TED speakers are filmed with multiple cameras and edited exactingly. Online, they’ve had more than eight hundred million views.
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TED Talks reach millions around the world. How has a conference turned ideas into an industry? by nathan heller
’d like to begin with a story. On a graduate work focusses on collective growing, best-educated, and wealthiest bright late-February afternoon, in cognition and social networks, saw his creative communities in America. (Ad- ILong Beach, California, Lior Zoref, an appearance in this company as an ar- mission to the Long Beach conference Israeli Ph.D. student, climbed onstage rival. Last April, he had signed up for starts at seventy-five hundred dollars, to rehearse what he called “the talk of the conference’s first public auditions, not including the hotel; tickets are my life.” It was the second full day of the promising a crowd-sourced talk, on the available by invitation, or through an TED ideas conference, and in the lobby idea that a group of networked minds application that includes both essays outside the theatre doors more than a can shape a better product than an in- and references.) And, although “TED” thousand men and women milled and dividual imagination. After putting out stands for Technology/Entertainment/ gammed and ate lunch in the winter sun. the word on Twitter, Facebook, and his Design, the conferences have recently Zoref was nervous. He had spent the past blog (“Ideas for other questions or sub- skewed toward the first part of the trip- few months preparing with an athlete’s jects I should address?”), he’d received tych. If you have a surprising notion focus for a talk of fourteen minutes. suggestions from hundreds of people. about how business works, how Third While the presentations that he usually Of these, the gambit of which he was World hunger works, how the mind gave were functional and evanescent, this proudest was the only part of the talk he works, or how technology ought to one had to be a virtuosic feat, a summa of hadn’t yet rehearsed: a moment when work, it may be TED-worthy. If you have his work to date. “I’ve been practicing like he’d step aside and call onstage a giant ox. fresh ideas about Second Empire ur- I’ve never practiced,” Zoref had told me “It’s huge,” he exclaimed now, as the banization, or Richard Diebenkorn’s earlier, not long after touching down in creature appeared for the first time. The “Ocean Park” series, you’re best off park- California. (He and his wife had allowed ox was black, sleek, muscular; when it ing your tweeds elsewhere. TED is now themselves two days’ respite in New plodded into the spotlight, under the based in New York, where it occupies a York, on a layover from Tel Aviv, and guidance of a wrangler, the stage crew sleek, beanbag-chair-laden office, but it caught “The Book of Mormon,” on and other rehearsing performers shifted remains spiritually centered on the Cal- Broadway.) Now, with an hour left until tensely, as if each motion might mark ifornia coast, nearer Stanford’s labs and his lecture, he was concentrating on mi- the start of a faena. Cameron Carpen- the cafés of Valencia Street—even as nutiae and grace: the slow, assured sweep ter, an organ virtuoso performing that its influence grows to extend past that of his gaze across the audience; the way afternoon, peered at the animal from a world. he strode across the stage; the timing of generous distance. “It’s going to gore us People who know TED these days a joke. Everything else was muscle mem- all,” he murmured. frequently know it best from “TED Talks,” ory. By the time Zoref arrived in town, “Is it sedated?” someone asked. a series of Internet lecture videos that he said, he’d given his TED talk—to The wrangler shook his head. Zoref has received more than eight hundred friends, to students, to his nonverbal one- moved in close, pushing his brow into million views to date. (That’s nearly year-old son, to anybody, really, who’d the ox’s face. He is a thickly built guy, two-thirds the number of movie tickets listen—more than four hundred times. with an air of willed eagerness, and sold last year in all of North America.) Yet Long Beach is a marina town, a when he gets excited, which happens its style and substance have begun to place where the Pacific Coast Highway a lot, his speech climbs to a zinging overtake other media, too. To feed a hiccups inland and the tallest buildings falsetto, as if voicing an invisible Mup- market for “ideas” which it has helped crowd down to the waterfront. On the pet. “Hello, Teddy!” he cooed into the create, the organization has launched an morning of Zoref ’s talk, this down- animal’s left eye. “Yes, hello!” The ox e-book imprint and an e-reader app to town corridor was dense with traffic, blinked. accompany it. You can watch TED lec- and the Long Beach Performing Arts TED—a four-day conference of re- tures on your seat-back screen as you fly Center—a squat, big-windowed build- search lectures, technology demonstra- cross-country, or listen to excerpts in your ing by the harbor—thrummed with tions, arts performances, and self- car as they air on NPR. discussion of the day’s events. The en- described world-changing ideas—has Abroad, TED spreads through what gineering professor Vijay Kumar had become in recent years a showroom for used to be called soft power. “TEDx” previously demonstrated his coördi- the intellectual style of the digital age. events—essentially, do-it-yourself TED nated swarming robots. T. Boone Pickens An open secret of a conference when conferences, produced by volunteers— NGO I . B
R advocated shifting our dependency it began, almost three decades ago, it run at a global rate of about five per day, in M from oil to natural gas. Zoref, whose is today home to one of the fastest- a hundred and thirty-three countries. (Lara
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TNY—2012_07_09&16—PAGE 69—133SC. the Long Beach stage. The applause died down. Zoref was holding a slide clicker in one hand. “I have a question,” he said. “Do you have a dream?”
