Name: TED 的起起落落！ (The rise and fall of TED)
Uploaded: 2026-03-03T22:35:25.000Z
Duration: 13 min 43 s
Description: 【看影片學英語】數萬部 YouTube 影片，搭配英漢字典即點即查，輕鬆掌握單字發音與用法，長久累積看電影不必再看字幕。

TED talks once helped define our entire culture.

TED演講曾經幫助定義了我們的整個文化。

In fact, the one in 2006 by Sir Ken Robinson is one of the most watched lectures of all time.

事實上，2006年由Sir Ken Robinson發表的演講是有史以來觀看次數最多的演講之一。

And for an entire generation, getting to speak at TED was basically like the Nobel Prize for forward thinking.

對於整整一代人來說，能在TED演講就像是前瞻性思考的諾貝爾獎。

Yet today, TED pumps out even more content than it ever has.

然而時至今日，TED產出的內容比以往任何時候都多。

And unfortunately, the brand feels basically irrelevant.

令人遺憾的是，這個品牌感覺基本上已經無關緊要了。

Nobody says, hey, I'm a TED speaker and with a straight face and is proud of it.

沒有人會一本正經地說，嘿，我是個TED講者，而且為此感到驕傲。

And in fact, for many people on social media, the idea of doing a TED Talk is kind of a joke.

事實上，對許多社群媒體上的使用者來說，做TED演講的想法有點像個笑話。

They'll make long posts and be like, oh, thanks for attending my TED Talk.

他們會發長文說，喔，謝謝你來參加我的TED演講。

And it's basically just like a tongue in cheek approach to the whole thing.

這基本上就是一種挖苦的態度在面對整件事。

And representative of the brand is basically nothing today.

而這個品牌代表性在現今基本上什麼都不是。

if you're curious and a fan of this channel wondering why I'm back in the drainage ditch, we're doing something about ted.

如果你很好奇，又是這個頻道的粉絲，想知道我為什麼又回到排水溝，我們要做一個關於TED的內容。

I can't walk in the park, it's too muddy.

我不能去公園散步，那裡太泥濘了。

So ted's journey to eventual irrelevance, where it is today, started with one man's curiosity and his own ego.

所以，TED走向最終無關緊要的旅程，也就是它今天的樣子，始於一個男人的好奇心和他的個人野心。

Richard Saul Wurman was an architect turned information designer who believed he could create the world's most ultimate intellectual dinner party.

Richard Saul Wurman 是一位建築師轉變為資訊設計師，他相信自己能創造出世界上最頂級的知識份子晚宴。

And in February 1984, he co founded TED standing for technology, Entertainment and Design with co founder Harry Marks.

而在1984年2月，他與共同創辦人 Harry Marks 共同創立了TED，代表技術、娛樂和設計。

That first conference was kind of amazing.

It had an early demo of a compact disc, it had an early demo of one of the first Apple Macintoshes and a talk on fractals by famed mathematician Benoit Vandelbrot.

它有展示了光碟的早期版本，展示了第一批蘋果 Macintosh 電腦之一，還有數學家 Benoit Vandelbrot 關於碎形理論的演講。

And if you were Alive in the 80s, you remember this guy because they talked to us a lot about fractals back then.

如果你80年代還活著，你一定記得這個人，因為那時候他們跟我們講了很多關於碎形的東西。

The whole thing was visionary, like it was basically a Woodstock for forward thinking technology and ideas.

整個活動非常有遠見，就像是個思想前衛的技術和想法的 Woodstock 音樂祭。

The only problem was it was a financial disaster and Wisman would spend six years before he would try again.

唯一的問題是它財務上是個大災難，Wurman 在再次嘗試之前花了六年時間。

And when Worman brought ted back in 1990, something clicked.

而在1990年 Wurman 重新帶回 TED 時，有些東西就對了。

Back then, conferences were pretty staid and formal and all that kind of stuff.

那時候的會議都相當拘謹、正式，還有很多類似的東西。

Suits and lame panels of people just basically telling industry jargon over and over again.

一堆穿著西裝的人，無聊的座談會，不斷重複講著產業術語。

Mormon brought it in, made it all casual and made it about the ideas.

