TED

I’ve known about the TED talks for several months and even saw a couple of them before one of my roommates got married.  But I wasn’t keen in keeping up with it.  The talks that I watched tended to be focused on the latest technology and its effect on society.  Now, I’m not against that; I find that sort of stuff fascinating.  But… I’ve never been quick to get the latest gadget.  I’m still on only the third cell phone in my life, and this is the first one I’ve had with a camera on it.  Never owned an iPod or mp3 player.  The most recent game system I had was a Playstation 2 and I sold it so I wouldn’t have any more distractions than necessary while I was in school (boy, do I miss it, though.)  Even in school, most of the court reporting students have a new paperless Wave machine and their CaseCat software, whereas I make do with my Stentura Protégé with its paper tray and the free DigiCat software (this means nothing to the rest of you, but long story short, I’m not up-to-date.)

I wasn’t interested in TED.

This past week, though, I was looking for new things to practice and on a whim, I went to www.ted.com and was blown away.

What TED does is present talks from speakers in all walks of life and they will talk about their programs, careers, agendas or lifestyles, both business and personal.  It’s a fascinating array.  Some talks are better than others, but some of the stuff is plain cool.

There were talks on the value of teaching children to code, structure for families, the ethics in treating HIV, the personal lives of fashion models, and news reporting in war-torn countries.

The coolest part is that they upload a new talk every day.  It’s incredible.  As of this writing, I have just finished Fahad Al-Attiyah’s speech on his home, Qatar.  Qatar’s economy is growing at a steady 15% a year, a population of over one million, and all without water.  Seriously, they have a two-day supply total of water for their nation, and since there’s virtually no farming happening, most of their food is imported.

This is unheard of, nay, undreamed of.  If anything is proof that we live in a time of great wonders, a country that is not only surviving but thriving in a land of no resources is it.  That talk goes over briefly how that is possible.

But the one that made a great impression on me was Leslie Morgan Steiner’s, “Why Domestic Violence Victims Don’t Leave.”  A talk on personal experience with her first husband and some discomforting facts and statistics about domestic abuse, this helped answer one of my great questions that I have had.  Why don’t they leave the bad situation?  How did they get caught in that trap?  It was illuminating and her solution was to get the information out to everybody in the world, to be open about it.  The main reason I decided to do this post is that it’s my own small way of getting that message out.  If you listen to no other talks on Ted, check this one out.  It’s worth it.