James Crabtree
At the end, TED seems different
The motto of the TED conference, where I’ve spent the last few days, is “ideas worth spreading.” It was a mixed bag: sometimes brilliant, certainly eclectic, stylish, but aesthetically intellectual rather than heavyweight. I think that was the intention, too. The final session today combined speeches from a Benedictine monk, an orchestra conductor, a management theorist and art curator Daniel Birnbaum. If that sounds like the type of mix that might be tricky to get your head round, so it was — a mix of unusual ideas and sometimes unsatisfying lack of synthesis that seems to be what TED is aiming for; flashes of the future, not frameworks. That said it was certainly the most varied, most stimulating and most professionally produced conference I can remember.
The format remains counter-intuitive. In an era in which many fashionable ideas gatherings lean towards the “un-conference” format, and spout platitudes about the “group formerly known as the audience”, this was clinically scripted stuff. One opportunity for questions (largely taken up by audience praise for the conference itself), no audience interaction, no over-running of speeches, no walking into the auditorium during speeches, no laptops, and no phones. In the end this seemed a strength – a welcome strain of authoritarianism, which even the super-liberated TEDsters seemed to enjoy.
So what were the ideas? Paul Romer I mentioned yesterday; a genuinely arresting and divisive thought. Of the rest, the 5 that most caught my eye were:
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James Crabtree
At the end, TED seems different
The moto of the TED conference, where i’ve spent the last few days, is “ideas worth spreading.” It was a mixed bag: sometimes brilliant, certainly eclectic, stylish, but aesthetically intellectual rather than heavyweight. I think that was the intention, too. The final session today combined speeches from a benedictine monk, an orchestra conductor, a management theorist and art curator Daniel Birnbaum. If that sounds like the type of mix that might be tricky to get your head round, so it was — a mix of unusual ideas andsometimes unsatisfying lack of synthesis that seems to be what TED is aiming for; flashes of the future, not frameworks. That said it was certainly the most varied, most stimulating and most professionally produced conference i can remember.
The format remains counter-intuitive. In an era in which many fashionable ideas gatherings lean towards the “un-conference” format, and spout platitudes about the “group formerly known as the audience”, this was clinically scripted stuff. One opportunity for questions (largely taken up by audience praise for the conference itself), no audience interaction, no over-running of speeches, no walking into the auditorium during speeches, no laptops, and no phones. In the end this seemed a strength – a welcome strain of authoritarianism, which even the super-liberated TEDsters seemed to enjoy.
So what were the ideas? Paul Romer I mentioned yesterday; a genuinely arresting and divisive thought. Of the rest, the 5 that most caught my eye were:
Read more »
Brian Semple
Chris Anderson: a "professional exaggerator"?
Chris Anderson knows a thing or two about self-promotion. His first book, The Long Tail, caused a stir three years ago in its suggestion that the internet was creating a golden age for niche retailers. His latest work, Free: the Future of a Radical Price (which like The Long Tail began as a Wired article and was developed on Anderson’s blog) makes an equally sweeping claim – to plug the gap in economic thought that arises from the disappearance of prices.
However, in a review in the new August edition of Prospect, William Davies suggests that the answers Anderson provides to this problem are really little more than an extension of already existing economic models, such as Moore’s law (which predicted in 1965 that the cost of computer processing would halve every two years). Davies also crticises Anderson for being enthralled to Google, Free sometimes feeling “less like a glimpse of the future than a reverential analysis of a business model dreamt up 15 years ago”.
Still, Davies acknowledges that Anderson does have a point, if also a repetitive and slightly disingenuous way of making it. What does Free mean for the Rupert Murdochs of this world? Let us know your thoughts below.
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