TEDXSeattle

Ron Krabill teaches media and cultural studies and is affiliated with the Department of Communication and the African Studies Program at the University of Washington. He is currently the Project Director of “My World Cup,” a transnational community media project aimed at producing and disseminating short media pieces made by South African youth during the hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. He is also a recipient of the 2006 Distinguished Teaching Award. Read the rest of this entry »

David Edelstein is the Director of the Grameen Technology Center (GTC) and the Vice President of Technology Programs at Grameen Foundation, an organization that provides the world’s poorest people with collateral-free banking services. Fiona Lee is the Africa Project Manager at Google. The two discussed how mobile technology can aid the poor by providing access to vital information and financial resources. Read the rest of this entry »

When you hear “police officer,” “nurse,” or “computer scientist,” what images comes to mind? Sapna Cheryan wants to challenge your assumption. Her research as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington focuses on how stereotypes influence people’s behavior and decisions, particularly in relation to membership in social groups.

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Ignacio Mas is Deputy Director in Financial Services for the Poor at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His impressive background includes degrees from Harvard and MIT and high-level positions at CGAP, interTouch (an NTT-DoCoMo Group Company), Vodafone Group, and  Intel Capital–Intel Corp’s venture capital arm.

Ignacio Mas began his talk with a statement we’re probably not used to equating with survival: Everyone needs a safe place to save. By asking “How many of you have a bank account?”, he illustrated to TEDxSeattle attendees an overlooked fact—we have the luxury of an affiliation with a financial institution, in contrast to the more than 3 billion who don’t have access to a basic bank. Read the rest of this entry »

Revised 17 April

Using word pictures like “the pig’s blood of technology,” award-winning science fiction author Greg Bear urged the TEDxSeattle audience to be mindful of our increasingly public and digitally-archived lives. “The web that knows who you are … do you want it to?” he asked.

Bear’s works include Mariposa, Quantico, City At The End Of Time, Eon, Blood Music, The Forge of God, and Darwin’s Radio. He often tackles issues pertaining to contemporary society in his work, and the issue he focused on today is privacy.

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