Conference convened, curated and chaired by Chris Anderson
Presented by the Sapling Foundation, TED LLC, New York
Steinbeck Auditorium, Monterey, California, 6-9 March 2007.
www.ted.com 

From the Speakers (*Outstanding, ** Stellar)

Journey to Saturn by spacecraft; 50 years since humans stepped off the planet; history of the universe is 13.7b years; journey to understand our cosmic place and origins; Saturn is such a place to visit for answers; seven years of travel; splendor beyond compare; the Cassini project people are Jules Verne people; a human-made device landed in the outer reaches of the solar system; in all of human history this place has been unreachable; drainage patterns that could be formed only by the flow of liquids; our sense of responsibility for the future of our planet (planetary scientist Carolyn Porco*) http://ciclops.org/index.php

Truth and beauty in the biological sciences; how life really works; 100 trillion cells interacting, passing information, manufacturing genes, cells and molecules on the fly; cellular mechanics (medical illustrator David Bolinsky) http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/03/72962

Fish-frog-monkey-super monkey - every generation thinks they are the final one - this is our story, our poetry, our romanticism; today we have no idea what we will be in the future; what is the life of the mouth? We have on white paper invented; we are God now, it is almost done (designer Phillipe Starck*) http://www.philippe-starck.com/

Why are so many people so wrong about something so important? Our ancestors were far more violent than us; 10,000 years ago a hunter-gatherer had up to 60% chance of dying at the hands of another man; mutilation, torture, sadistic capital punishment, death penalty for non-violent crimes, slavery, cruelty common in European Middle Ages; violence is in decline; we live in a peaceful time (even accounting for Rwanda, Baltics, Iraq, Dafur), tipping point was 16C; one-on-one killings have profoundly decreased; more recently, since 1945 decline in interstate wars, coups and pogroms, end of Cold War, fewer civil wars, 90% reduction in genocide; better treatment of indigenous people; less anarchy; deterrence factors; change in human behavior and ultimately, evolution bequeathed us with a sense of empathy; the expanding circle" (Singer) - family, village, clan, tribe, nation, other races, both sexes, other species (psychologist Steven Pinker*) http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/

Mapping and animating population, health, economic, emissions, broadband data to dynamically display and absolutely understand relativities, challenges, progress between nations and regions; in 50 years Africa has gone from a pre-medieval state to a Europe of 50 years ago; in Africa the impossible is possible; we can have a good world; culture brings joy to life; how do you get serious - make a Powerpoint (Professor international health Hans Rosling**) http://www.gapminder.org;

In fundamental physics, beauty is a very successful criterion for choosing the right theory. A more beautiful thing is more likely to be correct than an inelegant one; nature conformable to herself (Nobel prize of physics Murray Gell-Mann) http://www.santafe.edu/~mgm/

Discovery of a new layer of information superimposed on DNA coding; a code beyond genetics; the genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes; big biological question - how different kind of cells get their distinct entities; could re-evaluate the way the genome is structured and how it operates (Jonathan Widom, cell biologist, Northwestern University) http://www.chem.northwestern.edu/faculty/details?assetI
D=1465

Who asks the question is in charge of the conversation; cultural commonality; success principles - integrity, know the system, execute (NBA Hall of Famer Kareen Abdul Jabbar) http://www.nba.com/history/players/abduljabbar_bio.html

There is a time when pause is the only appropriate response; I'm really scared, I don't think we're going to make it; 1) companies are really powerful, 40% green house gases come from operating buildings; how Wal-Mart went green, reduced energy 20% in existing stores, painted roofs white, skylights; 2) individuals matter - despite 100m ee lightbulbs sold in 07 it's hard to get consumers to do the right thing; 3) policy matters for reduction in greenhouse gasses by 2020, ethanol vehicles, flexi-fuel cars; 4) radical technologies - synthetic biology, biofuels; need to reduce CO2 to save planet; energy is a $6T market worldwide; going green is the largest economic need of 21st C (Venture capitalist John Doerr*) http://www.kpcb.com/team/index.php?John%20Doerr

America spends 19% of income on car - how to make more efficient? Car sharing; congestion pricing; mesh networks (Zipcar founder Robin Chase) http://www.meadownetworks.com/

