Who is TED? Correction: What is TED?

My sharp-eyed son spotted the signs yesterday on his way to the Main Library: TED, TED, TED. Brilliant red on a stark white background. Whozat? After searching online, we discovered the right question is whazat? and you have to be invited and pay $6,000 to find out the answer. LBPost has an article on it and this mystery marvel that is gracing our humble shore also has its own website as well as a Flickr steam and a Twitter perch.

You may detect just a tinge of sarcasm here. I am flattered by all the gushing remarks made on the TED website about how hip and happening Long Beach is. Anything that makes the good people of Santa Monica and/or Pasadena the least bit jealous is fine with me. That said, the general tone of the website makes TED sound like a high-tech mutual admiration society. Take the list of speakers--some are pretty understandable, like researcher or anthropologist, but others are mind boggling (my favorite is jazz revitalizer). And why do most of the people in the Flickr stream have the glassy-eyed look of cult followers? Let's hope they have a genius for other things besides self-aggrandizement.