merican culture rides forward on stories about sudden fame and boldA ascent—the singer who invents a new style of celebrity, the unknown actor rising with a quirky TV show, the kid who shapes a generation’s online habits from his dorm room. TED is a display case for such stories and, increasingly, the subject of them; the conference has grown famous for making its speakers fa- mous, even as it claims to tread above the rough clod of celebrity. TED has been criticized for these tendencies. And yet the criticism, like the admiration, has never addressed the mystery of the talks’ success: why TED has grown so excep- tionally popular, and so quickly. The answer may have something to do with the conference’s rituals of prep- “The problem is that your trap is one big macaroni.” aration. Soon after arriving in Long Beach, I met Susan Cain, who was scheduled •• to speak about the subject of her first book, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.” Stein, who runs the program, noted, ideas in a way the audience would be Cain is a friendly woman with a soft, “We’ve had a TEDx event with six hun- unable to forget. clipped verbal style. In the week before dred people on a floating hotel in the mid- At 2:09 p.m., the “Marcia Trionfale” TED, she’d been working with an act- dle of the Amazon forest with seven high- from “Aïda,” which heralds the start of ing coach to perfect the rhythm of her definition cameras.”) Ambitious young each TED session, echoed through the talk—a measure beyond the pale of nor- people worldwide can apply to be “TED complex, and an audience began to col- mal preparation, since all aspects of the Fellows,” and join a weeklong residency lect outside the theatre doors. The pro- conference are already shaped to make program at the mothership conferences gram started. Carpenter, the organist, the ideas being presented fit for popular as they launch their entrepreneurial ca- launched into an arrangement of Rich- consumption. reers. Or they can stay home and watch ard Rodgers’s “Slaughter on Tenth Ave- Ordinarily, TED’s closely governed TED Talks subtitled into eighty-eight lan- nue.” Reid Hoffman, who co-founded editorial process begins with the con- guages by a worldwide corps of volunteers. LinkedIn, discussed flexibility in career cept: the conference’s “curators” feel out Shortly before Zoref was to speak paths. Then the venture-capitalist David a speaker’s interests, looking for material that day, Prime Minister Benjamin Hornik gave a short, charming talk about that’s new and counterintuitive. They Netanyahu had called him to wish him how his dyslexia makes him forget every- think about form. A TED talk tends to luck—an extra notch of pressure on an one’s name, and Zoref left his chair to follow one of several narrative arcs (some already carefully calibrated talk. Study- lean against the base of the stage. have three acts, others are cast as detec- ing past lectures, Zoref had noticed His name was called. He bounded tive stories, others are polemics), and cu- that several shared an “Aha!” moment: up. He took his place on a circle of red rating is about creating a mix of styles as a turn of visceral surprise that drove carpet. The orchestra seats were faintly much as it’s about shaping each lecture. home the talk’s concepts. In 2008, Jill lit from above—an eerie blue, to make Vetting follows. In the run-up to a pre- Bolte Taylor, a cognitive researcher the audience show up on video. Zoref ’s sentation, key facts may be spot-checked. who narrated the story of her own stroke, face was already being broadcast live Allusions, metaphors, jargon, jokes— had produced a real human brain to to screens throughout the Long Beach anything that might appeal to an audi- talk about cerebral anatomy. In 2009, complex; to Palm Springs, California, ence of coastal Californians but leave on- Bill Gates had released a jar of mosqui- where TED staffers were holding a tick- line viewers in Lebanon baffled—are toes to make a point about malarial eted shadow event; and to more than a often flagged and cut, a process that can risk. The ox, whose weight Zoref would hundred and sixty other conferences bleach lectures to an odd cultural beige. ask the audience to guess, was his bid around the world, whose organizers and (TED is generally aligned with main- to join in this tradition, to deliver his translators had brokered a live feed of stream left-of-center views, but any pol-
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TNY—2012_07_09&16—PAGE 70—133SC. —LIVEART—A16572 icy positions it leans toward tend to be before joining TED, in 2005. These the table. He had met Giussani at the framed in terms of broad and undeniable days, his chief responsibility is organiz- previous night’s party. He reintroduced goods: education, environmental sus- ing the yearly TED Global conference, himself and immediately started toying tainability, equal rights.) The real work which ran last week, in Edinburgh. with the silverware. of the curators, though, often comes “I used to say, ‘One of the things that “I have to tell you something,” he said. down to emotional shading. When Cain makes a magazine great is what you put “I’m a mentalist.” He pointed to a spoon. first drafted her talk, it was thick with in, but also what you leave out,’ ” Gius- “Do you see that spoon?” He balanced it statistics and case-making data. Looking sani told me, stirring artificial sweetener on a saltshaker. “I’m just going to see if I at other TED lectures, though, she de- into his coffee. “Some ideas, compressed can move it.” cided to replace some of her data points into four minutes, don’t have enough With his hands, the man made a with stories—an inclination that the time to develop. Some others, for eigh- loose, throbbing gesture, as if conduct- conference’s curators pushed even fur- teen minutes”—the upper limit at TED— ing a miniature orchestra. The spoon ther. A moving narrative about her “just feel dragged out.” Pressure is built spun crazily around. We murmured our grandfather’s bookish introversion now into the