The Africa you don't hear about is the Africa of opportunity, the one that is changing; Africa is open for business; new wave of democratization and reform; conflicts have declined; average economic growth up from 1.5% to 5% past three years; best way for Africa to advance is through job creation (Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, former Finance Minister Nigeria) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngozi_Okonjo-Iweala

It all happens at four in the morning. Sometimes listening is enough (Rives*) http://shopliftwindchimes.com

The democratization of content; the ecology of fre(er) content; kids different from us, as kids we watched TV, today they make TV - it is technology that has made them different; kids can't be made passive, they are pirates (Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig) http://www.lessig.org/

The internet is made up of words and enthusiasm; love makes things real; if you love a word, it becomes real (lexicographer Erin McKean) blog http://www.dressaday.com/dressaday.html

Perfection scales down; quantum dots, solar cells, paintable semiconductors (nanotechnologist Ted Sargent) http://light.utoronto.ca/tsargent/

Avian defecation; archeological projects at Easter Island and Egypt; inventing nuclear reactors; high tech barbequing, search for extra-terrestrial intelligence; meta materials; whale sex; the ongoing dilemma whether to be a mile wide and an inch thick (Nathan Myhrvold) http://www.intellectualventures.com

Vacation is the great skill of anyone involved in complexity; simplicity is about living life with more enjoyment and less pain; mentors humanize us (designer John Maeda) http://plw.media.mit.edu/people/maeda/

The world is not as it seems; we don't see things as they are, but as we are; reality is a kind of waking dream; over the last 400 years human beings have invented "brainlets" made of powerful ideas that help us see the world in different ways: sensory tools (eg telescopes, microscopes), reasoning machines (eg computers, logic, math, etc) and a change in perspective (eg science and its process, etc); we confuse sophistication with understanding; new software for the $100 Laptop (computer scientist Alan Kay) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay + 

The best job in the world is as a daydreamer; to be ignored is a great thing; I don't know a lot; the principles of uncertainty (illustrator Maira Kalman) http://www.mairakalman.com/

Looking at the world from the point of view of the animals and the plants is a cure for human self-importance, for the current model is more for us and less for nature; heal the earth and re-animate the world (author Michael Pollan) http://www.michaelpollan.com/

I am a witness on the express elevator to hell; a photo that showed the true face of war would almost by definition be an antiwar photograph; the front lines of contemporary wars are not on isolated battlefields, but right where people lived; one of the things I had to learn as a journalist was what to do with my anger. I had to channel it, turn it into something that would focus my vision rather than clouding it (photojournalist James Natchwey - TED Prize) http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/  **

On a special mission on behalf of the millions of trillions of insects and other small creatures, to make a plea for them; if we would wipe out insects from the planet, the rest of life would disappear within a few months; create the key tool we need to inspire preservation of earth's biodiversity: "The Encyclopaedia of Life" that would contain information about all life on the planet; we live on a mostly unexplored planet; our lives depend upon these creatures; human juggernaut is destroying the earth's biodiversity through habitat destruction including climate change, the spread of invasive species and viruses, pollution, population expansion and overharvesting; to prevent catastrophe we must properly explore the biosphere to map and discover the biological code of all of the life on the planet; transform the science of biology and inspire a new generation of biologists to continue the quest to search for life, to understand it, and finally, above all, to preserve it (biologist E.O. Wilson - TED Prize*)
http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/fenimore/wilson/  +

Help me in creating a better future for Rwanda; we have a chance here to prove that a country that almost slaughtered itself out of existence (while none of us, most of all me, did anything to help) can practice reconciliation, reorganize itself, focus on tomorrow and provide comprehensive healthcare to its citizens (Former President Bill Clinton - TED Prize*) http://www.clintonfoundation.org/index.htm

The "Mystery Box"from Lou Tannen's Manhattan magic store "$50 of magic for $15"; never opened because it represents infinite possibility; mystery is the catalyst of the imagination; mystery is more important than knowledge; mystery is the key ingredient of storytelling; the movie theater is a mystery box; intentional withholding of information makes for exciting cinema; "Jaws" and "Alien" were more compelling by the fact that we hardly ever saw the creature - we rarely see the shark in Jaws, the alien in Alien (Lost creator JJ Abrams) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Abrams  +

