Within minutes of Alain de Botton announced before a packed audience in Edinburgh that secularism is necessary to learn the lessons of religion and reintroduce the concept of sermon, Chris Anderson, director of TED, needed to fill a few minutes and asked the questions from the floor. "TED is a new religion?" Someone asked. "I can answer that," he said quickly. "Absolutely not."
And yet, TED has brought back the concept of the sermon - 18 minutes of talks given by experts in their fields absolute. Five years ago, when YouTube started, is supposed to be where he was looking for cats that look like Hitler, or people falling off skateboards, but TED Talks, with short digressions on everything from neuroscience to creativity, held only 500 visitors on the site. At the end of next year, that figure is expected to reach one billion. In the month that the News of the World folded, Anderson has shown that there is enormous untapped appetite and largely the real news of the real world.
But then, as the media moguls go, it's about as far from the president of News Corp as you can imagine. He founded and made his fortune with not one but two media empires - first with Future Publishing, Bath-based company he founded in the 1980's exploding appetite for computer and hobby magazines, and later in U.S. with Imagine Media, which once had 130 titles and 1,500 employees - but is in many aspects of the anti-Murdoch. Among other things because, apart from anything else, few people have heard of him.
However, as the owner of TED and its self-proclaimed "conservative," has become a kind of global "meister ideas." Appearing at a TED conference, and over 70 speakers last week at TEDGlobal in Edinburgh, can have a transformative effect on an academic career. "We tried our speakers seem to rock stars," says June Cohen, director of TED Talks. To a large extent, they succeed. A talk by Ken Robinson, a rather obscure anyone's standards, a professor of Liverpool's old art education at the University of Warwick, has seen eight million times.
Is it a religion, though? Not yet, although it has its rituals - conference attendees to check their cynicism at the door, standing ovations at TED seem, at times, as obligatory acts of obedience rather than spontaneous moments of gratitude - and not far from Botton's description of the Catholic Church: "collaboration, multinational companies, brand and very disciplined." Anderson himself is the son of missionary parents, born in Pakistan and educated in India. No, he says, "a series of doing good," but Bruno Giussani, European Director of TED TEDGlobal scheduled, says he can not hide their nature optimistic.
Giussani TED got his job after sending an e-mail Anderson of nothing suggesting that some speakers. "He responded within minutes. It says a lot about Chris.'s Just very open to new ideas. Make decisions quickly and has the courage to do things that others do not," says Giussani.
Things like the decision in 2005 to reveal the contents for free. For what is most remarkable TED and its transformation into an international media and a global force for the diffusion of knowledge is that it happened almost by accident. When Anderson bought TED in 2001 on behalf of Sapling Foundation not for profit, it was more like a supper club of elite to masters of the universe.
It was the place where Bill Gates came to rub shoulders with Al Gore and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and the annual conference of California has yet to feel. It is not cheap: the 850 attendees had paid almost TEDGlobal £ 4,000 each. But in 2005, Anderson listened to their speakers - people who had spoken of the Creative Commons and how the Internet can be a force for good - and put all the online conversations.
"TED 800 went from once a year, half a million each day in an incredibly short space of time," says Anderson. "And instead of destroying the business model, which is what many people believe, because it is essentially giving away the crown jewels, which actually increases as more people have heard of it."
Online video, he says, is the beginning of a revolution. He calls it "a multitude of accelerated learning" and its latest initiative, TED Ed, it's about creating a database of educational resources that can be used in any classroom in the world.
"Thanks be to God has not gone to his head," said John Lloyd, the veteran producer of the comedy Blackadder and co-creator of the MC, who was in Edinburgh this week. Anderson called him in 2005 and asked if he would speak in the first TEDGlobal.
"Of course I had never heard of him, but he liked immediately thought it was brilliant and now TED has become as Comic Relief: .. If you get a call, you can not say no." The old media is in crisis, says Lloyd. "Television just assumes people are stupid, but if you're motivated there all these incredible things out there. Mobility is where it's intellectual, rather than social mobility. And in this the power of TED is almost limitless. You kick ass. "
And yet, TED has brought back the concept of the sermon - 18 minutes of talks given by experts in their fields absolute. Five years ago, when YouTube started, is supposed to be where he was looking for cats that look like Hitler, or people falling off skateboards, but TED Talks, with short digressions on everything from neuroscience to creativity, held only 500 visitors on the site. At the end of next year, that figure is expected to reach one billion. In the month that the News of the World folded, Anderson has shown that there is enormous untapped appetite and largely the real news of the real world.
But then, as the media moguls go, it's about as far from the president of News Corp as you can imagine. He founded and made his fortune with not one but two media empires - first with Future Publishing, Bath-based company he founded in the 1980's exploding appetite for computer and hobby magazines, and later in U.S. with Imagine Media, which once had 130 titles and 1,500 employees - but is in many aspects of the anti-Murdoch. Among other things because, apart from anything else, few people have heard of him.