process. There are no simultane- surprise. Snatching up the spoon again, concluded the lecture. “I’ve had to stifle ous events at TED, so speakers can’t hide he grasped its base between the fingers my appetite for nuance,” she said, about behind the premise of a self-selecting au- of one hand. “I just want to tell you— the lost statistics. dience. The pressure tends to drive them watch.” He flashed the five fingers In the days or hours before a Long beyond the fourth wall, into their view- of his free hand, and the silver wilted Beach talk is delivered, it gets a final pol- ers’ arms. “The personal element often forward, like a bar of chocolate over a ish from Chris Anderson, TED’s head comes in, because it’s what makes the flame. An elderly Northern European curator, or June Cohen, who runs TED speaker a bit vulnerable in front of the couple at an adjoining table gasped. The Media. The polish consists largely of a audience,” Giussani explained. “It’s what man offered the bent spoon to Giussani, speaker running over key passages on- makes them authentic.” and then abruptly walked away. A few stage while Anderson or Cohen sits in Giussani and I were just starting weeks later, Giussani told me he’d the front row and laughs uproariously at breakfast when a man with a trim beard booked the silverware torturer—Gerard the jokes. When Cain went through this and a striped velour jacket sidled up to Senehi, a self-described “mentalist and process—it was early in the morning, and Cohen was slumped back in her seat, clutching an enormous paper cup of coffee and guffawing in an otherwise impassive room—I assumed it was es- sentially a confidence-boosting exercise, part of the general cloud of cheerleading that TED exudes like a Shalini perfume. It wasn’t until Cain presented for real that I realized something else had been going on. The moments when Cohen had laughed were, almost to a one, the moments when the audience laughed. Cohen had been pacing the talk, fore- casting the way that Cain’s gestures, punch lines, and revelations would play against the energy of a large crowd. And she hit the mark. Soon after Cain spoke, she discovered that her name was the sixth-most-trending phrase on Twitter in the world. When her lecture later went up on TED.com, it received about half a million views in its first day.
ne morning, I met Bruno Gius- sani, TED’s European director, for breakfastO in the Palm Court of the Plaza Hotel, where he was staying after flying into New York for a party. Giussani is a warm, watchful man with Steve Martin hair and a doughy Italian accent. He “The only ghosts you need fear are the ghosts of your worked for years as a journalist, mostly past—which will gnaw away at your soul, riddle you with from Switzerland, where he still lives, self-doubt, and ultimately sap you of your will to live.”
TNY—2012_07_09&16—PAGE 71—133SC.—live art—A16591 activist”—as a speaker for the upcoming Coast mood, one that becomes palpa- ers.”) Downloads took three to five min- TED Global. ble down near Big Sur, where the light utes. “I was just hooked,” Cohen says. “I TED’s eye for theatre, its vigilance changes from the buttery subtropical wasn’t interested in pursuing traditional about immersion and control, has be- glaze of Southern California to some- journalism anymore.” When she gradu- come a key source of its appeal. Attend- thing cooler and more filtered, where ated, she turned down a few print jobs ees are urged not to check their phones people start calling the Pacific Coast of the kind that editors of élite campus during the talks. Volunteers who want to Highway by the simpler name of dailies used to glide into, and bartended organize a TEDx event receive a hundred- Highway 1. It is the mood of profession for a year, looking for something more and-thirty-six-page manual detailing als who wear Converse to work, own in line with her interests. regulations and requirements—advi- multimillion-dollar homes at thirty- That something turned out to be Hot sories like “Webcast archives of TEDx two, eat local, donate profits to charity, Wired, the Web-magazine arm of Wired, events are not permitted” and “The name learn Mandarin, and rock-climb in the which launched, in 1994, with a man- of your event should always align left in Pinnacles on Sundays. It is the friendly, date to bring journalism online. Cohen relation to the ‘TEDx’ part of the logo.” self-effacing irony of winners. There is began as an intern and stayed for six Conferences that overstep major rules a joke around the TED offices which dis- years. The experience helped to teach lose their TED license. “We always hear tills this West Coast irony for me. It her how readers approached the media about it,” Lara Stein says. goes, “Oh, so you’ve lost your legs and world of the Internet. HotWired sold This tight control sits awkwardly with climbed Everest? So did everyone else.” the first banner ad on the Web (“Seri- TED’s promises of intellectual exchange. ously, sorry,” Cohen says) and was one of The most famous flap in TED’s history first heard that joke from June the first Web sites to feature reader- came in 2010, when the comedian Sarah Cohen, a spark plug of a woman comment sections below articles. It also Silverman launched an onstage riff about Iwith bright-blue eyes, curly dark hair, carried her to TED, which she first at- wanting to adopt a “retarded” child—in and the exuberant nerviness of a student tended in the winter of 1998. particular, one with a terminal illness, so who has just emerged from a final exam Cohen thought she was done with the she wouldn’t have to care for it past the after a night guzzling coffee in the sci- Web when Chris Anderson hired her age when children ought to be autono- ence library. Cohen didn’t expect to end seven years later; his hopes for building mous. It was the satire for which Silver- up in the conference game. As an un- out the TED brand centered on TV. But man is known, pushing a popular trope dergraduate, she was the editor-in-chief Cohen couldn’t get a single station ex- of do-goodism and right-think