“TED is Christmas morning for the mind,” says Richard Saul Wurman, 80, whose curiosity about the convergence of technology, entertainment and design (i.e., TED) back in 1984 led to the first TED conference.
Thirty years later, more than 1,800 TED talks (ted.com) have been viewed 2.5 billion times, on topics from bionic limbs to body language. (Wurman sold TED to the nonprofit Sapling Foundation in 2001; since then, local TEDx events also have sprung up).
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“Google was announced there; the Macintosh computer was first seen there,” Wurman says. “There was that American spirit about it.”
Brené Brown, sociologist and author of the Aug. 25 release Rising Strong (Random House) whose 2010 TED talk on the power of vulnerability hit 20 million views, says TED is uniquely American: “It’s about being asked to do something uncomfortable in the service of curiosity and conversation—not in the service of your work, of money, of politics or of religion.”
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