Title: The Future We Will Create – Inside the World of TED
Genre: Documentary
Director: Stephen Latham, Daphne Zuniga
Release: (2007)
“There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in human history. Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable -- except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind, Miss Taggart. This is the mind on strike.”
John Galt, Atlas Shrugged
In Ayn Rand’s classic novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt brings the world to a halt and forces us to reconsider our priorities and entitlements by withdrawing from society the “men of the mind” – that small percentage of innovative, visionary, insatiably driven men and women who actually make the things happen that the rest of us take for granted. Things like figuring out how to extract raw metal ore from a mountain and turn it into the stairway railings we absent-mindedly grip everyday, or how to erect fifty-story skyscrapers with perfectly dispersed supports and conveniently located electrical outlets in every room, or how to offer you the ability to flip open a small communicator on a whim and transmit any important or inane bit of information (by your choice of voice, text, image or video) to someone a thousand miles away instantaneously and with less effort than it would take to walk next door and talk to a neighbor. Things that most of us only consider in the most nebulous of ways, and almost never actually associate with having an origin in the mind of a singularly gifted individual to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude. If Galt were around today, his job of rounding up these “men of the mind” would be made considerably easier thanks to the efforts of one soft-spoken British man who is already doing just that, a man named Chris Anderson. Rather than traveling the globe with his partners to speak to them each individually, Galt would need only to make one stop to find them all – at Anderson’s annual Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference in Monterey, California.
The TED conference is a gathering of the 1000 most brilliant, interesting, and important minds from across just about any discipline in the world today. Attending by invitation only, each participant is given the invaluable opportunity to both learn from and share their own ideas with some of the other most creative and influential minds on Earth over the course of this four-day gathering. Now, for the first time anywhere, The Future We Will Create – Inside the World of TED offers a glimpse behind the exclusive doors for the other six and a half billion or so of us who couldn’t snag an invitation again this year.
For all of the secret society, Trilateral Commission, separatist elite, conspiracy theory-type connotations that the idea of this type of conference may conjure up in the minds of many skeptics, the truth is that the glimpse we are offered is actually quite inspiring. Rather than being left with any suspicions of collusion or manipulation, the audience is left with a renewed appreciation for our ability to adapt and evolve as a species and hope for the future of the planet. Which is fortunate, because you will also be left with a serious awe for the power that this group can wield to make things happen in the world and it is comforting to see that they are (at least to some degree) wielding it for good. Case in point may be the awarding of the annual TED Prizes on the last day of the conference. Among the presenters, three winners are selected based on the inspiration and potential of their work. Each of them is awarded not only a monetary prize, but the opportunity to present a “wish” to the group for a vision of global change that they would like to see in the world. I won’t give anything specific away, but to say that it is stunning to watch as they recap the previous award winners and show how the TED membership was able to use their ingenuity and resources to almost instantaneously put effective global changes into motion to grant the wishes of these recipients.
The Future We Will Create – Inside the World of TED is equal parts motivational, educational, and sensational. It is motivational to see the likes of so many unknown, uncelebrated, unaided minds who are making a difference in the world today, just by their own ideas and determination, getting the chance to stand on stage and share those ideas as peers with a rapt audience of celebrities, billionaire industrialists, politicians, activists, and other self-made idealists like themselves. It is educational to learn about the amazing work that these minds on the cutting edge of evolution are doing to help us understand and shape the world around us better everyday. And there is also a certain sensationalism that comes with the feeling of peeking through their keyhole and looking in on a party you weren’t invited to. For those who are impressed more by people of substance than people of style, there is a giddy, celebophile kind of rush that comes with catching glimpses of an auditorium crowd in which Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com) may be sitting in a crowded row alongside an unknown, brilliant graduate student in cancer research, alongside the aerospace pioneer whose independent designs are driving the race for affordable, private sector space tourism, alongside Al Gore, alongside a pioneer on the verge of revolutionizing sustainable architecture for third-world development, alongside the professor who’s discovered a simple way to avoid the needless deaths of millions of children from an astonishing cause, alongside Matt Groening, alongside an eleven-year old violin prodigy, alongside the man who led the way in ridding the world of smallpox, alongside an up and coming spoken-word poet, alongside Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google. And even more of a rush to be there in the moment when some shy, unknown mind gets on stage for their turn and absolutely blows a crowd like this away – like previously unknown NYU mathematics researcher Jeff Han did to them in 2006 and, if you have a few minutes, likely will to you too.
Unfortunately, despite all the collective genius and technological experience in the room, it appears that the one thing mankind still has yet to find a solution for is a way to make narrator Daphne Zuniga’s eyes not move while she reads lines off a teleprompter. That notwithstanding, The Future We Will Create – Inside the World of TED is a fascinating, too brief look into the world of the men (and women) of the mind who are shaping the innovations that our children will one day probably take for granted. Though hopefully not too much, as an appreciation for minds like these should be made a point by all of us.
I highly recommend anyone interested in a film from which you can learn something, more than just be passively entertained, to make time for this movie. Perhaps you could plan to watch it as a way to kick off your celebration of Pangea Day – the international day of film which started as a TED prize winner’s wish just a year ago and is already set to kick off soon in over 1000 locations worldwide thanks to the resources of the TED minds. But if for some reason you can’t get your hands on the film, just take some time every now and then to check out some of the speeches now available on the TED website. You might be surprised. You will almost certainly be amazed. Some of you may even be a little jealous. But hopefully, somewhere along the way, everyone will remember to be thankful.
Grading Story: N/A
Acting: N/A
Visuals: N/A
Originality/Innovation: A
Enjoyability: A Overall: A
