Rhetorical reading: ", TED Talks: the Official TED Guide to Public Speaking" by Chris Anderson

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but today I realised that my normally rather orderly and linear approach to reading had broken down. I had three books on the go simultaneously, plus clear intent to embark on another (in the form of an audiobook) tomorrow. Chaos! 

 Clearly, there is a need to restore some order, and I trust the upcoming summer holidays will help me achieve this. However, one thing I could do immediately was polish off one which I had come close to finishing, but had been rather distracted from, TED Talks: the Official TED Guide to Public Speaking. There is a reason for my failure to finish this book, which has been on the go since May (possibly even April), namely that I had the impression it was delivering diminishing returns.  However, being rather purist on such matters, I thought I should make the effort to finish a book which had, after all, given me quite a lot along the way. I'm glad I did, by the way, even though I still feel that 80% of this book's value came in the first 20% of its pages. You will note in passing the pleasingly TED-ish quality of this 80/20 rule (which, I discover as I write this, is officially a thing, viz the Pareto Principle).

I am an unashamed fan of TED talks, and will freely admit to harbouring a desire myself to get up on the TED stage one day (though to talk about what, I'm not quite sure). The basic idea behind TED is one that appeals to me immensely, that of, as TED has it, ideas worth sharing. The notion that individuals with special expertise or experience should be given a platform to share their knowledge and ideas with both a live audience and a worldwide public is perhaps not an utterly original one, but the genius of TED has been to combine a fundamentally traditional format - the short spoken presentation - with the power of the internet, and - here's the key - to do so by reviving the most ancient of accomplishments: rhetoric.


This is the idea which struck me most in the book, an idea I have myself "spread" repeatedly since reading it here, that the internet age offers a golden opportunity - imposes the necessity indeed - of reviving an ancient skill, that of rhetoric. The ability to speak effectively in public, to sway an audience, to infuse it with enthusiasm for an idea, to motivate people to act - these are all notions that a Cicero, for example, would recognise as part of a rounded education. As Chris Anderson argues in this book's introduction, this is a skill which has come to seem less important in the age of the written word, where knowledge spread principally in the form of printed words on the page, but one which, with a boom in online media, is being restored to pre-eminence. No education is complete, he would argue (and I would agree), without the acquisition of the capacity to present a case powerfully to an audience. 

Chris Anderson, Head of TED

That, for me, is the big idea of this book, one developed at both its beginning and its end. In between, the book explores the nitty gritty of the subject - the techniques for how to do exactly that, how to give a good presentation. It is in the nature of these "how to" books that so much seems obvious in the telling, which is not to say it doesn't need telling. How to walk on stage, how to breathe, how to rehearse, how to use slides, how to catch an audience's attention, how to create empathy - all this is there, with abundant examples. TED talks are undeniably good, and one reason is that the rule-book for how to do them has been extremely well thought through. Again and again, reading this, I wondered whether I shouldn't somehow try to arrange for a copy to be given to every single one of my colleagues who has ever to address an audience, for all that that might seem arrogant or condescending.

And there you also have my slight reticence about this book, slightly off-puttingly subtitled, as you may have noticed, the official TED Guide... It is perhaps thereby a little too sure of itself, in the way of, say, an Apple: the disruptor become the establishment, ripe to be taken down by the next upstart. But meanwhile, make no mistake, like Apple, TED got where it is by being very good and extremely cool. And, I think, fundamentally right about how one real person, telling other real people about something fascinating and doing it in a way that makes the ideas stick and spread, adds up to one of the most important, valuable and exciting endeavours of which we as human beings are capable.