Wurman 把它帶進來，讓一切變得隨意，而且聚焦在想法上。

And in a genius move, he curated two things heavily, the format and the speakers.

他巧妙地精心策劃了兩件事：形式和講者。

And he would basically require you to speak everything in 18 minutes.

他基本上會要求你在18分鐘內講完所有內容。

And if he didn't understand something personally, he would interrupt your talk to get you to say it better.

如果他個人聽不懂，他就會打斷你的演講，要求你講得更好。

He ruled the whole thing with an iron fist.

He was the ultimate curator of both the culture and the activities of ted.

他是 TED 文化和活動的終極策展人。

Famously, he went on stage during Nicholas Negroponte's talk, a famous head of the MIT Media Lab, and

據說，在 MIT Media Lab 的知名負責人 Nicholas Negroponte 演講時，他走上臺，

用剪刀剪斷了那個傢伙的領帶。

It's basically like going to Dick's last resort and eating.

這基本上就像是去 Dick's Last Resort 用餐一樣。

But ultimately like that kind of cultural czar can really shape an event.

但最終，那樣的文化沙皇確實能塑造一場活動。

And right or wrong, he had stumbled on the perfect formula.

無論對錯，他都偶然發現了完美的方程式。

Invite the most interesting people on earth and put them in a room together and let them share what they're most passionate about.

邀請世界上最有趣的人，讓他們聚在一起，分享他們最熱衷的事物。

By the way, people ask, how do you become a great conversationalist?

對了，大家可能會問，要怎麼成為一個很棒的哈拉高手？

Number two, figure out how to party or an event.

第二，想辦法讓聚會或活動變得有趣。

Get somebody talking about what they're most excited about.

Those two things will make that you are considered one of the best conversationalists in the world.

這兩件事會讓你被認為是世界上最頂尖的哈拉高手之一。

And the good news, you don't even have to say much.

好消息是，你甚至不用說太多話。

Over the coming years, TED would become basically an invitation only cult of the most elite kind of visionary minds from Silicon Valley and beyond, talking about tech, design and all the stuff Walt Ted stood for.

在接下來的幾年裡，TED 基本上會變成一個只有受邀者才能參加的、最頂尖的夢幻思想家們的邪教，他們會談論技術、設計以及 Walt Ted 所代表的一切。

Wurman ruled with an iron fist until he started to get a bit older.

Wurman 當時管得很嚴，直到他年紀漸長。

And at age 65 in 2000, he needed a successor.

到了 2000 年，他 65 歲時，他需要一位接班人。

He's a British born American entrepreneur who had built a magazine empire during the dot com boom and cashed out before everything went wrong.

他是一位英國出生的美國企業家，在網路保麗龍時期建立了一個雜誌帝國，並在一切崩壞前套現離場。

In 2001, he took his nonprofit foundation called the Sapling foundation and spent $14 million to buy Ted.

2001 年，他接手了他的非營利基金會 Sapling foundation，並花了 1400 萬美元買下 TED。

Anderson had a vision that Wurman couldn't have imagined.

Anderson 有著 Wurman 當時無法想像的遠見。

Basically, he wanted to use TED as a platform to promote ideas to the world.

基本上，他想把 TED 當成一個平臺，向全世界推廣各種想法。

And under his leadership in 2006, Ted took a huge gamble.

在他的領導下，TED 在 2006 年做了一個很大的賭注。

他們把所有的演講都免費放到網路上。

He had tried to get them on mainstream media.

他曾試圖將這些演講放到主流媒體上。

Too long, too boring, like nobody, nobody got time for that in the age of watching Seinfeld reruns.

太長了，太無聊了，沒人有時間看，在這個看《六人行》重播的年代。

So TED just decided to go direct to consumer.

所以 TED 就決定直接面對消費者。

And one of those was that famous one from Sir Ken Robinson talking about how schools stifle creativity.

其中一場就是 Sir Ken Robinson 那場關於學校如何扼殺創意的著名演講。

By 2012, all of the TED content had crossed 1 billion views.

到 2012 年，所有 TED 內容的觀看次數就突破了 10 億。

It became such a cultural icon that when Ridley Scott released Prometheus that year, they basically had a fake TED Talk in it, set in 2023.

