Reflections on TEDxPOS & Reality Revisited

TEDxPOS has become an important event in the national calendar. Globally the TED talks have continued to expand. That’s the thing about ideas, there are no limits!

And the growth of TEDxPOS attests to the fact that there are a lot of persons here with interesting new ideas and different perspectives on conventional wisdom.

My own TEDxPOS talk in 2014 outlined a set of ideas on Trinbagonian and West Indian culture which I had only just started to formulate. I am now about to publish my new book entitled: “We Like It So?” which develops the same eight cultural attributes I outlined in that TEDxPOS talk and how these attributes affect our economic progress.

I have seen where TED talks have initiated projects in various countries based on the ideas presented in an initial talk. Some have explained new and promising research in medical treatments and promoted new business ideas.

But perhaps the most significant impact of the TED and TEDx talks is the better informed discussion and debate that they generate.

Many have been wondering how the internet and social media would transform education, publishing, interpersonal communication, and traditional media, including broadcasting. Beyond the apparent anarchy of some areas of social media, we are beginning to see the outlines of what a hyper-connected, high speed world of data and information looks like. It is refreshing and exciting! And the TED and TEDx talks are definitely a part of that new world. The presenters are vetted and selected; the format encourages tightly presented and argued points, delivered with to live audience in a manner which is designed to get one’s attention and to follow the argument through. They may sometimes inspire action.

TEDxPOS is important in that new world because it allows us in the Caribbean to speak to the rest of the world on an equal footing. We too have ideas worth sharing. We too have lessons of experience which we can give to the rest of the world.

Revisiting ‘Reality’

The theme of this year’s TEDxPOS is ‘Reality Revisited’. I take this to mean that we have to challenge some of the things that we think that we know and understand, what John Kenneth Galbraith called the ‘conventional wisdom’.

The truth is that we all operate with these mental models and mental ‘short cuts’ which help us to make sense of social, political and psychological issues we confront daily. But sometimes these are wrong! They may have been useful at one time, but the world, the reality may have changed, leaving us out of step and requiring now for us to ‘revisit’ what we think we know.

Keith Nurse is now a member of the Economic Development Advisory Board. We needed someone who had a deep understanding of the creative industries, international trade issues, and how we might connect with the West Indian diaspora.

Keith’s academic has kept pace with the fast-changing reality of international trade in services. He knows the reality and appreciates the challenge that this country has to face in boosting services exports.

Elizabeth Solomon presented to the Economic Development Advisory Board just recently on Social Policy, taking a human rights based approach to policy formation and introduced the Advisory Board to the important concept of ‘social cohesion’.

It is not enough, she argues, to deliver social support to the vulnerable; we have to acknowledge the reality of a fragmented society and institute programmes to build and sustain social cohesion.

I look forward to their presentations and those of the other speakers at TEDxPOS.

By Terrence Farrell
2014 TEDxPOS Speaker