18 February 2009

From the TED Fellows Blog: Why we are TEDizens

The TED Fellows Blog is a treasure — the unexpurgated thoughts of the 40 people chosen as this year’s TED Fellows, who attended the Long Beach conference, networked with one another and other TEDsters, and gave a presentation about the work that brought them here. On their shared blog, they talk about their work and their lives, their experiences in Long Beach, and now their reactions upon heading home and back to work. What’s next for this extraordinary class? Look here to find out.

TED Fellow Bright Simons tipped me to this post, a great introduction to the vibe of the site and the TED Fellows: TEDiscovery: Why We Are TEDizens. From the post:

… we knew before we got there — before we got to Long Beach — that TED represents an assault on all Dogma. It is a place where no prejudice, no convention, no reverent concept can be spared the creative destruction of open-minded interrogation. Still we queried: what then?

Could we have known that not only being but more so becoming is the preoccupation of TEDizens? Even if we had heard the fabulous story of ShopAfrica53.com, launched by Herman Chinery-Hesse on the very neon-lit pedestal of TEDGlobal 2007 to the hails of TEDizens, and with their concrete support, or been told of the redemptive tale of William Kamkwamba and his blessed windmill of Kasangu, could we have engaged from afar?

We had to go to Long Beach. We had to swim the watersheds of awareness; cheer to the miraculous swings of Zander’s fingers; consume the Poms of Google’s largesse (and may Lynn Resnick be ever blest); submit our cynicism to the electrifying epiphanies of the Siftable chorus; and relapse, O Clansfolk, relapse like the intellectually lobotomised before their saving dose of electrotherapy. Then ponder the last of the Oliver Sacks visions. But wherefore?

Now that we have believed, whither the action that issues forth from contemplation?

Read the whole post to find out one answer >>

Photo credit: Joshua Wanyama

Posted by Emily McManus | Permalink | Comment | Trackback