so far of the Stanford Daily. One night, she cited about the idea of broadcasting TED that it grows offensive and absurd. And was out for drinks with a few other edi- talks. “I thought, If it’s too intellectual for it divided the Long Beach audience. In a tors when somebody dropped a copy of the BBC, I must be doing something personal tweet, Anderson called Silver- MacWeek on the table. The big tech wrong,” she told me. man’s routine “god-awful.” Even now, story was the release of Apple’s video YouTube had just launched in beta. there’s no Silverman talk on TED.com. player QuickTime. If text could be read In October, Apple released its video Critics—such as Nassim Nicholas on a computer and video could be iPod. Cohen sensed that online video— Taleb, who famously likened TED watched on a computer, Cohen thought, which had been crashing back to Earth speakers to “low-level entertainers”— why not combine those two journalistic for more than a decade—might finally be tend to regard TED as a rogue force of forms in one space? As the drinks piled approaching its escape velocity. She hired idiocy, chasing ideas with a meat grinder up, she and her Daily colleagues turned a filmmaker specializing in the Web, while serious thinkers chew their leafy over the idea. “We started drawing on a Jason Wishnow, and began planning greens. But the conference’s numbers cocktail napkin—like, what would it TED’s first video podcast, hoping that are its best defense. Why speak rigor- mean if we could create a computer- building a small following online would ously to an audience of hundreds when based supplement?” she said. “Maybe make a better case for TV pickup. you can ham it up a bit and spread the you could combine the immediacy of Wishnow arrived at TED with two fruits of your research to millions? Why broadcast journalism with the in-depth convictions: that most lecture videos are charge a reasonable rate if you can de- reporting of print news.” mind-numbingly boring, and that this mand an exorbitant one (Long Beach It was 1991. The multimedia World tended to be a function of the filming— always sells out, even with the four- Wide Web hadn’t established itself yet. what he calls the “junior-high-school- figure admission fee) and use the cash to Cohen and her staff built their computer play” style of cinematography, with one make your videos available for free and newspaper in HyperCard and served it camera shooting grainy footage at the to fund developing-world programs like locally. (“Stanford students who want to back of the room. Today, Long Beach TED Fellows? Arguments against the view the ‘newspaper’ will be able to call talks are filmed, in the spirit of a live rock conference’s approach have a way of it up from any high-end Macintosh, concert, with eight cameras: a centered seeming absurdly parochial. from the Classic II on up, that is linked lens for closeups; two medium-distance People frequently say that TED has a to the campus network,” a 1992 news cameras on either side of the room; a low irony quotient. Actually, there is release boasted. “Readers will be pre- remote-controlled tower camera, stage plenty of irony at TED; what’s missing is sented with a table of contents, from right; a handheld, roaming upstage; two a particular kind of irony, the underdog which they can transfer one or two sto- fixed, unmanned cameras, one trained kind. TED’s sensibility reflects a West ries at a time onto their own comput- on the orchestra seats and the other giving
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TNY—2012_07_09&16—PAGE 72—133SC. •• a rear panorama; and a wide-angle lens tents. “We actually try to be a maga- forth, she quoted a line from Davis’s mounted on a giant jib that flies above zine,” Emily McManus, who edits the 2003 talk, about the disappearance of the the audience. TED.com Web site, says. world’s rare languages, the way someone Editing emphasizes movement. “If “Since the moment June posted six might recall a favorite line of Byron. you think about the best talks you’ve ever videos on a corner of our Web site, we’ve “Every language is an old-growth forest heard, they tend to impact you on an been on a rocket ride,” Tom Rielly, TED’s of the mind,” she recited. Then, quietly, emotional level,” Wishnow says. “We community director, recalls. He is wry she added, “It sets my heart on fire.” borrowed from the language of cinema and voluble, with tousled red hair and tur- to achieve that effect.” TED favors tight quoise tortoiseshell glasses. He attended he TED talk is today a sentimental shots for sensitive moments—“to gaze his first conference in 1990, and has been form. Once, searching for transport, into a speaker’s eyes”—and to make an to more TED events than anyone alive. peopleT might have read Charles Dickens, intimate frame for small Web-player Even measured against the conference’s rushed the dance floor, watched the Os- screens. Most lectures begin with intro- storied history, the past few years have cars, biked Mount Tamalpais, put on ductions, throat-clearings, and lame brought startling success. When Cohen Rachmaninoff, put on the Smiths, played jokes, but TED prunes all that out. TED’s started researching podcasting, in 2005, Frisbee, poured wine until someone started videos start with a clamorous, animated she read about a popular business podcast reciting “somewhere i have never travelled, opening; a swell of applause is added, and that had been played forty thousand gladly beyond.” Now there is TED. “I got then they cut to what editors find to be times, and used that as a goal for traffic. all inspired and my hair stood on end and the first interesting moment of the talk. Today, the average TED video gets forty I got weepy-like and energized and en- Awkward silences, microphone troubles, thousand views within twenty-four hours. thused,” wrote a participant in an online factual errors on slides, the dribbling of Cohen had wondered if releasing free vid- TED-discussion forum. (The talk that water on shirtfronts, stumbles onstage— eos would kill ticket sales, but