HIV prevention in Uganda - abstain, be faithful, use condoms; expensive sex; if you improve poverty, malaria, pollution, you improve HIV; link between increase in Aids and mobility, in context of prospering African export economies, truck drivers and prostitution (economist Emily Oster) http://home.uchicago.edu/~eoster/

Humanity 2.0; bridging the Hope gap; invest, connect, celebrate; bet on good people doing good things; Everyone has the opportunity to make change in their own way; there is no right way to make change; created pro-social media company Participant Productions (An Inconvenient Truth, North Country, Good Night & Good Luck, Syriana, Murderball, North Country); (Participant Production founder, former President of eBay Jeff Skoll) http://skollfoundation.org/

One year with the National Guard in Iraq, filmed by the soldiers themselves; making stories from the inside out; the disconnect between the lives of soldiers and those of the other Americans (director "The War Tapes", Deborah Scranton*) http://www.thewartapes.com/2006/03/scranton_1.shtml

The power of toys; games = toys; benefits of a Montessori education; eat/survive/reproduce (Darwinian game) (Will Wright, Sims creator) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wright

Programming molecules to evolve the design of disease organisms intelligently; the design of diarrhea; host mobility; thinking about the problem from a germ's point of view (evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_W._Ewald

Strategic vision and urban structure in Curitiba Brazil (@5m people); every city can be improved in three years; creativity starts when you cut a zero from your budget; urban acupuncture; turtle best example of quality of life, living and working together; 2.5m people daily on public transport vs 25k thirty years ago, a key design innovation making the bus boarding platform the same level (and performance) as the subway; 70% separation of garbage, highest in the world; a multi-use city; we have to work fast (former Mayor Jaime Lerner*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Lerner

600m people moving from countryside to cities in China; Dongtan Eco City; our ecological footprint is 10, ideal is 2.2 (Arup's Director of Global Insight Chris Luebkeman) http://www.arup.com/arup/people.cfm?pageid=9613

Blur Weather Pavilion Switzerland; fog creates suspense; a response to oversaturation of visual media, a de-emphasis of environmental scale, post-nature, nothing to see or do, works against visual dependence, theme of assisted nature, ascension/dreamstate/doubt; NY Highline agritecture - vegitial and mineral; ICA Boston - ground up, sky down, a place for looking at looking; the dance of obsolescence; micro-environments, post-post industrialization (architect Elizabeth Diller) http://www.dillerscofidio.com/

Heaven = satisfied curiosity; in Italy design is normal; design is still misunderstood as decoration; designers are synthesizers; athletic gear for Muslim women; hideaway furniture; luxury is relative to people who don't have much eg Campagna Brothers Brazil (MoMA design and architecture curator Paolo Antonelli*) http://www.moma.org/

Genius? No, we just worked harder" (Charles and Ray Eames); good host anticipating the needs of the guest (definition of a designer); always trying things out; looking at things from the standpoint of scale; always modeling; found the human connection in everything (Eames Office Director Eames Demetrious) http://www.dasfilmfest.com/?id=31

3b people have mobile phones, plus 1b in 2 years; the three most important things people carry are keys, money and mobile (Nokia user anthropologist Jan Chipchase) http://www.janchipchase.com/

What is truer than truth? Stories. Nice people with common sense do not make good characters; women do 2/3 of the world's work and own 1% of the world's assets; fear power without impunity (author Isabel Allende**) http://www.isabelallende.com/

Private wealth is now driving access to space; pushing the limits of exploration on earth and in space; descended world's deepest natural abyss; high altitude mountaineering in reverse; crushing psychological remoteness 8600 feet down and 30 km from entrance; in space you pay by the kg - 90% of the weight of a spacecraft is propellant; a gas station in orbit, space hotels and workshops; the underpinning of human life off the earth; there was a time when people did bold things to open new frontiers; we have collectively forgotten that, now we are at a time when boldness is required again; the traditional approach to space exploration has been to carry all the fuel you need, and to carry everybody back in case of emergency; but to take us beyond, the first expeditionary team must travel to the Moon without the fuel to come back, and produce it there; it can be done in 7 years, and I intend to lead that expedition (explorer Bill Stone*) http://www.stoneaerospace.com

