TED’s Idea Worth Spreading: Stay Home

Photo caption: This year’s TED was full of after-hours opportunities for attendees to connect with speakers, and each other, remotely. PHOTOGRAPH: RYAN LASH/TED (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Article by Steven Levy.

Plus: Early accounts from Vancouver, the endless surprises of tech journalism, and a new low for the White House.

The Plain View

I had really been looking forward to attending TED in Vancouver this past April. Despite its occasional bombast, the annual exchange of “ideas worth spreading” always seems to win me over by the end of the week. Inevitably, my brain gets softened by a rapid-fire succession of painstakingly honed, high-stakes talks, where speakers pour their hearts out to win internet glory, fat book contracts, and recruits to their intellectual causes. The TED bubble is also a grand social experience, meeting old friends and bumping into the likes of Cher and Al Gore for highfalutin chit chat. I’d missed attending for the last two years while working on a book, and wanted my fix. […]

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