Your Friday Morning TED Talk: Juan Enriquez

For each of the next dozen Fridays or so, I am going to post one of the talks I found so invigorating and inspiring at the TED Conference I attended earlier this month. (TED stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design"---it's a good mix. It is a group that has been holding a conference each year for 25 years now, to which they invite speakers who are the very best at what they do to explain, in just 18 minutes or less, some new discovery or insight they have gained. The speakers are not compensated, and TED now shares the talks at its Website.) It's a little rich to have to absorb more than one talk a day, and since everyone out there is so busy, I won't ask you to take more than one a week.

This talk opened the 2009 TED Conference, as part of the section that was called "Reboot"---in which Bill Gates gave the talk I shared with you earlier. Juan Enriquez was the director of Mexico City's Urban Development Corporation, and chief of staff for Mexico's City of State, before going to the Harvard Business School to found the Life Sciences Project there. As you can see, he specializes in the cross-disciplinary study of society, business and biology. You may read more about him here. For now, here is the talk he gave---pay attention especially to his observations on the current economic situation (what he calls "dancing in the flames"), before he goes on to show you the future of the human race:

I have been asked to provide a caution that the talk involves some adult humor, so consider yourself cautioned. And for those who would like to see the slides better, here is a link to the talk on the TED website, where the screen is a little larger.