Arch Daily Interview of Richard Saul Wurman by Niall Patrick Walsh

Niall Patrick Walsh Interview with Richard Saul Wurman, TED Founder and Architect:

https://www.archdaily.com/927079/an-interview-with-ted-founder-and-architect-richard-saul-wurman

Richard Saul Wurman is one of the most influential architects of our time; a remarkable achievement for someone whose passions and explorations extend far beyond the traditional realms of the profession. Wurman’s lifelong pursuit of the misunderstood, the unknown, and the unexplored, has offered a litany of contributions to the wider world, from the highly-acclaimed TED Conference, which he founded in 1984, to signature theories such as LATCH and Information Architecture. Born in 1935 in Philadelphia, an architectural alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, he has counted Louis Kahnand Charles Eames among his mentors, and Moshe Safdie and Frank Gehry among his great friends.

Throughout his life, Wurman has written, designed, and published over 90 books on multiple topics, from architecture and graphic design to data and medicine. Perhaps it was Wurman’s wife, the novelist Gloria Nagy, who captured this remarkable trajectory most aptly when she said “It is very hard to explain what Richard does. It is especially hard for Richard to explain what Richard does. All of his training, as an architect, as a cartographer, as a graphic designer, as an entrepreneur, as a publisher, and as an author, has all been about a passion for making information understandable.”

In the following interview, ArchDaily's Niall Patrick Walsh speaks to Richard Saul Wurman about his life, his views on architecture, and his encounters with Louis Kahn and Charles Eames. We also investigate the byproducts of Wurman’s many careers, from TED and TEDMED to LATCH Theory and Information Architecture; fruits of a purely personal mission to understand, but one from which we have all been profound beneficiaries.

ArchDaily (Niall Patrick Walsh): How do you describe your life, or your attitude to work, in your own words?

Richard Saul Wurman: In Chile, 1935, a gentleman from Argentina died in a strange airplane accident on the runway, playing “chicken” with an acquaintance. They were gambling to see who would swerve their plane off the runway first. The man was Carlos Gardel, the inventor of the tango. The tango is a terrific metaphor for my daily life. A tango is a complex dance to beautiful music, which on one hand has order, specific moves, real principles, and follows a plan. But it is also improvised. Part of it is about hate, anger, violence, love, adoration, and respect. It is a metaphor for the opposites turning out to be something terribly creative. 

The opposite of knowing is not knowing. The opposite of doing something myself is the fact that I’m never asked to do anything. Nothing is how it seems in my life. What seems like bravery and innovation comes from the thought of “well, what else am I going to do?”

AD: In 1976 you coined the term “Information Architect” for the AIA. What do you believe an Information Architect is, and what is its connection to the traditional practice of architecture?

RSW: There are many ways to interpret “information architect.” For some, an information architect is someone who designs websites. For others, it is someone who designs graphs and charts. For me, it is my entire life from the moment I get up to the moment I go to sleep.

I believe any building should talk to you, and you should understand it in many dimensions; during night and day, where you can and can’t go, etc. It has a story to tell to make it understandable to its occupants. But is that true for everybody? Does everybody care about “the existence will of a building” as Louis Kahn said? Does everybody care that you speak to a building and that it speaks to you? Do they care that I speak to a painting and sculptures, and they tell me what they want to be? That might make me seem like a freak, but it doesn’t stop me from having a conversation with my work or talking to myself. Talking, and spouting off, and hearing the fool I am, or the clever person I am, or the profound person I am, all help me on my journey.

AD: When describing Information Architecture, you have said that “the organization of information actually creates new information.”

RSW: Now that is a profound thought, and has not been embraced by the information community for what it really means. The principles of how you organize information actually generates new information. Some of that can be warped, and some can be positive and constructive. That is a whole field that people have let slip by. There are two organizations that came into my life. One is the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) and one is called AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale). Both were so deeply uninterested in Information Architecture that they didn’t want to hear about it, and laughed at the things I did. Forty years ago I predicted that half of the future work in graphic design would be corporate logos, movie posters, illustrations, etc.; but half of it was going to be Information Architecture. They didn’t know what I meant, and they thought that I was a fool. Of course, my prediction came true.

