Why I love TED talks

Recently, Jeff Jarvis’ post on how the ‘one to many’ format of Ted talks is ‘bullshit’ caused a bit of a ‘hear hear’ reaction online. His point is that the educational system has not changed to accommodate the “crowdly” influence of the web,  that the lecture format where one person speaks and the rest of us listens no longer makes sense, because today we’re ‘many to many’, ‘co-creators’ of knowledge.

Most of us agree that the educational system desperately need to change, but why attack TED’s format? This seems like a cheap shot, dragging a great name into the mud just to gain a bit ofattention.Most of us agree that the educational system desperately need to change, but why attack TED’s format? This seems like a cheap shot, dragging a great name into the mud just to gain a bit of attention.

I love the new models that the web promise for learning, collaboration, sharing and what not. But even if having a presence online means that I am now a creator, a collaborator, a co-creator, a web maniac, whatever you like, I sometimes also like to just listen and digest.

That’s why I still love the one-to-many format. It works for music. It works for literature. It works on YouTube, on blogs and… it works on TED.

Surfing the TED site is a bit like going apple picking – I reach for the ones I’d really like to chew into, the juicy, ripe ones and leave the rest hanging behind for some other time. TED is doing a fantastic job of putting interesting people with stories to tell on the podium for us to enjoy.

A true gem I found on TED recently is Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the best seller Eat, Pray, Love, talk on nurturing creativity:

If you’re working in an industry like mine, finding inspiration is key to staying creative and generating ideas. We can’t get our things done without having ideas, small or big ones, or contributing something to better other people’s ideas. Without ideas we’ve got nothing to work with and pretty soon, we’ll be heading towards the dry shore where fate awaits us like stranded & anxious fail whales.

In her talk, Elizabeth reflects on the notion of ‘geniuses’ – people who unlike the rest of us don’t go looking for ideas externally but ‘own’ them as if they were an internal phenomena, attached to their spirit from birth.

But in the past, creativity was thought to come from”divine” powers – not from the self. Elizabeth claims that defining genius as being embodied rather than disembodied is an enormous mistake:

“Allowing somebody, like one mere person, to believe that she or he is like the vessel, like the font, the essence and the source of all divine creative unknowable eternal mystery is just like a smidgen too much responsibility to put on one fragile human psyche. It’s like asking someone to swallow the sun”.

She challenges the notion that ideas and creativity come from people:

“Maybe if you don’t believe that the most extraordinary aspect of your being came from you, but maybe if you believe that they are on loan to you, from some unimaginable sort for some exquisite portion of your life to be passed on when you’re finished to somebody else – maybe this will change everything”.

That’s how the American poet Ruth Stone sees it. She never owned any of her poems, they owned her. She’d feel poems pass by her like thunder storms, looking for a vessel to bring them alive. If she didn’t get to a pen and paper fast enough, the words would race by her, searching for another available poet… c’est la vie…

Elizabeth is an amazing speaker – listening to her is a joy. She’s so effortless, so engaging and eloquent that you just want to hear more and more. Go on, just click on the video above and check it out… and if you’ve got a great talk to share don’t be afraid to put it in the comments below!