the first brought on such delirium was about ed- all such infelicities are elided. Wide shots conference after the video launch sold out ucation.) Debby Ruth, a Long Beach at- or reaction cutaways speed up ponderous in a week, at higher prices, with a thou- tendee, told me that she started going to talks or slow down rushed ones. sand-person waiting list. TED after reaching a point in her life These days, Anderson, Cohen, and a The first time I met Cohen, at a TEDx when “nothing excited me anymore”; she few other staffers decide which lectures event last fall, she came over to talk to me returns now for a yearly fix. TED may will go online, and when. Clustered during one of the breaks. We stood in an present itself as an ideas conference, but around a whiteboard in the office, they aisle as the theatre cleared and the crew most people seem to watch the lectures label Post-its with eligible talks, while began checking equipment onstage. I not so much for the information as for Anderson runs back and forth from his asked her what her favorite TED talks how they make them feel. desk, checking audience-reaction stats were. She thought for a moment, and Should we be grateful to TED for and saying things like “Reggie Watts— then cited Hans Rosling, a Swedish pub- providing this form of transcendence— these people loved him!” Then they lic-health professor, and Wade Davis, an and on the Internet, of all places? move the Post-its around, in seven-day anthropologist. Placing one hand across Or should we feel manipulated by one clusters, building weekly tables of con- her chest and swaying gently back and more product attempting to play on our
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TNY—2012_07_09&16—PAGE 73—133SC. live art 16646 found that more than five hundred people had submitted guesses, averaging to 1,792 pounds. The animal’s actual weight was 1,795. The audience cheered. “My biggest lesson is that we can all use crowd wisdom not just in thinking, but also to make our dreams come true,” Zoref said. “For me, being here today is a dream come true!” The crowd rose to its feet. Those elements—an opening of di- rect address, a narrative of personal stake, a research summary, a précis of poten- tial applications, a revelation to drive it home, and an ending that says, Go forth and help humanity—form the basic arc of many TED talks. As with lots of things, though, the magic is in the execution. When Jill Bolte Taylor narrated her own stroke, she teared up speaking about •• how, as she lost her rational intelligence, she experienced a state of “nirvana” that emotions? It’s tricky, because the ideas a sixteen-year-old, suggested that I re- tapped the “life-force power of the uni- undergirding a TED talk are both the create the original crowd-wisdom exper- verse.” Her talk is the second-most- point and, for viewers seeking a generic iment from one hundred years ago.” He viewed of all time on TED.com. TED-type thrill, essentially beside it: the clicked to a slide of Or Sagy’s Facebook Establishing intellectual credentials in appeal of TED comes as much from its page. “It’s really, really tiny.” He pinched order to break past them gives TED a presentation as from its substance. two fingers together. “So you need to pay somewhat vaporous tone. Tears are not Zoref ’s crowd-sourced lecture was a very close attention.” The ox plodded out uncommon. More than half of Long case in point—a talk designed, by TED on cue, looking bemused. “We all know Beach talks end in standing ovations. watchers, to be as TED Talk-like as pos- TEDx,” Zoref went on, priming one of “I’ll be on instant messenger with Long sible. “About a year ago, I attended TEDx his favorite laugh lines. “Starting today, Beach and I’ll I.M. that there’s going to Tel Aviv,” Zoref explained near the be- we have TEDox.” be a standing ovation,” Kelly Stoetzel, an- ginning of his presentation, after throw- There was chortling like a weak other curator, told me. “I can tell, always.” ing out opening questions to get the au- rain through the house. Zoref told An ovation of notable length and passion dience involved. He was pivoting to viewers to guess the animal’s weight is called a “TED moment.” address the left side of the theatre, then and enter their answers on a Web site; This year’s TED moment came from the right, placing a beat of silence after later in the presentation, TED would av- Bryan Stevenson, a public-interest law- every phrase, like a standardized-test erage the responses. Then he offered up yer who leads the Equal Justice Initiative, proctor waiting for students to fill in a flight of stories: about a pastor who which provides representation for low- their Zip Codes. He was dressed in a crowd-sources his sermons; about a income defendants and advocates for a gray button-down and dark slacks, and writer who diagnosed her son’s disease fairer legal process. (He argued Miller v. his right ear had been fitted with a small, using Facebook; about a woman who’s Alabama, the case on which the Supreme flesh-colored microphone. He contin- “raising her child using crowd wisdom.” Court ruled last week, opposing the ued, “It was then that I decided to share “Oh, no!” someone said. mandatory sentencing of juvenile homi- my dream with my Facebook friends. Zoref turned and grinned. “She’s cide offenders to life imprisonment with- This is what it looked like.” doing that on a daily basis. And listen out parole.) Stevenson started with a Zoref pressed his clicker, and a video very good”—he thrust a finger toward story about the sense of personal identity played on the screen behind him. The the doubtful regions of the audience— his grandmother instilled in him, and video was of Zoref and another guy, sit- “she told me she feels as if Supernanny is then discussed a justice system wracked ting in large chairs. “My dream is to helping her.” by racial and socioeconomic bias. “As ra- speak at TED,” the onscreen Zoref told As a research report, Zoref ’s talk was tional as we are, and as committed to in- his friend. His friend replied that they basic and rote: he offered no proprietary tellect as we are, innovation, creativity, had a better chance of winning the lot- information, and although his arguments development comes not from the ideas in tery, and the Long Beach audience dovetailed with any number of articles and our mind alone,” he said. erupted into laughter. Zoref, who had books on crowd wisdom (not least, James When Stevenson finished, with a line until that point been breathing like a Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds”), harking back to the civil-rights struggles marathon runner, loosened up. he did not cite them. As a performance, of the nineteen-fifties, the Long Beach Recounting how he crowd-sourced though, it was delightful. When Zoref crowd leaped up and began cheering, and ideas for the talk, he went on, “Or Sagy, called for the results of the ox voting, he it didn’t stop until Chris Anderson qui-
