Headline, January04, 2014

''' ENVYING TED'S : 

TECHNOLOGY​-ENTERTAIN​MENT-

DESIG​N ^PAGEANT! '''

The plain truth is that the annual networking session of America's nerd elite has become the world's most important talking shop  A model, that has sent the world into spasms of envy..

The rarefied observation is that technology, entertainment and design conference, is now the global power summit for the new:  super-wealthy,

tech-savvy, hyper connected intelligentsia.

TED conference   -an acronym derived from technology, entertainment and design  -rather regularly since it became a dotcom-era phenomenon.

The question often posed is that : Is it a compelling, blessed-out, incredibly pleasurable and efficient way to learn about all kinds of new and valuable stuff that could change the world and that you yourself might be able to make money from?

Or is it an example of lots of self-satisfied and cringe-inducing people drinking a very heady soft drink, all the more potent because they will have paid almost £4,000 for the privilege of drinking it.

These two views may in fact describe the same thing, and neither may be point. What the point is, is that if you are a certain kind of a person, if you see yourself as a certain kind   -the nature of which we will define more and more, you have to be at TED.

What then is TED?  -TED is a little like going to  university. It puts the imprimatur on who you are   -or what you want to be.

 The above and what follows is the brilliance of a great writer. So,read on.... ''Before I get to the nature of the new American intelligentsia, and the specific nature of TED, let me briefly explain the nature of a technology conference.

People who work in the technology business may not be more socially inept than people in other businesses but they certainly think they are and certainly appear to be. The symptoms can hardly be missed; the lack of eye contact, the poor dressing-

The tendency to lecture rather than converse, the decided lack of a sex vibe. It is a key aspect of the business, the social insecurity of the people in it, along with their often quiet desperate desire to compensate for it.

And it is not just people in the technology business who tend to be insular, but companies too,   -corporate life consists of everybody holing up in their cubicles, or on their Silicon Valley campus, interacting through interactive technology.

Curiously, the technology business, so averse to personal contact, needs it so much more than other businesses.

In other industries you have time to make relationships, say in country clubs or on golf courses. In the technology business you could well start a business and sell it within a year  -with no time at all for golf or other recreation.

So everything in tech land has to be speeded up, including how you meet, get to know, and go into business with someone.

Hence, early on, a conference   -ideally in a remote location where nerds inescapably come face-to-face with each other  -became the social and career engine of the technology world.

Pam Alexander, a legendary tech PR woman, built a almost exclusively devouted to getting her clients to the right conferences  =and the right tables at the right conference  -which she sold for a reported £50 million to Ogilvy.

But TED, which launched first in 1984, and then became an annual event from 1990, was always a little different. It was a pageant of nerdiness, in a sense combining the key forms of nerd social life: summer camp, talent show and adult education class.

In 2010, Physicists competed with juggling acts. Magicians with New Yorker writers. Qunicy Jones followed Richard Dawkins  -who gave one of his first talks about atheism at TED. Cellist Yo-Yo-Ma shared a stage with superstring theorist Brian Greene.

This Super Honour Post continues:

With respectful dedication to Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Many thanks and much obliged for your excellence in all round support to !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' !!! The Spontaneous Expression Of Destiny !!! '''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless