FYA ----- Original Message ----- From: Farida Sher To: undisclosed recipients: Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 2:10 PM Subject: Fw: A Gathering for Curious Minds - Free, Saturday 16th January 2010, 10am (for 10.30)-12noon, Silverbird Theater, Westgate Mall, Nairobi Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. --Margaret Mead A Gathering for Curious Minds Free, Saturday 16th January 2010, 10am (for 10.30)-12noon, Silverbird Theater, Westgate Mall, Nairobi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We believe in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately the world. So we're building here a forum that offers free knowledge from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other and challenge their fundamental beliefs. TED is a community of people who have just two things in common: they seek a deeper understanding of the world, and they hope to turn that understanding into a better future for us all. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole1. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Every Saturday we will be showing two 20 minute videos of talks by the world’s most inspired thinkers from the renowned TED conferences (www.TED.com), followed by a casual discussion. This Saturday’s theme is “How to live an Inspirational Life”. We will show videos that feature talks by: Adventurer Bertrand Piccard who offers us a challenge: Find motivation in what seems impossible and get rid of your mental ballast to soar to new heights of inspiration. In this inspiring, almost spiritual talk, and using his solar-powered adventure as a parallel, he shares his personal philosophy and his own plans to do what many say can't be done -- to fly around the world, day and night, in a solar-powered aircraft1. Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar who, at his Stanford University commencement speech, urges us to pursue our dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself. In recent years, Jobs has battled with a rare form of pancreatic cancer -- adding to an epic life story that mirrors the story of Apple itself: ever the underdog, ever the spectacular success1. At the last GCM we watched talks by Pranav Mistry and Janine Benyus who explored technology. We discussed what technology will look like in the future, whether its trajectory is beneficial or detrimental to the evolution of our world. The discussion took an exceptionally interesting path through issues ranging from where to draw the line between a ‘good’ amount of personal technology or an ‘overuse’ of personal technology in our lives. Does technology enhance our experience or does it take us away from the ‘real’ world. Our exploration found that sometimes there was an increase in “efficiency “but a loss of “depth” as one moves from the real world to the digital world… do we think differently when we write slowly and feel the paper and the pen interact compared to typing on a PC? Do we paint differently when we sense the texture of the paint and smell our work as well as see it rather than draw on a screen? Are our kids developing their sensory capacity by smelling, touching, hearing and tasting the world we live in or getting only a limited sensory inputs from a screen? On the other hand, there is also a massive added value to technology in terms of sharing ideas, gathering people around causes, putting much more power in the hands of the individual, connecting, learning, poverty alleviation, education, health etc. Perhaps every person has their own boundaries and there are 6 billion answers to this, either way it is something to think about deeply. Entry free, 10am (for 1030) -12noon, Saturday 16th January at the Silverbird Theatre, Westgate Mall (Westlands). For more information contact: Salim_keshavjee@yahoo.com, irfan.keshavjee@oba.co.uk or Farida_sher@yahoo.co.uk Co-ordinated in conjunction with Silverbird Theatres to whom we owe many thanks for supporting this event. 1: Adapted from the www.TED.com website If you don't wish to receive emails from the GCM group, just send me an email and I will take you off the mailing list, Thanks.