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TNY—2012_07_09&16—PAGE 74—133SC.— live art 16651 eted the room down, nearly a minute later. seventy-five dollars. The speaker lineup launched Business 2.0, a product of and The next day, just before the first break, included Herbie Hancock, Benoît Man- casualty of the boom years—who was look- Anderson put out a call for contributions delbrot, and Nicholas Negroponte. Now- ing to move beyond print journalism. He in support of one of Stevenson’s cam- adays, speaking with Wurman—who has made a buyout offer through his com- paigns; by the time the conference re- published more than sixty books, on sub- pany Future Network, and Wurman sold cessed for lunch, people in the theatre had jects ranging from Louis Kahn to infor- him TED Conferences, LLC, for twelve pledged more than $1.1 million. mation anxiety—means being drawn into million dollars, plus stock. a sort of arts-and-tech version of Holly- “As a media entrepreneur, I’d looked ichard Saul Wurman, who invented wood, in which everyone is known by his at passion—passion was the litmus test the TED conference, in 1984, lives or her first name, every hangout session is for whether a media property had legs,” inR Newport, Rhode Island, in a gated reported (“Yo-Yo, when I was on the Anderson says. “Even though there Gilded Age mansion made to look like plane with him, wanted to have this weren’t very many people at the confer- an eighteenth-century country home. young man from Bangladesh come to see ence, they were interesting, influential When I arrived one day, in midwinter, me”), and projects are perpetually being people, and their level of passion for this he showed me into his study, which was discussed. Early TED conferences intro- event was off the charts.” Soon after the painted forest-green and packed with duced Adobe Photoshop, and showed the initial sale (and the tech bust), Ander- baubles: Teddy bears beneath glass bells, Apple Macintosh only a few weeks after son left Future Network and took TED sneakers speckled with paint (a gift from its unveiling; still, Wurman says he’s not with him, buying it with his nonprofit, the artist Dale Chihuly), a large bowl much interested in keeping viewers happy. the Sapling Foundation, for six million filled with multicolored baseballs and “It’s not the audience’s dinner party,” dollars. globe ornaments, three bent spoons, and Wurman told me over lunch. “If they The men are temperamental oppo- an action figure in his own image, want to pay me money and come, fine. If sites. Where Wurman presents himself propped up and ready to fight. Not long they don’t like it, get the fuck out of here! as an iconoclastic oracle, Anderson trades after I’d sat down, he stood—“Come I’ll give them their money back. It’s my in an Oxbridge style of self-deprecation, with me”—and led me to an adjoining dinner party. I am not a smart person. If apologizing for his feeble efforts even as cottage, where the walls were hung with it’s fun for me and interesting to me and he drives his cannons swiftly up the hill. portraits and magazine profiles of Wur- understandable to me, other people have (Anderson took only one call during the man, elegantly laminated. historically found it interesting.” time I spent with him; it was from Mi- To spend time with Wurman, a By the turn of the millennium, though, chael Bloomberg.) When Anderson keen, fast-talking seventy-seven-year- Wurman’s restlessness was catching up speaks, it’s with his gaze cast to one side; old who was trained as an architect, is to with him. “For eighteen years, I did a bet- when he listens, it’s with narrowed eyes enter a world whose careful design, ter version of TED,” he says; he didn’t want and his lips slightly open, as if trying to childlike restlessness, and narrative au- to keep doing it indefinitely. Chris Ander- taste a passing breeze, traits that give him thority feels—for want of a better son was at that moment a publisher—he’d an air of feline circumspection. He wears term—TED-like. He designed much of started out with tech-hobbyist magazines, a lot of vests. the furniture in his house; the grounds in the nineteen-eighties, and subsequently Anderson and Wurman have had a are landscaped to his specifications. Wurman’s attention span operates on TED-like rhythms, with frequent scen- ery changes and breaks, and although an assistant screens his calls, I never saw him turn one down. “I’m sorry—I have a life,” he said at one point, rushing to the nearest phone. At another point, he announced to me that it was the time of day he always feeds his dogs, sprang up, and left the room for several minutes. If you ask him why, given all the things a wealthy and well-connected man could be doing, he has spent four decades or- ganizing conferences, he will look at you as if you asked him why he’s wearing pants. “I’m not an athlete, I’m not an en- tertainer, and I’m not smart,” he says. “I have no skills, I’m abrasive, I can’t type. What would you like me to do?” When Wurman created TED, it ran for four days, at the Monterey Conference Center, and tickets cost four hundred and “You’ll be in charge of the music down here.”
