Do you feel as if the world is one Wayne LaPierre catchphrase away from complete self-destruction? There’s a TED Talk for that. Do you need to be reminded that somewhere a child is working to prevent cancer rather than sexting? There’s a TED Talk for that. Do you ever wonder what, in the end, PowerPoint is actually good for? There are a lot of TED Talks for that.
I tend to hold conflicting ideas about the future simultaneously: Everything’s going to be amazing because of the Singularity, nanorobots, and iPhone 9. And everything’s going to be Mad Max because of peak oil and climate change, and because we still know who Donald Trump is.
In late February, I traveled to Long Beach, California, to attend the event behind all those inspiring web videos. It was my first time. TED’s slogan, as you may know, is “Ideas worth spreading,” and damn if it doesn’t deliver. Some highlights from my experience:
The Children Are the Future, and I Am Old, Lazy, and Probably Stupid.
My faith in Generation Whatever-Comes-After-Y has been bolstered. Kenyan teenager Richard Turere built an automated security system to keep lions from devouring his family’s livestock (#firstworldproblems #amiright!?). Thiel fellow Taylor Wilson, 18, said to himself, “I’m going to design a new, safer, more efficient nuclear reactor,” and then did it. And Jack Andraka, 16, funneled his anger about pancreatic cancer (which took a family friend) into something positive: He bucked the prevailing wisdom to develop a protein-based blood test that is orders of magnitude faster, more effective, and less expensive than the current option–all while dealing with homework, parents, and puberty.
