This TED Talk features action and hardware architect Elizabeth Streb, recorded live at TED

2018. This talk is highly visual. Watch it now on TED.com. Come on. Hasn't everyone here

jumped offline? So, why haven't humans flown yet?

I've been obsessed with learning to fly my whole life.

I grew up a feral, adopted child on the northern shore of Lake Ontario,

following my Dricklayer, fishermen, father around.

I was always fascinated by things that moved,

catching small animals, holding them in my hands,

feeling the magic of their movement.

Playing with fire, thrilled and terrified

at its unrelenting force,

accidentally burning my father's barn down,

just once.

That was my first brush with real danger, the fire and my father.

When I was about eight or nine years old, I caught a fly in a mason jar.

Studying that fly, I thought, wow, it's changing directions in midair with acute angles.

And it's going so fast, it's a blur.

Why can't we do that?

Can we?

Everywhere I looked, there were things moving.

And these things moved with their very own causal rhythms,

their very own mechanistic anatomies. It was clear to me and to Newton

...