TED Conferences Wraps With 2009 Awards

The most awesome annual gathering of activist brainiacs, social entrepreneurs and technology geeks is the TED Conference. The event is known for its TED Talks, where featured geniuses present their best stuff in front of audiences of adoring attendees. This is definitely the polar opposite of "dumb-and-dumber." And it is so gratifying to see mental labor, art and music celebrated in this manner at this forum. After years of anti-intellectual bullshit and hordes of nasty illiterates at our heels, this stuff is druid fluid, thick Meade for the mind. Soulfood.

The best videos The Author has watched are the result of this effort and these conferences. Dedicated by mission to "Ideas worth spreading...," as of January 2009, talks were viewed over 90 million times by more than 15 million people, according to Wikipedia. Now that's bandwidth. You're probably already following the conference and have seen one or more TED Talk videos, but you may not yet know that the 2009 TED Award winners are Oceanographer and scientist Sylvia Earle, Jill Tarter, and, Jose Antonio Abreu. You can watch Al Gore make the awards at this site.

The post will conclude with a musical performance video from this year's conference featuring The Author's favorite Cape Breton Fiddle Player, Natalie MacMaster. Enjoy!




TED
Natalie MacMaster
Ideas