Thank you for coming to my TED talk

From the temple to the garden, via Vancouver

Today, my recent TED talk—describing the massive media shift from the old, legacy world to Big Social’s chaos system and, ultimately, a “garden” with a new order—went up on YouTube. You can watch it above.

I can’t bring myself to watch this talk again. I watched it once a few days after delivering it, and all I could think of was how I could have done it better. It’s a complex task to pull off, especially under bright lights, with cameras on you, and on a fancy stage in front of an audience of smart people who have been watching a series of other top-flight speeches. It’s easy to mess it up.

I will say that I’m glad that I at least got my message across, and I didn’t clearly humiliate myself. I remembered everything I needed to say (most TED talks happen without notes), I didn’t stumble on my words too much, and I hit my main points. The weeks of practice paid off. But I wish I were more eloquent, more relaxed, more in-the-flow.

Still, I was extremely grateful for the opportunity and proud to represent Substack on that stage. And I was so glad to have another platform on which I could communicate a key message: that while we’re in a state of volatility in this time of cultural transition, there are better times ahead, where power will be distributed among the many instead of the few.

To go deeper with these ideas, I invite you to read the essay on which this talk was based, published in April on The Substack Post.

From the temple to the garden