AD: Indeed, this observation, that “organizing information creates new information” is becoming prevalent in architectural education.

RSW: Oh absolutely. But in my lifetime, I couldn’t get a job with it and nobody would listen to me. They thought I was a pariah and a mascot. But now, it is deeply embedded in our society.

AD: There is however still a significant portion of the architectural community that either doesn’t appreciate that line of theory, or sees it as having no relevance to the act of architecture.

RSW: Why does that surprise you? There are two things to say. First, most graphic design is still used in advertising, books, annual reports, schools, and charts. Most of it is still judged by professionals along the lines of whether it looks good or not. It is not judged on whether it works. The immediate judgment of the AIG, the AIGA, and whatever the equivalent is in Belfast, Dublin, England, France, or Japan – is primarily the look of something, and only then whether it works or not. That’s one thing. The second thing is that if I had to consider any field, whether it be dentistry, architecture, baseball, tennis: most people are terrible. That is the nature of things. Most people doing anything are bad at it. Here is a challenge: do you know a single human being that doesn’t have a disastrous doctor story?

AD: No, I don’t.

RSW: Well, doesn’t that say something? The most trusted profession, who holds your life in their hands, and your relative’s life, and your baby’s life. Even the most trusted profession is a joke, as far as the average capability of its participants. There are several big medical organizations in the world, the CDC (Center for Disease Control in the United States), WHO (The World Health Organization) and the UN. I have tried with a number of organizations to get two numbers I wanted. How many people in the world died in 2018? And how many people were born? You can’t get those numbers in a way where they line up or agree with each other. Isn’t that a pretty fundamental number? The latest I could get was 2016. If you try getting a more complex number, say the number who died from a medical error, you can’t get that either because it is not reported! The architecture profession is no different from such incompetence.

AD: You could be described as somebody who finds more interest outside of their comfort zone, in the unknown and the unexplored. Did your time as a practicing architect fulfill that part of your personality?

RSW: I miss architecture. My goal in life was to be a great architect. I love architecture, but I do not love, like, or tolerate the accident of a client, or what they might want me to do. I don’t like being told what to do, I instead like to discuss what to do. I am convinced that a good client can make a building much better, but you are also owned by your client, and I don’t think I’m making any great headlines by saying that. The frustration of even the most famous architects is that they work for a client, and that they spend a lot of time coddling and pleasing the client. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have clients. What I’m saying is that you can’t control your client, and that it takes up a major part of your day and life.

Early in my career, Robert Venturi and I were among those tipped to follow in the footsteps of Louis Kahn. I was considered a serious architect. I still consider myself an architect. I love architecture, I visit architecture, many architects are friends of mine including Frank Gehry and Moshe Safdie. But I am also interested in many other things. I focus on cartography, painting, guide books; they all interest me. But there isn’t an ounce in my body that is leaving architecture. It is part of my body and soul.

AD: You founded TED in 1984 along the convergence of technology, entertainment, and design.

RSW: That convergence existed even at the time, but nobody in those industries observed it. Today it is old news. If I said to you now that the entertainment business, the technology industry, and design professions work together, you would say “of course they do.” But before, that was a stupid idea.

AD: Having observed that relationship between technology and design, what do you believe is its future? Do you believe one overpowers the other? We often hear the phrase “form follows function” but do you believe that design follows technology, or technology follows to design?

RSW: I think form follows performance and performance follows form. Function is putting a piece of wood down and sitting on it. Performance is sitting on something that makes your back align correctly, and accommodates your movements. If it is done to a level of perfection, then it becomes an art form. There is a fork in the road between looking good, and being good. Don’t design something to look good; design it to be good, and then it will be handsome.

AD: Is there any architect you identify today who you believe is particularly noteworthy in that pursuit of an architecture that strives to be good, rather than looking good?

