Inspiration, Oceans and TED
Posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009
If you have never explored the website TED.COM you need to close this and go explore it. If you have been there go back and spend some more time exploring the multitude of stories and speeches from the greatest minds of our time. Here is what TED is all about (from their website):
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.
The TED Conference, held annually in the spring, is the heart of TED. More than a thousand people now attend, the event sells out a year in advance, and the content has expanded to include science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world. Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn’t work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole.
If that doesn’t make you curious then you should stop ready at this point.
June 8 being World Oceans Day, I looked at some of the speeches on oceans given and found that one of this year’s prize winners is Sylvia Earle, oceanographer. I know, I live two hours from the nearest ocean, many of you probably a lot further. But, as Sylvia said, we have to encourage that connection.
She said, “We’ve got to somehow stabilize our connection to nature so that in 50 years from now, 500 years, 5,000 years from now there will still be a wild system and respect for what it takes to sustain us.”
For someone that spends a lot of time out in that “wild system,” I want to make sure it’s around for a lot longer.
Somewhere on Sylvia’s wish list is a description of ways that people can help her attain her wish. Since I don’t have a huge ocean going vessel or the brain capacity to facilitate the “development of technologies that would permit deep sea exploration in order to make the invisible visible,” I will continue to spread the news of what Sylvia is doing and help in what ways I can.
So if there’s anyone out there with a research vessel sitting around in the garage, or maybe you know a climber that knows how to make the invisible visible, drop Sylvia a line and keep doing what we can to help the oceans and ourselves.
Inspired Mountain Ambassador Joe Klementovitch is a professional photographer who lives in New Hampshire. Check out KlementovitchPhoto.com to see more of his work.
