这个年会是本蝎认为最不boring的会议。抛砖引玉。今年的TED现在正在long beach进行。
GO TO WWW.TED.COM you won't regret it .
you will know why poeple pay $6000 to go there (your money doesn't gurantee yu a seat. Likely, one will be put on waiting list if he/she is a new comer).
转自旧金山纪事报
TED conference begins in Monterey
Alan T. Saracevic, Chronicle Business Editor
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference is often described as a place where you go to meet people who are much smarter than you. It's also not a bad place to meet people who are much richer than you, much more successful and generally much better known.
Indeed, the corridors of the Portola Plaza Hotel at Monterey Bay, along with the Marriott across the street, were crawling with power brokers and pop culture icons, artists and altruists for the four-day conference, running Wednesday through Saturday.
The mix of attendees speaks largely to the conference's evolution over the years, growing from a fairly geeky tech confab into a global think fest with the mandate of solving the world's problems.
And if this group can't get things started in the right direction, we're not sure who could. There's Google co-founder Larry Page, checking e-mail on his handheld as he strolls across the street. There's Bart Simpson's real dad, Matt Groening, hanging out with a group of pals in the lobby. Not far away, noted tech thinker Esther Dyson chats up eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. And let's not forget San Francisco author Amy Tan, waiting down the hall for one of the many byzantine registration functions required at TED.
They're all here, but it's not the kind of place to come for celebrity watching. Security is tight as a drum, largely because of the status of said clientele and the multithousand-dollar price tag to attend. Everyone has to wear these honking huge badges with their pictures, names, etc., written in 80-point type. This, of course, creates the time-honored, weird conference experience of looking at everyone's chest as they walk by in order to see who they are, rather than offering up the usual half-smile and nod.
You get the picture. Big Shots. Big Thoughts. Big Ideas. All set in bucolic Monterey, where a pack a lazy harbor seals are lolling on the beach about 300 yards away.
Who are we?
Who are we? That was the question that kicked things off Wednesday morning. (The theme of the show is "The Big Questions.")
Here's the quick answer: We're walking, talking, big-brained apes that evolved from common ancestors like gorillas and chimpanzees. We've been around for millions of years. And it's unclear how much longer we'll be around.
More precisely, that was the quick answer offered by world-famous paleoanthropologist Louise Leakey in her talk to the crowd intended to spell out where we stand as a species.
She went on to spell out our predicament in more detail. "We're certainly a polluting, wasteful, aggressive species, with a few nice things thrown in perhaps," said Leakey, whose childhood was spent digging up human fossils with her equally famous parents in East Africa. "We have reached extraordinary numbers on this planet. We've only been around 200,000 years as a species, yet we've reached 6.5 billion in population. We have to control our numbers, because we can't hold it together (at this rate).
"We have the communications skills to make the right decisions. But will we do that?" That was the question she really wanted us to think about.
Now, listening to Leakey didn't really unearth any shocking new developments for myself or anyone else in the room. It's clear that we, as a society and planet, have serious issues facing us from every side. It's unclear whether we're going to pull it together enough to survive.
But, more than anything, Leakey's discourse pointed out the purpose of gatherings like TED. It forces the movers and shakers of the world to confront the questions right in front of us. Who are we? Where are we going? How can we fix it? Whether this format produces any real change can be debated. But for the vast majority of us locked in the day-to-day struggle to survive, perform, cope, this kind of discussion is a wildly refreshing reminder of what's important.
Photographer Chris Jordan, an artist who creates art with social messages, tried to answer the same Big Question - Who are we? - a few minutes after Leakey did. In doing so, he also pointed out some stuff we all know, but never focus on: Why do so many people still die from smoking? Why do so many people die from prescription drugs? Why have over 300,000 American women received breast augmentations? Can't we figure these things out?
"I have this fear we aren't feeling enough. We've lost our sense of outrage, our anger, our grief," said Rivers. But even if we regain those abilities, acknowledge these basic truths, he wasn't sure we could answer the question he really wanted us to consider: "How do we change?"
Stay tuned to the Tech Chronicles at sfgate.com/blogs/tech for TED news, views and perusals. For details on the conference, go to ted.com.