RSW: I would say the auditorium space in Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall performs well. It is a pleasing sculpture, but one which underneath holds a space that succeeds in being good. The Kimbell Art Museum by Louis Kahn performs so perfectly that it is breathtakingly handsome.

AD: Early in your career, you worked closely with Louis Kahn. What is your view on the evolution of architecture between then and now?

RSW: I can’t imagine a life without Lou. I had an epiphany when I met him, he was somebody who told the truth. It was through the simplest of statements and observations. For example, in current buildings, half the budget is taken up by the mechanics; and yet it is not expressed. When I went to school in 1953, the attitude was that you hung a ceiling and you hid everything. You hid the lights, you hid the air conditioning, you hid the water. You essentially created a glass box, and the preoccupation was how good you did your moldings. Later on, architects such as Michael Graves painted buildings just to make them look pretty. Then you have buildings that look like they are solving mathematical equations, and look clever. Now you have a group of buildings built for billions of dollars, the Hudson Yards in New York, which is so anti-human that it takes my breath away.

Here’s a question: have you ever walked down Park Avenue in New York? Ask many people that, and they will look at you for a moment, and say “well, actually no. I know where it is, I know the buildings at the start and end, I know it’s the only wide avenue in New York that has a centerline of planting, and the Seagram Building and Lever House is on it, but no I’ve never walked down it.” Now isn’t that interesting? They must be some of the most expensive buildings in New York, but you don’t walk down that street. Why? Because the ground floor isn’t interesting, and because the buildings are set back from the street because they are “on show”. You don’t walk down the street as you do in Bologna, where even if it is raining cats and dogs you can walk all across the city. There are thirty miles of arcades. Why? Because the upper floors extend out to street level; because it is a city for people; because the ground floor is interesting. There are shops, and restaurants, and all manner of things. When I go to a city, I want to go somewhere where the streets are interesting, hence we go to Venice, to Rome, to Paris. The ground floor of Hudson Yards is a Park Avenue wrapped around a staircase.

AD: In addition to Louis Kahn, you also crossed paths with Charles Eames. How significant were Kahn and Eames in shaping your trajectory?

RSW: Charlie influenced me heavily. I wrote a remembrance piece for him in 1978, where I said “If I were asked to appoint a Professor of Curiosity or a Dean of Learning or President of Imagination or Commissioner of Magic, they would all be Charles Eames. He was the truest student of seeing. He allowed me to see those things I always saw and never saw. He allowed me to distinguish between learning and education and to demand of the world around me that it become self-revealing.” That was written about Charlie but it was also written about me. That is one aspect of character I shared with Charles Eames.

In 1961, I was 25 and working for Louis Kahn when he was beginning his rise to prominence. He was well known in the student community, but the people on the street didn’t know who he was. I asked could I write a book on him, and he said yes. I said that I wanted to have something by my bed, metaphorically, that I could open up and look at his drawings, and read what he had written. He said, “let us go back and choose the drawings.” I picked mostly unfinished drawings on yellow trash paper, with charcoal sketches and words crossed out. In 1962 I wrote the first book on Louis Kahn, titled “The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn.” He and I were secretly friendly. He was the first person in our lives that spoke architectural truth to us. He was my guru, he remains my guru, and I live with him every day.

AD: Beyond Kahn and Eames, were there any other encounters which heavily influenced your life? 

RSW: Someone who influenced my life a great deal was a man named Schuyler Van Rensselaer Cammann. He was a mentor of mine, a Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He was an odd man, who spoke thirteen languages. Given his interest in the Far East, he spoke Tibetan, and several dialects of Chinese, as well as European languages. For example, he learned Swedish because he was asked by the King of Sweden out for lunch in order to learn about a piece in his historical collection. He was the most encyclopedic person I knew, and he influenced me in enormous ways. When I was 19 or 20, he opened my eyes to another half of the world that I had never been taught. Back then, we had not heard of Tibet, we barely knew where China was, it was a different world. Through him, I learned about Chinese sculptures, the making of Japanese swords, etc.

