Culture

TED2009: The Great Unveiling

by Jordan Yerman | February 4, 2009 at 01:18 pm

180 views | 15 Recommendations | 3 comments

Ted2009 begins today, and the theme is "The Great Unveiling". The TED Talks (Technology, Entertainment and Design) bring the movers and shakers from the creative and scientific spheres to share ideas via quick lectures and speeches.

Here's the lineup: Bill Gates opened the series late this morning (PST), which will feature economists, painters, oceanographers, fine artists, political scientists, musicians, and other luminaries of their respective fields.

Over four days, the series is broken into the following themes:
Reboot
Reframe
Reconnect
See
Understand
Invent
Dream
Discover
Grow
Dare
Predict
Engage

If you're in LA and will be attending some of these, I'm A) consumed with jealousy, and B) hoping you'll tell us all about it. Thursday afternoon's Invent segment would be my first choice, as it features Daniel Libeskind (architect) and Catherine Mohr (roboticist).

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

TED is an excellent chance to see lectures that one could not normally ever get a ticket to, since, once the conference ends, the individual talks are released for free over the Internet. My recent favorites (from years past) are Amy Tan, John Hodgeman, and Gever Tully, whose lecture focused on five dangerous things you should let your child do.

It’ll be interesting to contrast the atmosphere of the five day affair (which officially starts tomorrow, though there are numerous pre-show shindigs to attend today) with reports from Davos, which by all accounts was a somewhat somber affair.

The talks are generally shorter than 20 minutes in length.

An anthropologist will opine on human skin. A Swedish singer and gold-medal-winning swimmer who lives "independently and elegantly" with no arms and just one full leg will share thoughts on determination and adaptation.

Here's a list of TED speakers from recent years: you can get videos fo their speeches via the site, or via iTunes (they're filed as podcasts).

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Paschen

at 19:26 on February 4th, 2009

I would not have minded being able to go there.

Barry Artiste

at 21:31 on February 4th, 2009

Oh great more crap to update to my computer that will never work, if they decide to make it computer software.

widgetsandstone

at 05:34 on February 5th, 2009

One of the super-short presenters at this year's TED is Darius Weems, a young man who suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Around the world, one in every three thousand five hundred boys is born in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. By age 12, they are confined to a wheelchair (if they can afford one). By age 30, the mortality rate is 100%. In fact, DMD is the leading genetic killer of children worldwide.

Researchers, however, say that promising advances have been made that could mitigate or cure the disease. Yet like most disease research it suffers from lack of awareness and funding. To help with both, a group of young men traveled with their friend Darius Weems — who is 15 and confined to a wheelchair —across country in an effort to get MTV to pimp Darius' chair and so gain attention for a DMD research foundation. This ended up as a documentary titled "Darius Goes West."

The special edition "Darius Goes West" DVD will be included in the gift bag.

widgetsandstone has contributed a photo to this story.