它已經成為一個文化指標，當年 Ridley Scott 推出《普羅米修斯》時，電影裡就出現了一個假的 TED 演講，背景設定在 2023 年。

In other words, like people saw that the ideas being promoted by TED were not only the future now, but

換句話說，人們看到 TED 推廣的想法不僅是現在的未來，而且

also a future format to influence culture and how we thought the genius of TED at the time was it started a time when the Internet was really hungry for content.

而且也是一個影響文化和我們想法的未來模式，當時 TED 的天才之處在於，它出現在網際網路對內容極度渴望的時機。

In 2006, things like YouTube and the different video sharing sites were just getting started.

2006 年，YouTube 和各種影音分享網站才剛起步。

Blogging was still a thing, but it was really tough to know what to watch.

部落格還很流行，但要找到想看的內容真的不容易。

And even then it was even there wasn't much out there.

即使在那時候，也沒有太多東西。

So TED was perfect to bring high quality content in a world that was ready for it.

所以 TED 完美地將高品質內容帶給一個已準備好接受它的世界。

And it was also positioned super well for the world that was to come.

而且它也為即將到來的世界做好了絕佳的準備。

The magic of TED was the super duper curation that they did on everything.

TED 的魔力在於他們對所有內容進行了超讚的策劃。

If something was put next to it, you knew it was going to be really good.

如果 TED 旁邊有其他內容，你就知道它一定會很棒。

I mean, they had Sir Ken Robinson and all this crazy stuff that was just so good.

我的意思是，他們有 Sir Ken Robinson 和所有這些超讚的內容。

And they were perfectly positioned for the world that would come.

而且它們也為即將到來的世界做好了絕佳的準備。

但接著他們做了一個關鍵的決定。

But before I tell you how that happened, here's a quick word from our sponsor.

但在我告訴你這一切是怎麼發生的之前，先來聽一段我們的贊助商廣告。

But before we get into that, I want to let you know that I put every single one of these video stories that I do into a one page summary cheat sheet.

不過在我們深入探討之前，我想讓你知道，我把做的每一個影片故事都整理成一份單頁的重點摘要。

It's a great way for you to remember the key beats of the story and take away all the great lessons that come from it.

這對你來說是個很棒的方法，可以記住故事的重點，並帶走所有從中學到的寶貴一課。

And maybe you could be the cool guy at the party who is telling interesting business nerd stories like I do.

也許你也可以成為派對上那個很酷的人，就像我一樣，講述有趣的商業冷知識故事。

Anyway, you can get all these cheat sheets totally for free@gerdly.com YouTube just put your email in and you'll get this video's cheat sheet automatically.

總之，你可以在 gerdly.com YouTube 免費取得所有這些重點摘要，只要輸入你的 email，你就會自動收到這個影片的重點摘要。

Remember, Chris had been highly motivated to share all the TED ideas as much as possible.

請記得，Chris 一直很有動力想盡可能地分享所有 TED 的想法。

His vision was to get all this out in front of as many people as he could.

他的願景是把這些內容盡量推廣給最多人知道。

So TED decided to let not only the headquarters which was running the TED flagship conference, run the playbook.

所以 TED 決定不只讓負責 TED 旗艦會議的總部來執行這個計畫。

They wanted to run the TED playbook well, everywhere.

他們希望在各地都能好好地執行 TED 的模式。

In 2009, they launched something called TEDx, which was basically the formula for organizers on a local basis, whether here in San Antonio or other places, to run their own version of the TED Conference in their own town.

在 2009 年，他們推出了 TEDx，這基本上就是一套讓各地主辦者，無論是在聖安東尼奧這裡或其他地方，都能在自己的城市舉辦 TED 會議的模式。

You would democratize ideas, you would spread information globally.

你可以讓想法民主化，在全球散播資訊。

And as a big platform, well, you could get more of the interesting stuff out there.

而作為一個大型平臺，嗯，你可以讓更多有趣的內容被看見。

I remember back in the 2010s, TedX exploded.

我記得在 2010 年代，TEDx 爆炸性地成長。

And it wasn't just here, it was other places as well.

而且不只是在這裡，其他地方也是一樣。