I was also introduced to archaeology, particularly the Mayans. The oldest Mayan city is Tikal, which I journeyed to in 1958. There were no roads to it, no water or supply lines. Three of us mapped the entire city, along with a couple of native assistants with machetes who helped us cut our way through the jungle. They were really the first maps ever produced of Tikal with any accuracy, and would later be published by the United States Geological Survey. From that, I became involved in Mayan architecture, which was another part of my life. Then I have a whole medical part of my life. I founded a conference called TEDMED which was successful. You asked about two designers because that is your field, but I could just as comfortably talk about Mayan architecture, or medicine, or painting. Even this morning from 5am to 8:30am I was working on a sculpture which is to be cast in bronze. I have a varied day, and a varied life.

AD: Given the many challenges that future generations of architects will face, what is your biggest piece of advice to young architects seeking to use their skills to improve the world, not just through the design of buildings, but through broader and more diverse paths?

RSW: Some years ago, I wrote a letter for the graduating class of architecture students.

Architecture is the thoughtful making of space and place. It shelters nearly everything that defines civilization: families, factories, football, and the sounds of a flute. Architecture holds formative conversations with everything. The near future is about conversations between those who are similar and those who are different, and about innovative ideas that come from such conversations. What will be your conversation?

Architects can relate to anything. Architects are in everything. Young architects should be human. They should have a conversation, and not just with buildings. The last line of that letter was “who are you going to have a conversation with?” What is your choice? I was trying to give them permission, that whatever they choose to have a conversation with can be their life. It can be with the environment, with a building, or with how a flute sounds.

Design Your Life

www.domusweb.it | By Brendan McGetrick | October 2012

A conversation with Richard Saul Wurman — founder of TED, a conference that since 1984 has evolved into one of the world's most eagerly anticipated and influentials summits — allows Brendan McGetrick to distill the seven secrets of a "Highly Effective Person".

This article was originally published in Domus 963 / October 2012 

At a certain point in our conversation, the architect, author and TEDconference-founder Richard Saul Wurman decides to inform me of how little he stands to gain from the experience. "I've never met you before," he says, truthfully. "I don't know your family. You're not gonna do any good for me. You're not gonna get me jobs or a grant. There is nothing that I can see that has a direct result of pleasing you." He explains all this about an hour into our interview and shortly thereafter my ears tune out and I find myself scanning the bookshelves just above his head. There are maps and journals, drawings and photos of Wurman and others. 

On a low shelf is a magazine apparently called Successful . Beneath the word — rendered in red, all caps — is a portrait of the man himself, slightly younger but more or less the same: silver crewcut hair, round face with beard and bulbous nose, mischievous smirk and light, appraising eyes. Just above his left eyebrow, in much smaller letters, so small that they span only the space beneath "Ful", it reads "Meetings". Apparently that is a magazine. Successful Meetings magazine. Wurman is their cover boy and deservedly so — he is an absolutely first-rate meeting-maker, a visionary in fact. 

When I return to the discussion my partner appears to be arriving at a conclusion. "What I'm trying to get at is a series of points that show, whatever you write about, that I'm not a model. I don't have a so-called philosophy that is worthwhile for anybody. The fact that I've survived is the magic. The magic is that somebody as abrasive and dissonant as I am, with basically no skill sets, can survive opulently in this world without trying to." 

By this point in our talk, I understand that Richard Wurman is prone to overstatement. Throughout the interview he has delivered pithy, quote-friendly pronouncements like, "The worst person to hire is an expert," and, "Young people are the oldest people around." This magic/model stuff sounds catchy and empty to me, and I'm pretty sure that there is nothing supernatural or even particularly special about the rise of Ricky Wurman. To prove it, I decide to define a model of the man's success. What follows is a draft: The RSW Model (or 7 Habits of a Highly Effective Person). 