However, as the owner of TED and its self-proclaimed "conservative," has become a kind of global "meister ideas." Appearing at a TED conference, and over 70 speakers last week at TEDGlobal in Edinburgh, can have a transformative effect on an academic career. "We tried our speakers seem to rock stars," says June Cohen, director of TED Talks. To a large extent, they succeed. A talk by Ken Robinson, a rather obscure anyone's standards, a professor of Liverpool's old art education at the University of Warwick, has seen eight million times.
Is it a religion, though? Not yet, although it has its rituals - conference attendees to check their cynicism at the door, standing ovations at TED seem, at times, as obligatory acts of obedience rather than spontaneous moments of gratitude - and not far from Botton's description of the Catholic Church: "collaboration, multinational companies, brand and very disciplined." Anderson himself is the son of missionary parents, born in Pakistan and educated in India. No, he says, "a series of doing good," but Bruno Giussani, European Director of TED TEDGlobal scheduled, says he can not hide their nature optimistic.
Giussani TED got his job after sending an e-mail Anderson of nothing suggesting that some speakers. "He responded within minutes. It says a lot about Chris.'s Just very open to new ideas. Make decisions quickly and has the courage to do things that others do not," says Giussani.
Things like the decision in 2005 to reveal the contents for free. For what is most remarkable TED and its transformation into an international media and a global force for the diffusion of knowledge is that it happened almost by accident. When Anderson bought TED in 2001 on behalf of Sapling Foundation not for profit, it was more like a supper club of elite to masters of the universe.
It was the place where Bill Gates came to rub shoulders with Al Gore and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and the annual conference of California has yet to feel. It is not cheap: the 850 attendees had paid almost TEDGlobal £ 4,000 each. But in 2005, Anderson listened to their speakers - people who had spoken of the Creative Commons and how the Internet can be a force for good - and put all the online conversations.
"TED 800 went from once a year, half a million each day in an incredibly short space of time," says Anderson. "And instead of destroying the business model, which is what many people believe, because it is essentially giving away the crown jewels, which actually increases as more people have heard of it."
Online video, he says, is the beginning of a revolution. He calls it "a multitude of accelerated learning" and its latest initiative, TED Ed, it's about creating a database of educational resources that can be used in any classroom in the world.
"Thanks be to God has not gone to his head," said John Lloyd, the veteran producer of the comedy Blackadder and co-creator of the MC, who was in Edinburgh this week. Anderson called him in 2005 and asked if he would speak in the first TEDGlobal.
"Of course I had never heard of him, but he liked immediately thought it was brilliant and now TED has become as Comic Relief: .. If you get a call, you can not say no." The old media is in crisis, says Lloyd. "Television just assumes people are stupid, but if you're motivated there all these incredible things out there. Mobility is where it's intellectual, rather than social mobility. And in this the power of TED is almost limitless. You kick ass. "
TOP TOPICS AT TEDGLOBAL
Are algorithms over the world?
Yes, quite possibly, says game designer Kevin Slavin. The world has become a place where algorithms to fight each other for supremacy. He cites the example of "Flash Crash" last year when, at 14:42 on May 6, 9% of the Dow Jones just died, "and nobody knew where he was." It's just a lot of computational algorithms battling against a host of other computer algorithms, without the mediation of man. Who's who runs this world we live in? Nobody.
Why does the world need an Internet police force
Forget about teenage hackers, there are all the criminal networks that is dedicated to stealing bank details and take over your computer. According to Mikko Hypponen, a cybersecurity expert from Finland, are impossible to find, and even if found, the local police tend to act. We need an Internet Interpol says, and back up safely and securely. The dust of your fax machine, he says, just in case.
It is "Facebookistan" the most powerful country on the planet?
Rebecca MacKinnon of Global Voices network of international online bloggers said it is starting to act like one. Private companies, she said, are beginning to behave like governments. Censorship is being applied or the response to the requests of the schemes and the creation of what she calls "a new layer of private sovereignty." In the old days, there were nation-states in the new world order, there are supranational corporations exercise power without restraint. We have to exert pressure, he says, a "consent of the network."
Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
No, a flying car, although according to one of the engineers who worked on it, Anna Mracek Dietrich is not so much a car that flies like a plane that drives. However, the transition is a "light sport airplane roadable" and will be in a store near you executive jet late next year. It is perhaps the most technologically advanced ever, but apparently is out of Thunderbirds and is almost certainly inspired an episode of Top Gear coming to a TV near you soon.
Watch out for the next big thing
Technology does not necessarily mean progress, according to writer Malcolm Gladwell. As U.S. drones have become more accurate and efficient, the Afghan people more angry, he says, the casualties have increased tenfold. New inventions are merely new inventions, but not necessarily going to save us from ourselves.
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