Headline, January06, 2014

''' !!! FOR WHOM THE BELLS 

TOLL !!! '''

As it happened, the treacly Anderson, who immediately dubbed himself TED's  ''curator'' , turned out to be as much of a hustler and showman as the voluble Wurman.

Anderson's tonal shift, from coolness to earnestness, became a palliative relief to the suddenly dead dotcom culture. 

Al Gore appeared at TED, reinventing himself as the global-warming saviour, and making TED an official stop on everybody's save-the-world tour.

Bono is, of course, a frequent TED conference attendee. 

If Wurman was an old-fashioned impresario, it became clearer and clearer that Anderson was an extremely up-to-date marketeer. Wurman had a club.

But,.... but Anderson understood he had a brand, with inevitable brand extensions. The world watched with utter fascination as TED became no longer just a sort of rump gathering of elite and entitled, but a place that conferred status in itself:

I am going to TED. Will I see you at TED? Yes, I heard that at TED. Oh, you don't go to TED?.....................hmmmm, I see. 

Where TED had once been made up of insiders, now it invited people to become insiders by coming to TED.

What's more, Anderson expanded the size of the California conference from 700 to more than a thousand   -plus a high-definition simulcast in Palm Springs.

Added  off-shoot conferences in India and Oxford; instituted the TED prize, a £65,000 annual award to world-class do-gooders. Winners include Jamie Oliver, Dave Eggers and President Bill Clinton.

Levered the TED talks out over virtually every available platform, including iPhone; and has bought an ever increasing rooster of blue-chip sponsors.

TED isn't just an event now, but a network of influence. Whatever you are selling will be sold better if you get it mentioned at TED. 

The new American intelligentsia is a fragile notion. It does not so much involve, as it used to, universities, well-known intellectuals or clear political points of view.

It's an insecure state, trying to be intelligent in the face of technology you don't understand and a future that seems constantly compromised by the very people it was thought were the real smart guys   -dotcomers or financial geniuses.

This has fostered a new earnestness that Anderson has tapped into. We want to get ahead, and get more rich, yet do it more gently.

Not so many years ago, many of us would have looked at this yearning for direction as a media opportunity. A new voice for a new Zeitgeist. A new magazine perhaps. Notably, Wired magazine was introduced at TED by Louis Rossetto and James Metcalfe, in 1992.

But in a sense what has happened is that TED itself has become the magazine   -curiously of a kind that is so old-fashioned that no one would publish it any more.

TED is a magazine whose subject matter ranges widely  -much too widely,  we might have assumed, for our special-interest age, it proposes to educate its audience   -often in a rather preachy way, it wants to instruct its readers about the big thinkers of the time.

It wants to create a model of behavior, and class, and savoir-faire. It offers a shared experience, it defines you.

If you go to TED you know who you are, and others do too.

''Every year,'' says the author, ''around November and December, I start to get the calls: do you know how I can get into TED, they say it's sold out?

I don't. And it is. But maybe you can get into the simulcast room in Palm Springs.''   

With respectful dedication to the Students,Professors and Teachers of Canada. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' World Class In The Making '''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless