I have a prop and it sounds like I am
going to talk forever because I'm
talking so slow now but my object is
after I start to tell 9 2 minutes
stories and get the hell off I've never
tried to do that and I've never given a
talk at Ted but I love bananas now I
know that's somewhat phallic looking but
I've always loved bananas I've loved
bananas when I was quite young they're
supposed to have a lot of potassium
which is supposed to be good for you I
lived in the jungle in Guatemala for six
months we had a finger banana tree and I
ate the bananas over that tree ripened
bananas are really quite good and I
thought it was a perfect perfect fruit
because they were clean and you didn't
you don't wash up a net and I've always
peeled a banana from the way it comes
off the tree and sometimes you have to
go like that just started which that is
putting a banana which might be dirty on
the outside in your mouth and just
recently I I started peeling bananas
this way and they peel very easily not
only do they peel very easily but all
the strings come off in a banana the
opposite way
I don't have any lessons to give you I
don't have a mission I don't have
anything I'm selling sort of but I would
like you to go home with some new
patterns in your head so I'm gonna tell
you little stories and it's for you to
see what patterns you see in those
stories obviously do things the opposite
way give him a chance in 1398 Gutenberg
was born born in Monster minee and about
40 years 50 years later he did the first
printed book in the Western world he and
his brother invented the printing press
which is really based on the wine
Preston we're in a wine building it's
based on a wine press that's what the
whole mechanics are based on but he
invented this movable type and he cut
the type himself and he cut a hundred
and twenty six letters so that the type
was perfectly spaced I'm not gonna fall
off the type was perfectly spaced each
letter to each other it is still the
most perfectly set book ever ever
the 42 line Bible that he printed about
180 to 200 of them summer had two colors
he ran through the press twice and he
had to invent paper because they had
just sort of vellum they had invent
paper to dampen it put it so it printed
in the press and he had to invent the
ink because books of hours which are
what rich people had at that time the
books of hours there was only one of
each thing and he had to invent a paper
the ink because books of hours were on
with water-based
call it pain he hadn't do an oil-based
ink and he printed his books so it
wasn't one invention it was a whole
bunch of inventions he died bankrupt but
the Catholic Church saw a way of making
a shitload of money because they printed
indulgences which were like confessions
they printed so many of these
indulgences and sold them that Martin
Luther in his list of things that were
bad with the Catholic Church one of the
major things was the printing and
selling of indulgences but that's still
not the story the story is that it took
99 years for somebody to invent
pagination there was no page numbers in
the Bibles so after you read it you
couldn't find something on a certain
page now pagination led to the
organization of information 140 thousand
words on the floor are not a dictionary
you organize them alphabetically you can
find something if you collect certain
words that are the same subject you have
a thesaurus or the mean the same thing
or the beginning of an encyclopedia the
organization of information actually
creates new information into there's
only five ways of organizing information
which is by location alphabet time
category at hierarchy and there just
isn't a sixth if there is a six the next
speech I'll say there six but I've been
doing this for 30 years saying this five
okay we just had a volcano go off in
Iceland about a hundred miles east of
that in 1783 84 and 85 there's a volcano
Bane blocky they went off in Iceland and
it sent the same kind of plume all
volcanoes are not created equal it sent
a plume of pumice up in the sky they
went over they went over Europe but it
had this the winds took it down south
south over the nile valley
and it hung over the Nile Valley well
when it was over Europe they lost a croc
for a year there's a lot of starvation
when it was over the Nile the Egyptian
Nile Valley it hung there for three
years they lost three years of crops and
a million people died of salvations a
starvation it is estimated talk about
not having food and we don't even
learned that in school and they don't
anyone even know about locky
and it's 1783 and we know it happened
because Benjamin Franklin was in Paris
at the time and he wrote about it it's
not so long ago we were talking about
attention span there's a wonderful
wonderful short joke by emo Philips that
said for years and years and years I
thought my brain was the most important
organ of my body until one day I thought
huh look who's telling me that
we think in numbers we hear numbers in
the paper all the time
numbers numbers a trillion is one of the
numbers that we throw around now a
trillion dollars of debt we see that all
the time and I'll tell you a made-up
story to people Sam and Ethel they have
to be Jewish because I'm Jewish open up
a mom-and-pop store in the year 1 as you
know there was no year 0 because they
didn't have the concept of 0 when they
came up with a car with the calendar
Stephen the little of the 6th century
came up with a calendar he was a little
monkey was short so they had they had
this mom-and-pop store and every day
they lost a million dollars he can call
his shekels first year 365 million leap
year so yet 66 million and they lost a
million dollars every day of every year
and now it's the year 2010 they had long
lives and in 2010 they would still have
to keep the store open till 2738
to lose a trillion dollars now do you
know how little you know what a trillion
is you know how little you know and how
you trust some stupid numbers in the
newspaper thinking you understand
something it's more than a big number
it's something you can't understand and
if you read it and don't realize that
you can't understand it you have a
really bad habit by reading things and
think they're meaningful to you
it's estimated we have a hundred
trillion cells in our body 90 million
that's up for grabs that's an estimate
but it's generally considered that 90%
of them are not human cells there wee
beasties there are other animals that
are listed in LaRussa's dictionary of
animal life and yet we have the
arrogance of thinking we're human
species we're really zoos we are zoos
and we ought to appreciate that we are
zoos because it is that sense of
ourselves the reduction of our arrogance
about our species that allows us to
understand things better everything is
interdependent and made of everything
Steven Wright is one of my favorite
jokesters really clever and he said
everything is in walking distance if you
have enough time that gets to the heart
of one of the fundamental questions we
are asked in our whole lives is that in
walking distance do you see what a
stupid question that is that is and it
is the symbol of how bad or question is
of that we don't learn how to ask good
questions when I ran Ted I never took
questions from the audience if I asked
you or would you rather have questions
or not questions most of you want to ask
questions and what would they be bad
questions and speeches
and it wastes all our time that's why we
have the brakes so you go around you go
around asking each other bad questions
and then when people remark on something
you go aha
and you've never heard of the
book or the movie or the article or what
somebody said because we're lying to
each other all the time
how's it going keeping busy how's it how
you doing and you know give a
you're looking good some other speakers
say you know you know awesome I'm so
tired of those words I'm so tired
of the sloppiness of speech because the
sloppiness of speech is not respectful
to the person listening
it's a duality when we talk to each
other I want to respect you I want to
listen to you I want you to respect me
and listen to me I want to speak clearly
and properly and accurately about the
things that interest me and learning is
remembering what you're interested in
what you heard this morning from some of
the speakers not all and not all the
same ones those things that were
interesting to you you'll remember and
those things that we're not interesting
to you you won't remember learning is
remembering what you're interested in
and embrace those curiosities because
you there's no cure there's no course in
curiosity that has to well up through
yourself and then it has to be nurtured
the biggest project I've ever worked on
I'm working on now and it's called
1920-21 and it's about 19 cities of the
world that will have more than 20
million people in a 21st century there
might be many more than 19 I don't care
it's a clever title you'll remember what
it's really about is a fact and some of
you will be nice but you'll go out and
you'll see that I'm right that no two
cities in the world through the maps to
the same scale with the same legend
there's no methodology on the edge to a
city you can legitimately have anywhere
between eight point three eight point
six million people to forty five million
people as the population of Tokyo
depending on which counties how you
measure it and what part of Japan you
say is part of Tokyo there's no edge to
New York City I mean the the edge New
York City is not the five boroughs so
where do you put the edge do you do it
by lights at night do you do it by SMA
do you do it by density you do it by
concrete density from Landsat images
from space that MDA federal does company
you don't know but it shows you how
smart I am if you don't have an area
within which to collect information how
do you compare Sao Paulo to Shanghai it
is a world of cities not a world of
countries I know the last speaker was
from the UN FET because the map that the
UN shows as a map of Worrell wars and
walls it is the boundaries of countries
it is a map of countries and it's a
world of cities it's a world of cities
cooperating the TEDx conferences have
city names normally there are some
companies that are recognizing that and
looking at 60 cities in America 40
cities in Europe and 48 cities and age
as the marketing of the world because
51% going to 70% quite soon of the
world's population lives in metropolitan
areas that is the cooperative spirit New
York City has 13 sister cities some of
them we have seemingly nothing in common
with but we cooperate we fly to cities
and yet there is no methodology for
drawing the border collecting
information displaying the information
or making maps the same scale and if you
don't have a language that's the same
you can't talk to each other
and the only language you can share is a
visual and numeric language and that's
basically the initial step for
describing and comparing things and
that's possible to do and that's what
I'm working on doing if I don't die
first well you think that's funny I
wasn't a joke I guess people think it's
a joke I'll tell a little story about
introductions which I am fascinated with
how people are introduced or not
introduced there was an early Ted I
think everybody wants an early Ted story
in the three day heads the first day I
introduced somebody by saying Bill Gates
the second day somebody was sitting on
the aisles and he was the most famous
business person in the United States at
that time
not now but at that time and I said John
and John Sculley came up he used to be
head of Apple he sat next to the mrs.
president during the State of the Union
speeches how famous he was at one time
and the third day I said cute
and Quincy Jones came up what's
interesting is that the more famous the
person the shorter the introduction not
the opposite and almost everything in
our lives is the opposite of our
expectation
that's what a joke is that's why the IQ
test should be changed to the Soh test
the sense of humor test and the people
who can't pass it can't even laugh about
it and it is the true measure of
intelligence I hope you've enjoyed these
few stories and I'm very honored to be
here today thank you very much 75th
birthday this year and we are about to
go on a break and before we taste our
case let's sing happy birthday to
Richard absolutely one two three