Subjective responses to colors, sounds, numbers are caused by synesthesia, a neurological condition that mutates in an area of the brain that can result in a cross-wiring of hearing, vision and touch senses; synesthesia is eight times more common among creative people such as artists, musicians, writers and poets, resulting in a greater sense of metaphorical thinking; scientists advance their understanding of the brain by examining patients with damage to a small region of the brain; by looking at the selective loss of brain function in a damaged area while other functions are intact, neuroscientists can create a map of functional structure throughout the brain (neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran*) http://psy.ucsd.edu/chip/ramabio.html +

The democratization of philanthropy, principally due to new people, values and wealth that has been invested into the sector over the past 2-3 years. Principal trends are: Mass Collaboration the notion that suddenly things can be done for love eg Wikipedia; Online Philanthropy Marketplace peer-to-peer philanthropy, enlarging the circles of giving - see YouthGive, Donors Choose, Network for Good (all websites); Aggregated Giving communities form around funds eg Gates/Buffett, Amy Novagratz (Acumen Fund); Innovation Competitions - X Prize, TED Prize, Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World-Changing Ideas; Social Investing - capital markets that invest in good eg www.xigi.net. Other observations: Philanthropy is re-organising itself; a new generation of citizen leaders; the new model is open, big, fast, connected, long - has stamina; Paul Hawken's "The Blessed Unrest"; new language - philanthrocapitalism, philantropreneurs, the social singularity, mutually catalytic; "What if we could do better things for love?" (philanthropy chartist Catherine Fulton) http://www.monitorinstitute.com/

Nikola Tesla: "Human beings are fundamentally good." (President of Wofford College Ben Dunlap) http://wofford.edu/president/default.aspx  **

The closing presentation by Ben Dunlap brought the final standing ovation, and few more enjoyed than his, following a rapid-fire and riveting story about the transformation of the textile manufacturing industry in the US South by an Eastern European refugee in the 1940s. This was pure and exciting storytelling, affirming the most decent elements of being human, which is what TED is about.

** With performances by Tracy Chapman, Paul Simon and Raul Midon.

** Outstanding new multi-touch interface technology presented by Jeff Han Perceptive Pixel, Virtual Earth software presented by 3D mapping expert from Microsoft Stephen Lawler, and software architect Blaise Aguera from Microsoft Live Labs showing Photosynth.

+ Notes supplemented from blog coverage

Selection of the 3 Minute Shows

I didn't need another mission - but 1,600 Iraqi vets have arms missing; how to create a robotic solution; (inventor Dean Kamen) http://www.dekaresearch.com/index.html

Design, development and distribution of simple IV drip devices for non-medical personnel for rapid treatment of acute dehydration and saving lives in situations of cholera epidemics, disease outbreaks, refugee camps (entrepreneur Sam Morgan) http://www.morgancharity.co.nz/bio.php?avery=disp

1.6b people have no access to electricity therefore no refrigeration, can't store food but most importantly vaccines; solution an inexpensive refrigerator that doesn't need electricity, gas, propane; $25 for high volumes (Richard)

Email chemistry and online dating (highly recommended by former Chairman Bartley Boggle Hearty Cindy Gallop) http://www.adotas.com/2005/12/around-the-world-
with-bbhs-cindy-gallop-keynote-speaker-adtech-ny-2005/

Bravo to all.

For greater session-by-session coverage go to Bruno Giussani's excellent blog www.lunchoverip.com and search on TED07.

Every TED is extraordinary and each meeting is distinctive either in an in-your-face way like when the web busted out, or in a resonant way like the power of stories.

Amidst the passion, commitment, brilliance, transformative ideas, ingenuity, profundity and creativity, TED07 was about empathy, a deep caring for human progress on all fronts.

TEDsters have changed the world, and are doing so right now on many fronts.

TED is open for everyone to participate at the new www.ted.com.

BRIAN SWEENEY

Brian Sweeney is a corporate advisor in business strategy and communications. He is Chairman, Director and co-founder (in 1987) of SweeneyVesty, an international consultancy providing advice, content, and resources to corporate organizations and brands. He is based in New York and New Zealand. He studied political science and had an early career as an entertainment and film producer. His first TED was #4 in Kobe in 1994.

www.sweeneyvesty.com 
www.nzedge.com 

  
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