This report shows that there are is a dip in happiness in during midlife. And this is true for people in countries all over the world. Could this be a contributing factor in mid-life crisis?

Mark Penn, a well-known pollster, speaks at Google headquarter about social trends. Penn is also the author of the book titled “MicroTrend”.

Mark Zuckerberg, a 23 year old as of this video in 2008, is the founder and CEO of Facebook. Lesley Stahl of “60 minutes” interviews him and gives us a brief history of the company. We also get a glimsp of Facebook head-quarters in Palo Alto, California where Mark sits at a modest desk along with his other software engineers.

Professor Dr. Marti Hearst lectures at University of California at Berkeley. This is the first lecture of the course “Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business” from School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS 141).

This video is about two hours. If you want to bypass the portion of the video that goes over the course logistic and skip directly to the part of the lecture on how the web works, skip to 30 minutes into the video. If you want to skip to how search engines work, skip to 76 minutes into the video.
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Thomas Friedman, New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist goes to India Bangalore’s call centers to talk to the young folks living there and how globalization is changing the way they live. Friedman does not only just visit the high tech centers; he also visits the villages of the working poor less than an hour’s ride away where there is often not even running water.

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NOVA presents the documentary “The Elegant Universe” that talks about string theory. Hosted by theoretical physicist Brian Greene.

Part 1:

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The documentary film “What the Bleep Do We Know” explores topics in quantum physics, the brain, and time-travel. It consisting of interviews with scientists that looks at our perceptions of realities in a whole new light. Below is the video found on YouTube broken into 16 parts. Or you can buy the DVD from Amazon via this link

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Here is an example of Microsoft’s surface computer. It is a coffee-table-like computer that allows multiple people to interact with the computer using multi-touch.

The surface computer can even recognize devices placed on it. These machines cost between $5,000 to $10,000.

This is the story of Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant with Asperger’s syndrome who can do complex math in his head and can learn languages at an extraordinary rate.

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Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk, gives an enlightening lecture at Google about our inner state that affects our happiness. He is the author of the book, See Happiness: A Guide to Life’s Most Important Skill.

Seth Godin gives the following talk at Google titled “All Marketers are Liars” which is also the title of his book.

Here is an entertaining and enlightening talk by Hans Rosling, professor of international health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. Lots of good data and animated graphs to give you a more accurate look at the world.

In this one hour video, Professor Barry Schwartz explains why too much choice is not always good. This is a paradoxical concept since western belief is that more choice means more freedom and happiness.

At about 45 minutes into this video, Schwartz comments on the effect of money on happiness. He says that …”What is true is that once you cross subsistence, whatever subsistence is in your society, additional increases in wealth have virtually no effect on well-being. There is a hugh steep curve going from zero to subsistence. But once you cross that line of subsistence, the curve flattens out. It is worth knowing, in case you have a choice between choosing x and making more money, almost certainly choosing x is what you should do.”

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Computer scientist Jeff Hawkins (who also pioneered PDA’s) tells us the theory of brains and how the brain work. The talk is not technical but covers the theory. There are a few chuckles here and there as well.

Very fascinating. Deborah Gordon, who studies ants, explains how ant colonies work. In particular, the idea of task allocation explains how each ant know what to despite having no central control from the queen..