[Gilbert] relayed a story that musician Tom Waits told her years ago. One day he was driving on a Los Angeles freeway when a fragment of a melody popped into his head. He looked around for something to capture the tune -- a pencil or pen -- but had nothing to record it.
He started to panic that he'd lose the melody and be haunted by it forever and his talent would be gone. In the midst of this anxiety attack, he suddenly stopped, looked at the sky, and said to whatever force it was that was trying to create itself through the melody, "Excuse me. Can you not see I'm driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment ... otherwise go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen."
LOL, go bother Leonard Cohen. I wish TED would someday just decide to open its doors and go full live screencast. I can't wait to see this talk.
Years ago when I was at Stanford running ASES, an entrepreneurship club, we made a decision to open up the talks to anyone on campus. We spent months preparing a one week conference for dozens of students from all over Asia who came to learn what made Silicon Valley tick. But why not make it free to all? Knowledge is power and is free to duplicate.
And these days, in the time of ustream.tv and justin.tv and seesmic, qik and all these great realtime video streaming services, there's no reason not to live stream. If only AV tech could catch up and save us from the snap crackle pop of bad audio/video. But I think that will come with time.