The TED lecture series has become a cultural entity in the new world. I often spend time watching some of the Videos on YouTube (the primary way which the vast number of people who consume this information). The TED lectures take place at a number of sites, at specific times; and quite honestly, as far as the impact of these lectures, and presentations go, I can only imagine how important they are when taken in the aggregate.
Luckily there are some other sites which offer comparable information, insights, and perspectives about all things in our culture. Where TED is focused upon Technology, Entertainment, and Design (e.g. T.E.D.), there are sites which cover some other topics, some of which present aggregations of podcasts, others present series of videos, and all of them resent ideas (regardless of format).
If you watch any of the TED lectures, these are sites which you should check out:
The Do lectures
http://www.thedolectures.com
The DO lectures are all about inspiring you to do something…
Open Culture
A compendium of podcasts, videos, links and blog entries presenting a very broad coverage of culture
Brain Pickings
Brain Pickings is about curating interestingness — picking culture’s collective brain for tidbits of stuff that inspires, revolutionizes, or simply makes us think. It’s about innovation and authenticity and all those other things that have become fluff phrases but don’t have to be.
Cambridge Ideas
http://www.youtube.com/user/CambridgeUniversity
Check out the Cambridge Ideas series, a collection of short films in which top researchers reveal some of their latest findings and discuss subjects ranging from energy to disappearing languages, and policing the streets to the future of robotics.
