Day 2 at the TED "meeting of the minds" started with a bang: Craig Venter gave a talk on "Future Uses of Synthetic and Engineered species“. In a nutshell, he is trying to do nothing less than replace the petro-chemical industry with synthetic bacteria to generate fuels. By designing organisms that chew up CO2 and produce energy, he suggests that biological refineries can be built and consequently solve the CO2 emissions problem and overcome peak oil at the same time. When asked by the audience about the potential risks of bio engineering, he replied that he was worried more about getting the technology out there in time, in order to solve climate issues, than about its potential misuse.
His statement was quite moving, especially when he confessed to being very disappointed with the debate in Davos on the climate crisis - where he had the feeling that world leaders there were not engaged enough when it came to finding real solutions. At TED, he felt the spirit was much more optimistic, that this issue is very important and solutions must be found.
Needless to say, this very bold and impressive concept from one of science's greatest minds stirred up a lot of debate in the coffee break amongst TEDsters.
Image from www.ted.com
Another great highlight was that the topic of sustainability was presented in the evening session. The TED community officially launched the amazing Encyclopedia of Life on www.eol.org . This project aims to become the first complete record of all species on our planet. It was E.O.Wilsons´s TED wish last year, after he won the TED prize 2007 for lifetime achievement. I find the project very inspiring and encourage every member of Club of Pioneers to check it out.The TED talks are going up online bit by bit, so check out www.ted.com to see what great ideas people are sharing here at Monterey.
Day 1

So we checked into the TED conference 2008 in Monterrey, California and it´s been a very exciting day 1 already.The sexiest thought leader conference worldwide, this year focuses on nothing less than „the big questions“. Thus, it kicked off by asking simply "Who are we?" followed by the more specific: "What is our place in the Universe?".The quest for human identity was answered in good TED style by an eclectic group consisting of an anthropologist, a musician, a neuroanatomist and an artist, shedding light on how we changed from animals into civilized humans in the first place – and left us with a fair warning, we might loose it all again, if we do not take care of our planet and ourselves a little more than we have done in the past 200 years.Overall, the message of sustainability has been an underlying topic at most talks so far. Peter D. Ward, a Paleontologist, gave an insight into how with rising CO2 emissions our oceans are about to collapse, and that in order to survive we might have to adapt to a more reptilian environment.The issue of the state of the oceans and the scarcity of water was specifically placed onto the agenda by many, including the Coca Cola company, which sponsored a talk on this topic and hopes to make it as relevant in the international debate as global warming is now.The morning had already started with Matthias Hollwich giving a talk on Econic Design at the TED University. We´ll post the talk in the next few days, but you can already check out some of this on our site.
Matthias Hollwich
But sustainability was discussed not just in an environmental sense. Anthropologist Wade Davis told us that today we still have 6000 native languages in the world. But only half of them will be taught to the children born today due to rapid globalization and „modernization“ of our societies. Thus we are also loosing half of our collective wisdom. The evening discussion about the truth in journalism was greatly enhanced by one of those surprise moment that can only happen at TED! When the audience had to wait for the technical difficulties to be solved, comedy superhero Robin Williams jumped on stage and gave a riveting stand up comedy improvisation. Amongst all these great minds assembled at TED, it seems he´s the one who´s also the wittiest...