I'm In Love with TED

No, A and I aren't splitting up. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and it's the name of a conference held annually at Monterey Bay since 1984. It draws together over a thousand of the top people in a wide range of fields to meet, give presentations, talk, have a ball, and figure out how to save the world. What do I mean by top? I mean people like Bill Clinton, Paul Simon, Bill Gates, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bono. James Hong, co-founder of the website Hot or Not describes it this way: "It's brain candy on steroids." You've probably seen clips from TED on the news, since this is where Microsoft and Apple debut their latest big breakthroughs; the original Apple Macintosh was presented to the world here.

I wish I could go. Unfortunately, it's by invitation only, and even then the price of admission is $6,000. However, and very fortunately, they have a website that offers over 200 edited clips of presentations on an incredible range of subjects, like "Is There A God?", "How the Mind Works", and "What's Next in Tech." They're available to view for free, and I'm probably going to spend the next six months watching all of them.

They encourage bloggers to embed their favorite clips in their blogs. Here's the first one I saw. Watch to the end, about five minutes, cause you won't believe what that octopus does:



Then there's these guys. (About 15 minutes.)



That's from Ted.com. Worth a visit.