And the final TED morning….And again it didn’t disappoint in terms of highlights and amazing things to think about.

 TED Curator, Chris Anderson, started the morning with a quote that will live with me for a long time: “I’m
not sure if the pessimists or the optimists are right but I know damn
sure that it is the optimists that will get something done about it”

Statistician/Analyst
Alex Tabarrok gave a very compelling and extremely intelligent analysis
of why globalisation is a great thing for the planet, and a brilliant
thing for the development of great ideas. It was big zag from the usual
zig on globalisation. And he was very very persuasive. He goes into
this in a lot more detail at marginalrevolution.com

He
showed us some pretty amazing graphs to show that the growth periods
after the great depression outstripped by miles even the most confident
and optimistic growth analysis predictions from the 1920’s. Basically
his point was that growth washes away depression.

 Then
the truly brilliant Dan Ariely took us through why we should definitely
not trust our hunches and intuitions. A very good talk, perfect balance
of pathos and intelligence based upon personal experience as a serious
burn victim analysing whether to pull bandages quickly or slowly! He
was hugely fascinating on the subject of cheating – why we do it, what
makes us to do it, what makes us stop doing it and then how these rules
apply to what’s been going on in the stock market recently. He has a
lot more at predictablyirrational.com  And his great book on the topic “Predictably Irrational”

 Then
the ever amazing and truly jaw-dropping Nicholas Negreponte showed us
the next part of his $100 laptop project. Worth getting involved in.

TED, Palm Springs, as seen by Google Earth.

And
finally one of the most fascinating speakers of the whole four days,
Bruce Buenode-Mesquita, talked us through how Game Theory can be used
with 90% more accuracy than standard diplomatic/political analysis to
predict the outcome of international political events. I was a bit
sceptical too, but he is worth a read/listen. And if you are worried
about Iran and the nuclear bomb, don’t be. He reckons with 90% accuracy
that it is all going to be fine! For more info go here.

 So, what an amazing four days.  Lots
of new friends made. Huge amounts of business cards collected. And lots
of great connections to follow up. Bankrupt from the amount of books
bought at the TED Book Store. If you ever get the chance to go to this
event, go. It is truly brilliant.

 Oh,
and final mention to the man I met in the queue for a cab at the
resort. Jason Hackenwerth, balloon guy – he’s made them for kings and vagabonds, and he’s
been on Blue Peter and he made this absolutely amazing thing that has
been sitting in the TED@PalmSprings room for the last four days.

Third
full day of massively inspirational and scarily clever people
assaulting our minds with very very interesting shit. Again, far too
much to detail but some stuff does stick out

Started the
day with a massively fascinating deconstruction of the origins of the
character of the Wizard of Oz from Evan Schwartz.

Turns out
that the Wizard was a hybrid of the four corners of the American
character: Greed (Rockefeller), Imagination (Edison), Deception (PT
Barnum) and Potential (Kananda). Truly brilliant. No idea how he
crammed this into three minutes

Then the
author of “Between the Earth and the Sky”, Nalini Nadkarni gave us an
amazing journey through what trees are, what they represent and the
incredible eco-system that is the upper canopy. Lots of supercool
stuff, but Treetop Barbie will be what sticks in my mind! And the
amazing project stuff she and her team are doing – especially Sound
Science & Green Prison Reform Project. More at the International Canopy Network.

Bonnie
Bassler then made my head spin with her incredible work understanding
and analysing what she calls the “harmless beautiful bacterium”. She
and her team have worked out the universal language of bacteria, how
they communicate within their own and outside their own species and
also managed to understand their collective intelligence and behaviour
patterns. Er, wow. And wow. They talk to each other (seriously), they
have their own languages, they understand the me & the we, and they
build communities. Fore more, see here.

Then the
Indiana Jones of Viruses™, Nathan Wolfe managed to make test-tubes
cool. He also introduced us all to a new concept – Surface
Parochialism – the fallacy humans have that they should just look for life on
other planets rather than within other planets! And also why not look
for Alien life within our rocks and within our planet rather than look
for it extra-terrestrial? A scarily clever man

Oh, er, what
else. Evan Willams (CEO of Twitter) came on stage to chat through some
of the cooler parts of where they are going next. And was promptly
deluged by about 3 billion tweets.

“When you give people easier ways to communicate with each other then great things will happen”. Well said Evan.

Then some
pretty fascinating and thought-provoking stuff from the guy who is
trying to get everyone into Vertical Farming – Dickson Despommier.
Worth a look.

David Merrill
from MIT then showed us the coolest, greatest, most impressive, most
sexy and definitely most marketable concept in computing I have seen in
10 years.

The “Siftable” Check. It. Out

This guy was pretty awesome. Scary and mental, but awesome. He jumps off things. A lot.  

The truly brilliant Mary Roach took us through the ten things you didn’t know about the orgasm.

Some for me were:

1. the dead can have them
2. you don’t need genitals to have them
3. they can cure hiccups
4. you had them in the womb

And everyone
at some point in their lives should get her to narrate you through the
video she has of a Danish farmer sexually stimulating the clitoris of a
pig. I mean it. Who said TED was just about clever people being clever?
You can also get videos of people whacking off pork.

The day ended
with one of the most remarkable human beings I’ve ever seen – Lena
Maria Klingvall A multi-awarded swimmer, international singing star,
calligrapher, aspiring truck driver & painter. All so far so not
very impressive until you find out she was born with no arms, and only
one formed leg. She was amazing. And treated us to some pretty
incredible and inspirational stuff.

She grew up with the following motto:

“Whatever I want to do I can do, whatever I want to be I can be, wherever I want to go I can go”

The day was topped off with a few tracks from Herbie Hancock.

Tired. Emotional. Drained. Inspired. Scared. Hopeful. and that was also off the back of two hours sleep.