Ideas worth spreading

TED is an annual conference that "brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)." The mission of TED is to spread powerful ideas. One of the ways they do this is by posting videos of the talks on their website.

{1} What makes TED talks so great?

(i) The subjects of the talks are powerful ideas. They are "ideas worth spreading". They are of that special type of idea that changes the world and will continue to change it. They are meaningful to many different people in many different contexts, with far reaching applications. Example: Barry Shwartz talks about "The Paradox of Choice". He says Western society tends to assume that more choice leads to better lives. But Shwartz gives compelling evidence that too much choice makes us miserable. Sociologists, psychologists, designers should all find this work relevent...so should all people who make choices in their daily lives.

(ii) Not only are the TED talk ideas WORTH spreading, but they are SPREADABLE. Many ideas aren't very spreadable. Most ideas aren't even valuable. Many of those that are of value are too difficult to explain - they may require too much background knowledge, they may be too boring to get someone interested, they may not even be completely understood enough to easily communicate them well. TED talks have the property that you can summarize the talk in a simple and intuitive way that still captures the power of the idea behind the talk.
For example, the point of Sir Ken Robinson's talk is that children are born creative. They all have natural, unique talents. But schools educate them out of their natural creativity. Schools force conformity rather than helping kids to discover their talents. So... schools should STOP killing creativity, and we should aid children in discovering, utilizing and enjoying their natural talents. With only five sentences and I just explained the meat of Sir Ken's talk. Of course there's more. Sir Robinson gives wonderful stories and examples to make his point... these not only serve to support and elucidate his idea but they make his talk engaging and entertaining.


(iii)
The final important aspect is that the ideas are shared. They post the talk online under Creative Commons. People love them, or sometimes hate them, but I suspect they are almost always moved in some way by them. The powerful idea behind sharing powerful ideas it that powerful ideas breed powerful ideas & powerful action, hopefully ideas and action that makes the world a better place.

{2} Beyond TED talks.

The secret to TED talks is simple
(i) get some very smart people to generate powerful ideas
(ii) make sure the ideas lend themselves to being communicated clearly and in an engaging way
(iii) communicate them (e.g. free podcasts under a creative commons license)

If a "TED talk" is anything that realizes i-iii, we could ask:
1. What other content should have "TED talks"?
2. How and where can we funnel the engagement initiated by "TED talks"?