TNY—2012_07_09&16—PAGE 75—133SC.— live art 16678 difficult relationship since the sale. It to TED,” Susan Cain, the introversion ex- mores of academia. Educational lectures reached a nadir in 2006, when, according pert, told me at a buffet one night. She are set at a podium; TED prizes theatrical to Anderson, Wurman scheduled his was doubled over writing her e-mail ad- movement. Academic work relies on E.G. (“Entertainment Gathering”) con- dress on paper scraps, against her thigh. communities of shared premises and in- ference to run concurrently with TED. TED’s attendee list looks like something terpretive habit; TED tries to communi- (The dates were later changed.) Today, a Harvard development officer might cate without those givens. Scholarship they speak about each other with the hallucinate after huffing too much enve- holds objectivity as a virtue; TED aims for mild passive-aggression of two people lope glue. the heart. If the thirties and forties were who have got what they want after a tir- “I was joking last night that if a meteor the golden age of the Great Books pro- ing sortie in divorce court. Wurman is no had hit that party, it would have wiped grams—the tools of a middle class striv- longer invited to Long Beach; when I out forty per cent of the gross national ing toward the academy—TED is a re- asked about the exclusion, Anderson de- product,” someone shouted one evening, course for college-educated adults who scribed him as “a wonderful, quirky ge- in the crowded lobby bar of the Westin, want to close the gap between academic nius” who was prone to excess. “He which TED had taken over. It was ap- thought and the lives they live now. started talking about this idea that the proaching midnight, and Cameron Car- There is, perhaps, an air of wishful- prepared talk was finished—I think his penter, the organist, was playing jazzified ness to that endeavor. Two very different words were, ‘I now must destroy what Chopin on a grand piano. People looked ways of thinking about ideas shape intel- I created’—and, to me, that was not tired and a little drunk; many of them had lectual life today, and TED’s sentimental the most constructive basis on which sunk into the beanbag-chair ocean. Ev- gestures arise from efforts to obscure the to come.” eryone, it gradually emerged, was looking difference between them. One way is to This year, Wurman has a new con- for Jeff Bezos. There are no Ferragamo see ideas as entities that speak for them- ference, WWW.WWW (“The first W suits on display at TED, no dresses by selves, that can be harvested, that inspire stands for World”), which will run in Lanvin, but details like the beanbag chairs and uplift people who handle them— September. It is costing him a million make tangible the conference’s greatest sunflowers of the mind. Research sci- dollars to produce, and its lineup fea- luxury: the opulence of easy access. ence, technology, and business enter- tures several old friends (Frank Gehry, In this respect, TED’s lore is self-sus- prises tend to perceive ideas this way, Herbie Hancock, Yo-Yo Ma, Nicholas taining. Hans Rosling, TED’s luckiest partly because their products are fre- Negroponte), plus some new ones. In- discovery and most influential muse, quently self-contained: the software stead of delivering a prepared talk, par- uses data-set animations, moving bubble works, the vaccine finally exists, and the ticipants will be paired and turned loose graphs that render public-health data as stalk of specialized inquiry that got us for free-form discussion; Wurman will it changes, challenging conventional there no longer matters. (Technology film the talks in black-and-white, and wisdom about the developing world. He demonstrations, or phrases like “One re- the discussions will be available through first brought the animations, which his cent study found”—both key TED- an associated app. There will be only son and daughter-in-law had pro- isms—are essentially sunflower-picking seventy-three ticketed seats. This is an- grammed, to the conference in 2006. exercises.) A sunflower, after all, is a other way of saying that, besides Wur- “After my TED talk, Larry Page from thing that you can carry around for quite man and his chosen speakers, WWW. Google ran up on the stage, looked at some time. Its form and beauty hold after WWW will be a conference with almost it has lost its roots. It can be given to a no people in it. friend or set in a vase to add some sub- stance to a desultory room. oday, TED has a lot of people in it, Yet not all ideas are sunflowers. Some, and their interaction in the corridors particularly on the softer side of the acad- Tand restaurants and parties of Long Beach emy, are more akin to bougainvillea— is the reason for the conference’s strict ad- thick, interlocking vines whose blooms missions policy. The event really begins are shaped much like their leaves. The on the flight into town, where TEDsters most vibrant ideas here depend on prece- find one another en route to the lavatory dent for structure: in order to understand and chat in the aisles until the seat-belt me from top to feet, and said, ‘Who why C is brilliant, you must be aware of A light goes on. It continues in the baggage wrote the code?’ ” Rosling delightedly and B. Most specialists in the university claim, where they say things like “Entre- told me. Within a year, Google had ac- today are trained to think of their fields in preneurship should be taught as a life quired both his software and his son and this way. Of course, bougainvillea flowers skill,” and then on into the taxis, which daughter-in-law. are hard to separate and carry with you. they share to one of the conference’s re- It is easy to dismiss such encounters as Try to “use” an idea from the philosopher served hotels near the water. By the time élite glad-handing. But that would ignore Emmanuel Levinas quickly on a TV talk official events are under way, some of the the peculiar stylistic exchange that makes show, and you’ll confuse many people and most valuable direct-contact information TED so attractive to begin with—espe- irk those who are not confused. This isn’t in America is circulating as if at a fresh- cially for academics like Rosling, who because the viewers are stupid, or because man mixer. “Nobody told me I would were used to limited audiences. By most Levinas’s ideas aren’t useful. It’s because need to bring two hundred business cards measures, TED shapes its style against the their usefulness is clear in a specialized
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TNY—2012_07_09&16—PAGE 76—133SC.—live art R22373M context; beyond that, the blossoms crush and wither. You cannot put a bougainvil- lea flower in a vase. The sunflower people and the bou- gainvillea people come together well enough in universities, but outside— where most of us make our lives—their coexistence is awkward. More Ameri- cans than ever before are taught in school, by specialists, to think about “the world of ideas” in a cumulative, contin- gent sense. (College enrollment in the United States has more than doubled since 1970, over which period academic specialization has intensified, too.) And yet, in the realm of industry, it’s a plug- and-play model of ideas that yields re- wards. What to do? An obvious solution is cross-pollination. TED has been strug- gling with that effort, trying to join the different ways we use and think about ideas, starting at the point of education. (“The heart of the TED idea, I think, is that all of knowledge is connected,” Chris Anderson told me at one point. “People spend a lot of time going very narrow.”) And the success it has encoun- tered is as telling as the criticism. “If you were to visit education as an alien and say, ‘What’s it for, public edu- cation?’ ” Sir Ken Robinson said in a 2006 talk at TED, “I think you’d have to conclude that the whole purpose of pub- lic education throughout the world is to “Hey! You’re pinching me!” produce university professors.” He ar- gued for breaking down the “hierarchy” •• of our traditional system, for letting chil- dren’s strengths and passions, rather than idées fixes about preprofessional training, and louder, and the party began migrat- in Israel, he’d made the national news. shape how they learn. “Our education ing into the aquarium’s dark places. Zoref told me about a woman work- system has mined our minds, in the way Zoref was sitting on a short stool in ing at the registration desk who had that we strip-mine the earth, for a partic- front of a tank. His jeans and red shirt praised his presentation. “She started to ular commodity,” he told the audience. It glowed in the aquariums’ fluorescent think about her life, about her dreams, was a resonant point. Robinson’s lecture light; the wall behind him was modelled about her aspirations, and she told me, had an exceptional viewership when it to look like the inside of a cave. I asked ‘Hey, Lior, you made me think, and I first appeared on TED.com. Today, it is him how he felt. “They gave me a DVD,” called my son and I talked about it, and the most viewed TED talk of all time. he said. “I watched it, and I felt like, yeah.” we’re going to do things differently.’ ” He closed his eyes slowly, as if trying Zoref sighed, a sigh of multiple re- n the last night of the conference, I to recall the feeling. Zoref ’s talk had liefs. After a while, he added, “I was so caught up with Zoref at the Long seemed in danger of running slightly happy to see that the image I had before, BeachO aquarium, where dinner was being overtime, and Cohen had wandered on- just from watching the videos and imag- served. A gigantic model of a blue whale stage to nudge him toward his ending, ining what it would look like, was true.” was suspended over the main gallery; up- but he appeared not to care about the lit- Beside him, brightly colored fish were stairs, air mattresses covered with fitted tle snafu. He had earned his standing circling—purple queen anthias and lyre- sheets and pillows were spread among ovation. He had been congratulated by tail fairy basslets and thicklip wrasses— the fish tanks, giving the dim walkways a people whom he never thought he’d and, in the dark, the glow of their tank tincture of louche decadence. As the eve- meet. (“The director of DARPA came to spilled out sideways and against his ning wore on and the drinks flowed, me, hugged me, kissed me, and told me face, like moonlight. “I was even more groups of talking TEDsters grew bigger this was an amazing talk,” he said.) Back impressed in real life,” he said.
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