1. Follow your fascinations 
In his 1989 book Information Anxiety , Richard Wurman writes: "Your work should be an extended hobby." There is little doubt that the author lives by these words. Since the 1960s, Wurman's professional output has been driven by his personal obsessions, and a cursory review of the more than 80 books he's made over the years reveals a man of distinct passions. There is a dog manual (Dog Access , 1984); there is something on hats (Design Quarterly 145, 1989); there are two volumes dedicated to the work of Louis Kahn (The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn , 1973; What Will Be Has Always Been , 1986). There are multiple atlases and brochures on medicine and on money, and there are guidebooks covering an enormous range of subjects, including guidebooks (A Guidebook to Guidebooks , 1973).

Richard Saul Wurman lives in a 19th-century house that is a copy of a French 18th-century building, in Newport, Rhode Island. Besides being an architect and graphic designer, he has curiously also been concerned with archaeology. After founding the TED Conferences in 1984, Wurman sold the format in 2001 to Chris Anderson for 14 million dollars

Taken out of sequence, these subjects appear random, but read in chronological order a kind of narrative emerges. In the 1960s, Wurman, a Kahn protégé with built projects already under his belt, makes his first efforts at defining a common language for representing and contrasting cities. With student assistants, he produces earnest works with titles of touching blandness, such as Various Dwellings Described in a Comparative Manner(1964).

In the 1970s Wurman's focus shifts from form to performance. He examines cities and develops tools for communicating their qualities. The effort yields publications that underline user experience — handbooks, guides and educational supplements. Besides working as an architect, Wurman organises events — the 1972 International Design Conference in Aspen, the Federal Design Assembly in 1973, and the American Institute of Architects Conference in 1976. He approaches these in the same spirit as his books, emphasising engagement and exploration, using the gatherings as platforms for urban adventure. At the AIA Conference Wurman coins the term "Information Architect". His architectural practice closes shortly after.

By the 1980s Richard Wurman is living in California and producing guides of all kinds. The first is Los Angeles Access , a book produced in what the author describes as "a full state of disorientation" and comprised of the info that he needed after moving from his native Philadelphia. Subsequent guides, all titled Access and published by Wurman's Access Press, make more comprehensible Paris, baseball, Polaroid, the 1984 Olympics, the aforementioned dogs, and more. In 1984, Wurman organises the first TED Conference — more on that later. In 1989 he releases Information Anxiety, a book-length manifesto on information design that applies techniques developed in the guides to new and more abstract subjects. In 1990 he sells his publishing company to HarperCollins. 

TED takes off in the 1990s and book output decreases. The publications Wurman does produce reflect his increasing involvement in the areas of technology (Danny Goodman's Macintosh Handbook , 1992), entertainment (Twin Peaks Access , 1991) and design (Information Architects , 1997). In 2000, Richard Wurman turns 65. He produces a sequel to Information Anxiety, but the majority of his books address issues of physical and financial health. Can I Afford to Retire? (2000) is followed by Wills, Trusts & Estate Planning (2001). Understanding Healthcare (2004) follows Diagnostic Tests for Men (2001). In 2009 Wurman creates 33: Understanding Change & the Change in Understanding . The book commemorates the anniversary of the 1976 AIA Conference and updates a fable that Wurman wrote for that event. 33 is a kind of victory lap, an Important Person's attempt to communicate a career's worth of lessons to an uninformed public. 

In a section entitled "The Design Your Life Episode", Wurman writes: "I really measure my life by what I want to do every day. That's a design problem, if you want to call it that, that we have an effect upon… We can decide what to do, what our trade-offs are." Seated in his study, surrounded by his books and hundreds of others, the author restates this point and adds, "From early childhood, every one of your teachers and your parents want to know what you want to do. They expect that if you then lock in and continue on that path with energy, if you're upwardly mobile and intelligent and all those other things, you're going to move ahead and become more and more successful. Success is usually a term that means partly money and partly achievement, position and power, and so for most of my life I was highly unsuccessful in society's terms."

