The ever-increasing pace of life and technological development drew several hundred people to Monmouth University in West Long Branch for TEDx- Navesink, where 22 speakers addressed the influence of “Accelerators.”
The theme describes issues and topics that affect society more than people typically realize, according to Donna Steinhorn, an event organizer.
“Accelerators are either those people or those ideas that are happening faster and will impact us faster than we believe,” Steinhorn said at the third annual TEDx- Navesink conference on April 11. “Acceleration can have a positive effect, or it can be something negative.”
Steinhorn mentioned futurist David Houle, who said “all of the acceleration that has happened in the last 50 years is going to triple, or even quadruple, in the next 10 to 15 years.”
“Things are just speeding up so much … so acceleration seemed a really natural topic,” Steinhorn said.
Speakers took the stage in four roughly hourlong sessions — entitled “Heal,” “Invent,” “Prosper” and “Reframe” — that addressed accelerators such as climate change or the discovery of a previously unidentified subatomic particle.
Abby Daly, founder of the Rumsonbased nonprofit Bridge of Books, was one of the speakers during the “Prosper” session. Her talk focused on the importance of providing books to disadvantaged children.
According to Daly, the nonprofit donated 75,000 books last year to children whom she described as “book-poor.” “When children have access to books at a young age, they are able to make the transition from learning to read, to reading to learn,” she said.
During the “Heal” session, Gail Dines critiqued what she called today’s “porn culture.” She asserted that with pervasive sexuality in advertising and pornography also comes the monetization of human bodies.
“Our culture is worth more. Our boys are worth more. Our girls are worth more,” Dines said, garnering applause from the audience.
During the “Invent” session, Don Lincoln lightened the mood with a talk about probing the most enigmatic questions about the universe.
Lincoln, who was a member of the team that discovered the so-called “God particle” — the Higgs boson — works at an actual accelerator known as the Large Hadron Supercollider in Switzerland.
His talk focused on the allure of physics’ unanswered questions and the universe’s great mysteries, recounting his life’s journey of constantly asking, “Why?”
Brian Reynolds, who helps companies prepare for the impacts of climate change, discussed the need for an inclusive conversation between environmentalists and businesses during the “Prosper” session of the conference.
“The best people in business and finance already know what we need to learn: Good climate policy means good business,” he said. “The right conversation to have is about money and risk.”
Attendees had the option of attending one of 12 “breakout” sessions for lunch. At one session, Reynolds and Nadya Zhexembayeva, who later spoke about reinvention and sustainability in business, discussed climate issues in more detail.
The result was a low-key debate and meandering conversation among attendees about how to encourage businesses to shift into a more ecologically friendly pattern of behavior.
As Zhexembayeva put it, those who support this initiative can use either “carrots” or “sticks,” suggesting that the carrots are far more effective.
Finally, during the “Reframe” session, speaker Ted Coiné considered historical figures of monumental stature and the trait of impatience as a source of acceleration in their lives.
Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were among the examples he used, stating that their global impact was only possible because of their impatience with the status quo.
“In order to make a change worth making, you need impatience,” Coiné said.
For Steinhorn, TEDxNavesink is not about pushing an agenda or converting audience members to a particular way of thinking. Instead, it was about getting people to think about difficult issues that have no clear answers.
“We just want them to start thinking about all of the various things people are talking about and then take action on the things they feel strongly about,” she said. “We just want to get them thinking and talking about it.”
TEDxNavesink 2016 is already in the works, she said. The theme is “Makers,” showcasing skills and technologies such as 3-D printing.