David Bolinsky's Talk at TED2007

Ford Motor Company's CEO pushed the world to move beyond cars. An innovative educator suggested teachers mix-up the whole homework and lecture thing. And a documentarian reminded the world about the prevalence of advertising in our everyday lives.

As the third day of the TED2011 conference continued Wednesday, a fresh batch of artists, entrepreneurs, CEO's, educators, and many more took to the stage.

This weeklong event in Long Beach allows the speakers to give "the talk of their lives," usually about an idea that they are passionate about or something radical and new that they want to bring to the center stage of intellectual world in an effort to share new ideas.

Previous speakers have included prominent figures, such as Former President Bill Clinton, Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and many more.

Typically, these talks are released to the public a few days after the conference ends. However, thanks to Goldstar, who hosted a live simulcast of TED2011 via TEDxGoldstar at Downtown Independent, Neon Tommy was able to watch a few talks today. 

The talks that we saw today featured Morgan Spurlock, Bill Ford, Indra Nooyi, David Christian, Amina Az-Zubair, Bruce Aylward, and Salman Khan, with occasional curator questions by Bill Gates. The two broad topics that these speakers discussed were "Worlds Imagined" and "Knowledge Revolution." Let's take a look at a few of these talks more closely.

The first talk was given by Morgan Spurlock, best known for his film Super Size Me. His talk discussed advertising in the media today. Spurlock has been recently been working on a film regarding marketing and branding in today's society. His movie, entitled POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is intended to be a product placement ad throughout the entire movie, funded primarily by those product placement ads. In effect, he pointed out that brands are seen everywhere throughout our lives and discussed how it effects us on a daily basis. 

The next speaker was Bill Ford, of Ford Motor lineage, and he discussed how the environment and population size will play a role in transportation in the future. One interesting idea that he talked about was that the general population is ignoring the larger issue beyond carbon dioxide emmissions. Our population is ignoring the amount of cars that even exist on the road today, and in turn causing traffic jams.

Ford believes that we don't need more roads to fix the traffic problem in the world, but rather, an innovative technological improvement to transportation as a whole--from smart cars and smart parking lots to better public transit systems. Another interesting point of discussion. He noted there are 800 million cars on the road today. That figure will rise to four billion by 2050.

"The answer is not more roads and cars," Ford said.

Going a little bit out of order here, Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, and Amina Az-Zubair, a humanitarian with a focus on Nigeria, discussed the improvement of lives by more effectively using money. In a country plauged with corruption, Az-Zubair has managed to create leverage in order to create a better country for it's citizens, bring fresh water, education, and other basic necessities to a larger population. Nooyi, on the other hand, has helped PepsiCo start the Pepsi Refresh Project, which funds the highest public voted projects submitted online to them. With approximately $5000 per project, she is effectively using micro-funding to create social change in the US. 

Salman Khan, the creator of Khan Academy, is on the verge of creating an dramatic change in education as we see it today. He has recorded lectures on Youtube that have made learning different basic school subjects considerably easier for many people. Teachers, particularly in Los Altos, have taken this further by reversing the role of traditional lecture and homework. By having students watch Khan's lectures, teachers can encourage interactive learning by discussing problems in the classroom. 

Over time, these talks will be publicly available, and they are recommend watching both for inspiration and for a new way to approach everyday life. It's the fuel for intellectual curiosity that has driven these speakers to provide new ideas that are truly worth sharing. 

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