You know how it seems as if some lectures end way too quickly? Yeah well, me either, but if you feel like a little extracurricular mind-expansion, your options are not limited to the fine USM faculty, or schedule one narcotics.
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an annual conference, being held this week in southern California. Under the motto “ideas worth spreading” TED brings together a wide range of speakers from former President Bill Clinton, to LOST creator J.J. Abrams, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell, and a host of other less recognizable names who seek to challenge the way we think, perceive, and act in our everyday lives.
But the real charm of this “meeting of the minds” is that it’s all available online. The TED website features over 300 of these “TED talks” organized by theme, speaker, date, as well as such eclectic categories as “most jaw dropping, funniest, and most inspiring”.
The talks, which range in length from five minuets to a half-hour, are infectiously insightful, and cover such a broad range of topics, that there is bound to be something to pique anyone’s interest.
TED gives a platform for some of the worlds best and brightest to share their bold ideas and visions.
But this is no intellectual snore-fest, filled with dense jargon and inaccessible ideas that would only make sense to those in a specialized field of study. These are academic conferences for the everyman, with speakers carefully chosen for their ability to convey and idea in a fresh way.
Take for example, Sir Ken Robinson, a “creativity expert” who claims, over the course a dry-humor filled 20-minute speech, that the modern school system stifles creativity in children, an quality that he thinks to be “as important in education as literacy, [that] should be treated with the same status”.
If overhaul of the western world’s educational system is not your thing, then how about the break dancing performance of a lifetime? In his baggy red velour suit, self-taught dancer Kenichi Ebina mixes hip-hop, martial arts, modern dance, and magic in a performance that will leave you wondering if this man has the requisite number of bones.
Slam poet Rives starts off his six-minute speech with “Mockingbirds are badass” and ends with him wishing for the key to the city of Monterey, California, so that he might be able to “unlock the air” in order to “listen for what’s missing, and put it there”. What comes in between these seeming non-sequiturs is a dizzying barrage of colorful imagery and clever metaphor that is best experienced first-hand.
During this year’s TED2009 Conference, speaker and world’s richest nerd Bill Gates released mosquitoes on the crowd as a unique means of delivering his message on malaria. “There is no reason only poor people should be infected,” Gates said, as a swarm of non-infected mosquitoes buzzed around the auditorium.
TED offers something for everyone, and gives the every-man access to a caliber of discourse not easily found outside of the Ivy League. The effort by the people at TED to embrace technology, and make these talks available to the world is not one that should be ignored.
I encourage you to get on over to www.ted.com, and do a little extracurricular learning.
Thanks for reading,
Matt Dodge