Sam Simmons Praises Silliness In A TED Talk
Triumphantly silly tantrum machine Sam Simmons stepped into the breach to do a TED Talk in Sydney last May, and now the rest of us peons may bask in its wacky wisdom.
It’s no secret that we Enthusiasts are big fans of Simmons and his belligerent, surreal manchild persona. How this would exactly lend itself to the sometimes profound and insightful, sometimes indulgently bleeding obvious platform of the TED Talks is a matter of some curiosity.
The current hourly rate of TED Talks being uploaded to YouTube slightly diminishes the honour. We’ve got a hopeful Google Alert for a TED Talk which might estimate what will be depleted first: people with something interesting to say or gigabytes on the internet. Not that a lack of perspicacity has ever prevented anyone from uploading anything to the internet.
In May, a Simmons in wang-revealing footy shorts joined a line-up featuring robotics engineers, activists, Nobel laureates, physicists, philosophers, linguists, and, uh, Tim Freedman at the third Sydney TED Talks at Carriageworks.
Does he have any insights into astronomy, neuroscience or architecture? Well, no. Simmons choose to demonstrate rather than pontificate, so absorb approximately ten minutes of patently goofy free-association and booming voiceover work with the occasional opinion on the value of being stupid. This is not a TED Talk on how comedy works, necessarily. It’s a welcome 20:1 ratio of lunacy to lecture. And not one book-deal buzzword in sight.
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Not really a TED talk. A tedx talk. I could start a Tedx in my bathroom and record a talk and put it online.