TEDx: Real People, Unreal Stories

This Saturday, Middlebury is hosting probably the coolest event of the year. Not Middlebury running of the bulls. Not Middlebury cheese-tossing. Not Middlebury cage matches (if only). Not Bill Clinton coming to speak, or Michael Jordan or Lance Armstrong (too soon?). Middlebury will have speakers, but none of them will have billion-dollar names or billion-dollar paychecks. But that’s the point, and that’s the beauty of it. This Saturday, Middlebury will be hosting its very own TEDx conference.

TEDx is a fascinating cultural phenomenon, a distinctly 21st century manifestation of contemporary man’s combination of an insatiable thirst for knowledge and a 20-minute attention span. Allow me to explain.

TED is a relatively new organization that searches for ordinary people with extraordinary stories to tell, from shark fights to squirrel-suit flights to champions of civil rights and everything in between. Presenters give 18-minute speeches, long enough to have meat on their bones but not long enough to get stale. TED Talks, the original entity, has existed for 26 years and hosted thousands of speakers. TEDx (the “x” meaning it’s independent of the larger TED brand) is a recreation of TED Talks. TEDx is an event organized by Midd students that will bring people with interesting stories to the community.

TEDx can exist because TED, the original, is such a wildly educational and incredible organization — so I’m going to pontificate a bit on why TED is so valuable. First, I’m going to tell you why we needed something like TEDx so badly.

After the Internet came about, we were inundated with stories. But there have been too many apocryphal tales of incredible virtue and goodness that fell apart like a house of cards or, perhaps more appropriately, like Greg Mortensen, the scumbag of Three Cups of Tea fame, for us to believe them any more. In a few short years, we have gone from believing all of them to believing none of them. From Mortensen to John Edwards to Lance Armstrong to Manti Te’o to Lindsay Lohan, we learn over and over again that those who we deify don’t deserve it, that they are mortal and eminently fallible; indeed, with the heaps of pressure we pile upon them, they are almost destined to fail. In the last decade, Americans have gone from trusting everyone to trusting no one.

And so every time we see a model’s picture in a magazine, we assume it is photoshopped. Every time we see an athlete on a field, we assume his blood is pumping with an avaricious combination of greed and performance-enhancing drugs. Every time we see a politician on a podium, we assume he or she wants to control people rather than to help people. The reason we feel so comfortable being jaded and cynical is that too many times, we have been proven right. We don’t know whom to believe any more. We don’t know whether we need just to choose our heroes better, or whether to dismiss the whole idea of “hero.”

Concomitant with our celebrities being brought forcibly back down to earth, normal people have been elevated. Through YouTube, blogs, Tumblr and Twitter, we can hear almost every person’s voice. But when everyone is shouting, to whom do you listen? Who can you even hear? With so many thousands of millions of billions of bytes of information out there, I always feel utterly overwhelmed and outnumbered by the cacophony, like a single lit match in a snowstorm or a non-cheater in baseball (sorry. Had to). I never know how to sort through the oodles of information out there to find the meaningful stuff. Luckily, TED came along.

TED finds special people, vets them, fact-checks them and brings their stories to us in tight, concise 18-minute talks that are free and accessible to anyone who can work a computer. We can see the best of the Internet, ostensibly reflective of the best in the world, and for the first time we don’t have to deify anyone in order to hear, respect and value their story. We don’t have to elevate them above the level of human, only to force them back down later on. We can simply listen, appreciate and enjoy.

And Middlebury has organized its own TED event, with its own interesting speakers with their own fascinating stories. I’ll avoid enumerating their virtues, as I’m sure there’s a feature on them elsewhere in the Campus — but suffice it to say that Middlebury TEDx is reflective of TED’s goals, and in my opinion should live up to them on Saturday, March 9.

Not only do we have the opportunity to hear their speeches, but from 5:30 – 7 p.m. on Friday, March 8 at Palmer we have the opportunity to meet, chat and even, to use the dreaded corporate buzzword I can’t go anywhere on campus without hearing (no, not synergy), “network” with them. Palmer House, the “Creativity and Innovation” house, is hosting a mixer with the TEDx speakers, TEDx organizers and the campus at large. You, dear reader, will have the chance to meet the TEDx speakers and bask in their infinite glory while also basking in the glory of delicious hors d’oeuvre’s and drinks for those of age.

So the night before the full show, come to Palmer House and bask away. Even bring your absolutely positively real Internet girlfriend. We’ll be waiting with the drinks.