The sexiness of TED and its dangers
Everyone knows intelligence is sexy. Which, I guess, makes intellectual stimulation of the kind TED offers in Long Beach this week the ultimate in arousal. Now, I'm a little worried about my brain. You see, in the normal course of everyday life, my brain is likely to get aroused by an amazing idea or story once a month, if I’m lucky. Some months can come and go with it getting no mind action at all. But, this is TED and I’m not sure my brain can tolerate being subjected to a sustained and intense level of intelligent stimulation over four days. And in a theatre full of equally aroused thinkers and doers. What will they be thinking? What might they end up doing? Is Long Beach about to become the planet’s largest intellectual erogenous zone? Could one of those brainy neuroscientists please bring his live action MRI scanners and monitor the activity of the signals from the room? Merge the data, make it into a Google Earth kind of display, play it live on YouTube, beam it into space to make contact with intelligent life out there…Oh, I don’t know. I think I’m losing the plot even before we get started. See, what did I tell you? My brain is out of practice. Maybe TED should come with a health warning like you see at the end of those late night commercials: “If arousal lasts longer than 4 hours call your doctor”. While we're on new ideas, could we put sensors in our TED badges which bleep and flash when we come within 10 meters of one of our top 10 matches. That way could find each other way faster than browsing the room, looking over the shoulders of the person we're talking to. Just a thought. Taghi Amirani TED Fellow 2009 http://www.ted.com/index.php/profiles/view/id/81645
