Getting Informed

Have you heard of TED? It is a national program of short televised speeches and conversations held regularly. The program’s purpose is simple: Ideas Worth Spreading.

Get on the internet and go to Ted.com. You will get the idea of what they are about.

Originally TED stood for: technology, entertainment, design. If you think about these three terms you will conclude eventually that all three are present in just about all other manmade elements of life. Whether medicine, technology, invention, housing, welfare or whatever, the convergence of technology with both entertainment and design – and vice versa – calls our brains into active creation and collaboration. We create ideas. We share those ideas. Others use those ideas. They create new things from those ideas. They share their work and new discoveries and inventions quickly follow.

In a nutshell that’s TED. Look it up on the internet. View some of the videos. Get a sense of how they organize the topics and supporting programs so you can follow any number of interests that are near and dear to your heart. You’ll be glad you did.

At our home we subscribe to Netflix and bought a video streamer which connects our TV with our computer. The Ted programs are downloaded from the computer to the streamer, and the streamer loads each program we wish to see to our TV. Endless streaming of TED speeches and presentations are thus available to us. And we view them with some regularity.

Want to discover how to cook nutritious meals for four people for less than 10 dollars in less than 10 minutes? Look up Shawna Coronado. She’ll tell you how to do it. We were present for her taping. And she has a complete series of programs to help you plant home gardens to feed the family and the hungry. And how to use the produce from the garden to be practical and useful.

Want to understand the latest discussion on quarks, or muons or any number of particle physics topics? Tune in to TED. How about how to think with more clarity using technology and entertainment standards? Or how about realizing that educational process moves in a molecular fashion from song lyrics and imagery to electronic art?

Do you imagine things? How do you communicate those imaginings? How are others to understand your ideas, and you theirs? Art. Technology. Music. Drama settings. Movies. Poetry, visual arts and performing arts. Synapses in the brain. Synapses communicating with other synapses. Brains to brains. People to people. Intercultural communities with others who don’t speak the same language. How do they pass understanding among them?

TED knows. You need to know about TED. Check out the website and get started. You’ll be amazed. We were. Still are.

March 15, 2013