Your attention, please

Will the ban on screen-based devices in the audience be the most ground-shaking innovation to come out of this week’s  event in London?

Slow en México

La Ciudad de las Ideas es el TED de México. He dado dos conferencias allí.

En esta entrevista que me hicieron, hablo de la filosofía Slow en general.

Slow space

I’m in Toronto for a three-day conference called IdeaCity. It’s an amazing collision of ideas and dreams. One of the comments that has struck me most came from a physicist. He explained that 75% of the energy in the universe comes from empty space. This is wonderfully counter-intuitive. I may be stretching things here but it also seems like a nifty metaphor for the power that is unleashed by slowing down. When we become still, it looks like nothing is happening but in fact, beneath the surface, all kinds of extraordinary thinking and exploring is going on.

Carl’s TED talk 2005

This is my TED talk from 2005. On the TED site, it has been viewed 735,000 times – and counting.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this video. It was one of the first times I took to a stage like this and I’ve learned a lot about public speaking since then. For me, watching it back is like reading through the early draft of one of my books.

I’m also talking pretty fast in the video. Partly that’s inexperience. Partly it’s the fact that you get 18 minutes on the TED stage, with a digital clock winking in your sight-line from the moment you start speaking.

My natural speaking rhythm is also more fast than slow…

Still, I’m not complaining. Far from it. TED is a remarkable phenomenon and I was lucky to be invited to speak there.

So with all of that in mind, check out the In Praise of Slowness TED talk…