Hilary's Weblog

Absolutely the most amazing thing you'll hear today

The wonderful people at TED have just posted the highlight of TED2009. Jose Antonio Abreu is the founder of the youth orchestra system in Venezuela (El Sistema) that has transformed the lives of thousands of young people. His TED Prize Wish is to bring El Sistema to the world. Click here to hear more about it. To support that wish, we were treated to a live concert from the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel (himself a graduate of El Sistema, and now music director of the LA Philharmonic Orchestra). 

It was incredible. Thanks to the wonders of the TED talks, I can share it with you now. For maximum mind-blowingness, plug your PC into a good set of speakers and make yourself comfortable.

Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk just got put online

I blogged enthusiastically about Elizabeth Gilbert's talk a few days ago.  It has just been put up on the TED site, and here it is:

Amazing things people have said

Just so I don't lose track of them, here is a random selection of some of the amazing things people have said so far at this year's TED conference.

Jill Tarter, TED Prize winner and searcher for extra-terrestrial intelligence said: 

The ascent of man has to go - it's a sense of privilege the natural universe doesn't share

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, photographer of the world from the air, and cataloguer of our impact on the earth, said:

It's too late to be pessimistic

Bonnie Bassler, molecular biologist and ace communicator of bacterial communication processes said:

We have 10 times more bacterial cells in us and on us than human cells - we are 10% human and 90% bacterial

Golan Levin, audio-visual artist and software engineer, and creator of the amazing double-taker, said:

The (computer) mouse is probably the narrowest straw you can try and suck human expression through

Elizabeth Gilbert, the writer, about whom I have already blogged, said:

We have somehow accepted the assumption that creativity and suffering are necessarily linked

All hail the bookshop guys

This is a note of appreciation for the bookshop guys here in TED at Palm Springs.  Brendan, Paul and Mark are doing a fantastic job - part literary haven, part neighbourhood hang-out - they have created an engaged and welcoming space for all of us.  I gather that thanks are due to Neal Sofman, the owner of the West Portal Bookshop, who has been running the bookstore at TED for a number of years, and who is at Long Beach right now.

So what's so great about it?  Well, there's the stock.  All the speakers (assuming that missing box arrived from Long Beach) are represented, and their subject matter supported by a broader base of books by other authors.  OK, there are one or two bizarre inclusions, but where would we be without a little randomness?  And in any case, that's what enabled the bookshop guys to run their private competition.  But mostly there's the guys themselves.  They are so engaged with being here at TED, with the talks, with the conversations and with all of us.  Of course, that can't help being a good commercial move - at least if my book purchases are anything to go by.

Life isn't perfect.  Last year the very wonderful people at Wired magazine paid for us all to ship shedloads of books home by FedEd, a gift I made very good use of.  Sadly, this year they decided to do other things.  Dear Wired Magazine, please, please bring back your amazing shipping gift next year. 

This is no time to be picky.  This is the time to say thank you, Brendan Sofman, thank you Mark Jobson, thank you Paul Signorelli - and have you finished reading that book I left with you yet?

Juxtapositions

I'm getting a bit hung up with language - with loss of meaning from misuse and overuse, and with heightened meaning from words newly cast. Imagine how thrilled I was to hear Daniel Libeskind's talk this afternoon. For him, architecture is based on wonder. He spelt this out with a series of distinctions that powerfully described his architecture - words that were supported with images of some of his iconic designs.

The pairs of words are not necessarily direct opposites, and the meaning he ascribes to them is not necessarily what you might assume. My personal highlights are:

• expressive vs neutral
• emotional vs cool
• political vs evasive (political meaning of the people, un-abstract)
• raw vs refined
• pointed vs blunt (many of his buildings are literally pointed, but he means it metaphorically as well - focused on reality)
• communicative vs mute
• risky vs safe

His words and his buildings reek of energy and attitude. A delight.

The wonderful workings of the mind

Our day in Palm Springs started with the quiet brilliance of Oliver Sacks. This wonderful, kind, insightful man has caused us to think differently about people whose brains work differently from the average - from what we tend to call normality. Today he told us the story of an old lady with hallucinations caused by Charles Bonnet Syndrome. The hallucinations are the result of hyperactivity in parts of the brain left inactive by failing sight or hearing, a natural extension of brain function being left with not enough to do.

This condition affects about 10% of people with visual or hearing loss. Shockingly, less than 1% acknowledge it - concerned, as this old lady was, not to be labelled as insane, or to find out that some other degenerative condition is bearing down on them.

Oliver Sacks' work and his writings communicate the fascinating normality of the many different ways our brains work, and the impact they have on us. These are ideas that need to be spread.

Bill Gates posted

I've just been told that Bill Gates's TED talk from yesterday has been posted on the TED website here. He talked about two of the challenges that his charitable foundation is working to address. Look out specifically for the moment when he releases mosquitoes into the crowd from the TED stage. A serious reality check.

Genius

Are you a troubled genius? Are you suffering from self-doubt? Are you facing the dilemma - can I keep generating creative output? Will my flow of ideas and my ability to communicate them dry up? Today Elizabeth Gilbert has given us the solution. In a gripping talk, she has re-defined genius. More correctly, she has taken genius off our shoulders and put it back in its proper place.

According to Elizabeth, genius was originally a kind of good angel of ideas, living in the wall rather than sitting on your shoulder, and visiting you to cast its inspiration upon you when it felt like it. This externalising of the source of inspiration removes from us the pressure of having to be inspired. As Elizabeth put it, all we have to do is keep on doing what we do - writing, composing, producing. The genius will do the rest.

Our adoption of the label and nailing of it onto individuals has burdened them with the responsibility to keep holding that weight up - not very reasonable; not very humane. We re-purpose words and lose meaning as a result. Perhaps reaching back to the origins of our language will help see some of the challenges that we face freshly, and open up new possibilities and new sources of energy for us.

Never enough time

TED is such a total feast for the senses that it's virtually impossible to drag myself away from the action long enough to reflect on it.  The first day was a visual, auditory and intellectual treat, and since the amazing chocolate people from Chicago are here again, a feast for the taste buds too. 

When I wrote the heading for this blog entry, I meant it to refer to blogging at TED. In fact it's a good summary of a strand of the messages so far. We are on a two edged sword, with destructive power and the ability to heal growing out of the same base development of ideas and technology. Yann Arthus-Bertrand said yesterday that it's too late to be pessimistic. Exactly the thinking that we need.