decentralized currency Bitcoin as a retirement investment, says Mercatus Center policy analyst Jerry Brito, but go long on it as the payment system of the future. Reason’s Nick Gillespie talks with Brito, the editor of the new anthology Copyright Unbalanced, about Bitcoin bubbles and why governments are so afraid of this virtual payment system.
Plastic Bottles go Solar in Philippines
In the Philippines’ urban slums, families are unable to afford electricity and often have no access to the grid anyway. But Filipino actor Illac Diaz is looking to change that. With his organization My Shelter Foundation, he’s come up with an innovative idea: turning empty plastic bottles into lamps.
Volvo takes safety to pedestrians with exterior airbags
Swedish car-maker Volvo has turned its attention to pedestrians by installing the first airbags for those outside the car. The new technology was first unveiled at last year’s Geneva Motor Show but has been integrated into the Volvo V40 model, now on sale in a number of countries.
Macroscopic Invisibility Cloak for Visible Light
Invisibility cloaks, a subject that usually occurs in science fiction and myths, have attracted wide interest recently because of their possible realization. The biggest challenge to true invisibility is known to be the cloaking of a macroscopic object in the broad range of wavelengths visible to the human eye.
Here, the scientists from MIT’s mechanical engineering department experimentally solve this problem by incorporating the principle of transformation optics into a conventional optical lens fabrication with low-cost materials and simple manufacturing techniques.
A transparent cloak made of two pieces of calcite is created. This cloak is able to conceal a macroscopic object with a maximum height of 2 mm, larger than 3500 free-space-wavelength, inside a transparent liquid environment. Its working bandwidth encompassing red, green, and blue light is also demonstrated.
Inside One of the World’s Oldest Medical Books
Tedmed curator Jay Walker shows off his collection of some of the world’s oldest medical books and talks about what they can teach us about innovation.
LA-based Daqri is at the forefront of the Augmented Reality revolution
Brian Mullins, Founder & CEO of Daqri and Co-Founder and Marketing/ PR guru, Gaia Dempsey, describe the process, history and future of Augmented Reality and show us their latest innovations.
Tony Blair Is Going Green. Not Just Dollar Green, But Green Green
The former British prime minister teams up with venture capitalist Vinod Khosla on a carbon capture project in California. The new project is reportedly cool, funky and fashionable. Every self-respecting ex-politician is throwing his or her hat into the ring to seriously involved in saving the planet. Even former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has been part of this eco-political movement. And that says a lot about the great cause.
Google Doesn’t Know How to Spend $50 Billion, Says PayPal Co-Founder
Conference panels are often sedate, friendly affairs. But that wasn’t the case when Google chairman Eric Schmidt went up against Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder, investor and well-known libertarian gadfly.
The debate at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen Monday night tackled the question of whether technology has improved our lives over the past 30 years. Schmidt argued that it had; Thiel claimed progress had stagnated because tech has largely retreated from the real world into a virtual one.
“Google also has $50 billion in cash,” Thiel added. “It has no idea how to invest that money in technology effectively … if we’re living in an accelerating technological world, and you have zero percent interest rates, you should be able to invest all of your money in things that will return it many times over. The fact is you’re out of ideas.”
Schmidt countered that the company had no deficit of business models, but instead suffered from real-world constraints. “What you discover in running these companies is that there are limits that are not cash,” he said. “There are limits of recruiting, limits of real estate, regulatory limits.”
“Then the intellectually honest thing to do would be to say that Google is no longer a technology company,” shot back Thiel. “It’s basically a search engine developed a decade ago … That’s why all these companies are building up hordes of cash, because they don’t know what to do with it, but they don’t want to admit they’re no longer tech companies.”
