ideas

Erlang co-creator Joe Armstrong's Code BEAM SF 2018 keynote revisits good ideas from the history of computing that were dropped, and asks which should be revived. It also touches on Erlang and Elixir.

Sandy Pentland of MIT presents his book on social physics, which uses big-data studies of how people interact to explain how ideas spread. He describes findings on collective intelligence and social influence.

Steven Johnson's TED talk argues that good ideas come from connected, slow-building hunches and liquid networks, from London coffee houses to Darwin to the modern web, rather than lone Eureka moments.

Alan Kay's TED talk on teaching ideas, in which he argues the world is not what it seems and shows children learning through programming and building their own lessons with Etoys/Squeak.

Lex Fridman interviews mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein about science, mathematics, and society. The conversation ranges across physics, academia, AI and job displacement.

Dr. Russell Barkley gives a nearly three-hour lecture of essential ideas about ADHD for parents, covering what ADHD is, its effects on executive function, motivation and emotion, and how it affects children.

The first clip from Russell Barkley's 30 Essential Ideas about ADHD series, introducing ADHD as a chronic developmental disability. It is part of a lecture series on the disorder by a leading ADHD researcher.

Sean Carroll introduces his video series on the biggest ideas in physics, such as symmetry, space and matter, as informal discussions with follow-up Q&A videos. This is the short opening video of the series.

An ICFP 2015 keynote on the history of Standard ML, covering its ideas, principles and culture. It traces ML from Strachey, Landin and Milner through SML's development and its interplay with OCaml.

A short clip from The Simpsons episode "Hurricane Neddy" containing the line "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."

Dr. Russell Barkley's roughly three-hour lecture on ADHD for parents of affected children. It explains what ADHD is and how the ADHD brain differs.

Jonathan Blow's first talk on designing a new programming language for games, which became Jai. He explains the problems with C++ and why Go, Rust and D do not fit game development.

Tom Wildenhain's guest lecture for CMU's Esoteric Programming Languages course shows that PowerPoint transitions and slides are Turing complete without macros, building up to a mind-bending fractal ending.

David Spiegelhalter, Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, uses statistics to weigh everyday risks such as bacon sandwiches and cycling. The six-minute piece introduces micromorts as a way to compare the risk of dying.

James Houston's entry to Radiohead's Nude remix contest, performing the 6/8, 63bpm song on obsolete hardware such as hard drives, a dot matrix printer, a scanner and a ZX Spectrum.

An excerpt from Russell Barkley's lecture on ADHD, focusing on inhibition, impulsivity and emotional regulation. It explains ADHD as a problem of response inhibition and emotional impulsivity.

A short video telling how Xerox PARC invented the graphical user interface and how Steve Jobs's 1979 visit influenced Apple's Lisa.

Paul Graham's keynote at PyCon 2012, in which he talks about startup ideas and what kinds of companies are likely to matter in the future. He discusses ideas such as a better email client and a search engine for hackers, and argues for looking back at the present from the future.

Dan Olson of Folding Ideas spends months in the virtual world Decentraland and delivers a long critique of the metaverse, NFTs and DAOs, and why virtual worlds fail as places.

Folding Ideas' long essay on why playing poorly in World of Warcraft feels rude. It traces how raiding culture shifted from relaxed fun to optimization, theorycrafting and wikis.

A full upload of Alan Kay's 1987 talk, with demos of several Smalltalk-era software systems and ideas about visual, kinesthetic and symbolic reasoning. It includes a Smalltalk program written by a 12-year-old and footage of the Rand tablet.

A six-minute excerpt from Steve Jobs' 1995 Lost Interview on why a great idea does not automatically become a great product. He says ideas change substantially once you actually build them.

Dan Olson's 76-minute essay on flat earth belief, built around a hike to a lake to test earth's curvature. It examines the community, how YouTube promoted it, and how it connects to wider conspiracy thinking and QAnon.

Dan Olson of Folding Ideas investigates the Mikkelsen Twins and the ghostwritten-audiobook passive-income course industry, even playing along with the scheme. It is a long video essay on get-rich-quick publishing grifts.

Dan Olson's long Folding Ideas video on the GameStop meme stock phenomenon, its online community and the conspiracy thinking around it. It runs over two hours.

Dan Olson of Folding Ideas critiques Fortnite's monetization, arguing it uses manufactured discontent, such as shop design and skins, to push spending. The video dissects the psychological techniques behind the game's business model.

Folding Ideas examines weird, algorithm-gamed children's content on YouTube, from automated toddler videos and educational spam to exploitative prank channels. It looks at how autoplay and recommendation systems reward this material.

Part two of Alan Kay's Stanford Startup School lecture on inventing the future. He draws on his time at Xerox PARC and elsewhere to discuss how to think about new technology and what makes ideas useful.

Gerald Jay Sussman speaks at Dan Friedman's 60th birthday celebration about how programming helps formulate and clarify ideas. He argues that ambiguous mathematical notation hinders understanding.

CGP Grey explains that postal codes are routing instructions for mail rather than geographic regions. He looks at the quirks and problems this causes.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz argues in this TED talk that abundant choice makes people more paralyzed and dissatisfied rather than freer and happier.

Terry Moore's three-minute TED talk showing a better way to tie shoes, replacing the common granny knot with a square knot so laces stay tied.

Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs, shares stories from messy real-world jobs in this TED talk. He argues that hard work has been unjustly degraded in society.

Sir Ken Robinson argues, with humor and stories such as that of choreographer Gillian Lynne, that education systems undermine creativity and should be changed. It is one of the most viewed TED talks.

Thai farmer Jon Jandai talks about leaving Bangkok to farm and build his own house, arguing that food, shelter, clothing and medicine are easy to provide and that modern life is made needlessly complicated. He founded the Pun Pun Center for Self-reliance.

Clifford Stoll's energetic TED talk, a wandering mix of anecdotes, a science experiment and thoughts on curiosity, education and technology. He is the author of The Cuckoo's Egg.

Cindy Gallop gives a 4-minute TED2009 talk arguing hardcore pornography has distorted how young men think about sex. She introduces her website MakeLoveNotPorn as a response.

Researcher Kamal Meattle describes how an arrangement of three common houseplants placed in specific spots can measurably clean the air in a home or office. It is a short TED talk based on his work in a plant-filled building.

CGP Grey explains the mess of Daylight Saving Time, including its dubious energy savings and the odd cases like Arizona that opt out. It is a short, simple explainer.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks at Google about his book Antifragile, on systems that gain from disorder and volatility. It draws on themes from his earlier books.