Pinch Yourself, This is Not Science Fiction

India will play host to a TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference later this year

Early this year, India-born Pranav Mistry, a doctoral candidate at MIT, wowed an audience with a groundbreaking presentation on ‘SixthSense’, a technology he’d developed that would link the real world with digital technology. The venue in the US was a conference by TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design)—a unique body that provides a platform to showcase cutting-edge work in the sciences and arts. In no time, Mistry was making waves.

Later this year, India will be host to a similar TED conference, usually a gathering of some of the world’s most influential scientists, artists, writers, photographers and designers. Previous conferences have had the likes of politicians Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown, Al Gore, Bill Gates, musician Bono and writer Alain de Botton deliver what are known as ‘Ted Talks’.

Lakshmi Pratury, program director, TED India, is keyed up about the happenings. Around 1,000 people, she says, are expected to attend the conference at the Infosys campus in Mysore in November. She likens Mistry’s talk as a telling example of the kind of work TED expects to discover here. “SixthSense would be a device which one wore and depending on the data fed into it, would respond to the outside world. Really, it was like a PC which functioned through hand movements and facial gestures. We really want to find out if there more people doing exciting work like this in India.”

Though the conference won’t have a stated theme, India will figure as a point of discussion. “The intention behind bringing TED is to try and establish a trend for important scientific dialogue here,” says Pratury. Apart from the US, TED has another chapter at Oxford University. “A lot of the questions being posed would deal with how India is using technology and how good is India as an environment for technological innovation,” she says. Everything else, for the moment, is under wraps. Expect all roads to lead down south this November.

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Rahul Jayaram

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