It is probably worth noting at this point that our conversation is taking place inside Wurman's gated 8-acre estate, in a 19th-century American copy of an 18th-century French country house that includes 3 swimming pools, 13 bedrooms and, according to the Home & Garden section of The New York Times , "11 perfectly maintained period fireplaces and 11 perfectly maintained period bathrooms". Wurman has worked on the place and considers it part of his architectural portfolio; he designed the landscaping and the largest pool and even the desk separating us — triangular, with stout legs and a glass top — over which he now leans and says in soft tones, "I think it's more interesting to have the terror of doing things you don't know how to do. But it is more difficult than if you just keep on doing one thing better. It's uncomfortable. The very nature of my life is a life of terror." 

Re: Terror. You will find this word in every Richard Wurman interview. Wurman loves this word. He does not respect this word. A more appropriate term to describe the condition that apparently defines his industrious, appetitive existence would be "anxiety" or perhaps "discomfort". The discomfort that all ambitious workers feel when attempting something they have never done before, for higher stakes than they are accustomed to. It is a sensation commensurate with risk and should be acknowledged by anyone attempting to apply the RSW model, but should in no circumstances be confused with terror, an important word that has been honed by millions of mouths over hundreds of years of distinctly non-work-related horror. Wurman misuses it for effect, and advises others to do the same. "Embellish with flourish," he counsels readers in Information Anxiety , "To clarify or highlight something, you exaggerate it."

Defined by Fortune magazine as “an intellectual hedonist”, Wurman is clearly working on a new conference format, titled WWW Conference. The letters www in the name derive from significant words like water, war, wonder and witness

2. Document your journey from ignorance to understanding 
Another favourite Richard Wurman term is ignorance. He uses this as often but more appropriately than terror, and when inclined spices it up with synonymous phrases like "know nothing" and "know dick shit", the latter of which he applied to comic effect in his keynote address at "Why Design Now?", a conference arranged by GE and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. "I can attack anything that interests me and try to find the pattern that would take me on this journey from not knowing to knowing," he announced to his Lincoln Center audience. "That journey is the excitement I have everyday because I don't know dick shit! I start and there's something that interests me and I pursue this journey trying to ask questions and find out how to get so I can feel, viscerally, that I understand something."

Wurman's gift is the ability to communicate this private experience in a manner fit for public use. His work is the visual record of his own learning process, a process triggered by the sense of anxious disorientation that all information-age inhabitants experience, expressed in a language that we can understand. "Embracing your ignorance is the way to understand better," Wurman writes in 33, "and that understanding is power."

3. Counter convention 
Wurman is most animated when discussing dysfunction. If fear is his primary motivator, frustration is a close second, and in explaining the inspiration behind his best-known work, he mentions few aspirations and a large number of complaints. "Everyone talks about how innovative TED was," he says, "and it was innovative, but the innovation came from subtraction. I subtracted all the things that I couldn't bare about going to meetings. I hated panels and I hated white guys in suits and I hated lecterns and I hated long speeches and I hated people reading speeches and I hated that it was all about one subject. People selling things from the stage — selling guilt and selling charities and selling books — I hated all those things! And basically my innovation was taking all of that shit away. It was subtraction, in the way that the Bauhaus, as I look back at it, was a whole movement of subtraction."

For a while there, TED truly was the antithesis of all that — the informal, social, multidisciplinary answer to uptight industry-standard gatherings. Now though, it is simply another standard and Wurman speaks of the franchise, which he sold in 2001, as a "20th-century model". In response, he is organising a new kind of meeting, the WWW Conference , for which the plan is to cut further from TED's seemingly stripped-down frame. "In the newest meeting, I'm subtracting presentations, subtracting time," he says. "I'm taking things away to see what's left. What's the essence?" The result will be a conference composed entirely of improvised conversations, possibly set to improvised music (performed by Herbie Hancock and Yo-Yo Ma). It is an experiment, like all of Wurman's projects, uncertain of success — "I don't have a business model. I'm terrified about that. At this moment I'm up to lose about 750,000 dollars." — but consistent with the conference designer's time-tested model of invention through the rejection of what's currently considered to work.

