Theme: The Domino Effect

Since Vienna is the most central place possible, our speakers are equally spread. North, East, South, West – we got the best speakers of their kind. The Event will take place in Studio 44, in the 3rd district of Vienna. It is a truly distinctive event location, featuring one-of-a-kind rooms, cutting edge technology and services customized to meet all the requirements of a TEDx event. All wrapped up into one perfect package – autumn 2011.

The world as we know it is ending. The development in robotics, genetics and neuroscience will make the lame walk, the blind see and our children have features which we choose for them to have. We will have more power - and more trouble than ever before. Because our hearts, and souls lag behind our technology. Our capability to solve conflict is way behind our ability to win wars. We are endangering ourselves on many fields, from global warming to plastics in our oceans, genetic manipulation and an economic system, that keeps preaching two hundred year old ideas. Our computer systems could overpower us, our companies could control us.

But this is not the only thing happening. There are other change initiators and one of them is ... TED. Never before were ideas shared in such rapid, global fashion. And interestingly enough, there are analogue events which make this difference. TED might be enabled by the web, yet TED itself represents the oldest form of human communication: story telling. Human beings sharing their stories with other human beings.

We want to address the urgent need for focusing and identifying worldly problems that concern us all, key issues of global actuality, while analyzing how a single jolt directed at changing the state of something particular can also cause a chain reaction. Interdependence. Causality. Responsibility.

The Domino Effect