TED Talks about the internet and the future of web technologies

TED is a great source of inspiration on all things known to man. From how geckos stick to glass to global *yawn* warming you can spend hours watching these short talks. Even when the subject matter is something you’d usually walk right past, the speakers knowledge on the subject is usually so good you just have to give it a gander.

In order to save your little finger getting sore, we’ve done the hard work for you and highlighted some of the best ‘web related’ talks we could find:

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Stefana Broadbent: How the Internet enables intimacy
We worry that IM, texting, Facebook are spoiling human intimacy, but Stefana Broadbent’s research shows how communication tech is capable of cultivating deeper relationships, bringing love across barriers like distance and workplace rules.

Kevin Kelly: The next 5,000 days of the web
At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?

Jonathan Harris: Collecting stories
At the EG conference in December 2007, artist Jonathan Harris discusses his latest projects, which involve collecting stories: his own, strangers’, and stories collected from the Internet, including his amazing “We Feel Fine.”

Tim Berners-Lee: The next Web
20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.

Gary Flake: Is Pivot a turning point for web exploration?
Gary Flake demos Pivot, a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online. Built on breakthrough Seadragon technology, it enables spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of patterns and links invisible in standard web browsing.

Steven Johnson: The Web as a city
Outside.in’s Steven Johnson says the Web is like a city: built by many people, completely controlled by no one, intricately interconnected and yet functioning as many independent parts. While disaster strikes in one place, elsewhere, life goes on.

Peter Hirshberg: TV and the web
In this absorbing look at emerging media and tech history, Peter Hirshberg shares some crucial lessons from Silicon Valley and explains why the web is so much more than “better TV.”

Jeff Bezos: The next web innovation
The dot-com boom and bust is often compared to the Gold Rush. But Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos says it’s more like the early days of the electric industry.

Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good
We’re at a unique moment in history, says UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: we can use today’s interconnectedness to develop our shared global ethic — and work together to confront the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy.

Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide
At TED2009, Tim Berners-Lee called for “raw data now” — for governments, scientists and institutions to make their data openly available on the web. At TED University in 2010, he shows a few of the interesting results when the data gets linked up.

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For more TED Talk goodness visit the main site:www.ted.com