TED2009 Part III - Day 2 - See, Understand, Invent - and Ignore?

The TED Day Two theme was See, Understand and Invent. I would like to say that it was amazing, uplifting, incredible and inspirational. And it was.

But what I would also like to say is that after a day of relentless optimism, of the glass half-full being continually topped up, of only about 2 out of 5 presentations not getting a standing ovation, my "sceptical streak" had gone into overload. Oh for more people to say that actually all is not perfect in this new new world, more people to stop Panglossing over the unpleasant bits of the TechnoUtopia we are theoretically heading for. (Heck, just someone to address the issues of the financial meltdown going on would be nice....)

Anyway, enough of that negativity, before my karma runs me over

Here are the talks that stood out for me, the Anti-Pangloss element if you like:

(i) Elizabeth Gilbert, a writer of 20 years who has had her first big "hit", talking about dealing with the highly probable reality that everything from now on is a downhill road, she won't in all probability hit the heights again

(ii) Louise Fresco, who graphically showed that the future of the world has to be in mass produced sliced bread and not hand made organic homebaked for rich Western foodies. (Peasant Rusticness today is only affordable in rich countries)

(iii) Jacek Utko who showed how good design, used in conjunction with sound business principles, actually has been increasing the circulation of print newspapers in Eastern Europe.

(iv) Catherine Mohr & Robert Full - Mo'robotics, covered over here in detail:

(v) Margaret Wertheim - Crocheting your way to complex topology and building a woolly coral reef on the way (see picture above - and those are lifesize in reality)

(vi) Shai Agassi - not fluffy green, but hard arsed business green to solve The Car Problem - if you have electric cars, you need a battery distribution network

(vii) A guy whose name I didn't catch, putting datachips into sockets so that power can be managed to prevent circuits overloading and fires starting - big picture is using sensors to put metadata into dumb networks

A (surprisingly) interesting session was one run by WalMart on the Future of Retailing, mainly because it showed me that the economics of retailing are actually moving towards VRM style systems. More on this in another post.