 It’s only if you keep building on what you’ve done that it bothers you. I’m not building on what I’ve done. It’s not of interest to me. It’s boring 

In the organisation of these WWW Conferences, Wurman has involved a group of personalities from widely assorted backgrounds: from Yo-Yo Ma and Herbie Hancock to William R. Hearst III

4. Claim no field. Invade all fields 
Although he left his Philadelphia practice years ago, Richard Wurman still talks of architecture with the intimacy of an active participant. Explaining the multidisciplinary impulses behind TED, he says, "The interesting thing about architecture is that it isn't siloed." Siloed is a Silicon Valley adjective that essentially means professionally or intellectually exclusive. "What you are being trained to do is house any of man's activities… so you're open to come into every problem being ignorant — because you can't possibly know about all those things. In that sense, architectural training, in its lack of specificity and openness to learn about each problem you solve, is not a bad way to do it." 

Since the 1970s Wurman has described himself as an information architect. In 33 , he defines it: "I don't mean a bricks-and-mortar architect. I mean architect as in the creating of systemic, structural and orderly principles to make something work — the thoughtful making of either artefact, or idea, or policy that informs because it is clear." The idea of information architecture is one of Wurman's most valuable, not only for its enduring idiomatic charm, but also because it allowed its inventor to establish for himself an entirely new profession from which he — as the de facto #1 expert — could enter almost any other field, advocate any strategy and condemn any trend, all the while enjoying non-committal outsider status. 

5. Do good work 
At some point I suggest that it would be interesting for Wurman to apply his skills to developing tools for the "life design" he writes about in 33 . Given the enormous amounts of behavioural data currently being collected in the streets, in our pockets and online, are we not better equipped than ever to examine our fascinations and develop careers based on the Wurmanian model of an extended hobby? Wouldn't the author of this model be the ideal person to lead the effort? This is his answer: "Unless I misunderstand you, implicit in what you just said would be the desire for me to make a change in the world or to clarify something for other people. I'm not interested in that." Here he takes a reflective pause during which I assume he is formulating a way to soften the preceding point. This assumption is wrong. He continues, "I'd have to be motivated to want to do that, and I know that in the PC milieu in which we are living, you're supposed to want to change things for the better. I believe as fundamentally as I believe anything that if I do good work — in my judgement good work — I will affect people. But never will I try to have an affect on people." 

Do good work. This is another Richard Wurman maxim, attributed to Mies. He invokes it often, in conversation and on stage and, to his credit, he does not hide behind the phrase's ambiguity. Wurman is very clear about what good work is and who defines it: good work is work deemed good by Richard Wurman. He is judge and jury. Though he clearly relishes his personal connections and professional accolades, these are, apparently, collateral benefits from a life of highly industrious narcissism. When I suggest that the app he is developing for the WWW Conference could be useful in extending the life of the event and opening it to the outside world, he says, "I don't care about that. I just care that this would be interesting for me to do, an interesting problem to solve. This is something that I would like to happen. This is not for the good of humanity." 

6. Cultivate childishness 
It occurs to me at this point that Richard Wurman behaves like a 77-year-old child. I do not mean this to be condescending or dismissive. It is one of the things I like most about him. He seems to have somehow maintained a portion of preoperational egocentrism and the world is richer as a result.

Wurman does not pine for past projects. "I don't think that anything I come up with will be there for any length of time," he says. When the work is done and it's achieved the level of idiosyncratic goodness that Wurman demands, he sets it aside and moves on in that inexplicable, admirable manner of a toddler who, having spent the better part of a morning meticulously constructing some sort of block-based sculpture, demolishes her work without comment and leaves the room in search of juice. When I ask how it feels to watch TED evolve without him he says, "Things run their course. It's only if you keep building on what you've done that it bothers you. I'm not building on what I've done. It's not of interest to me. It's boring."

With the WWW Conference, Wurman's idea is to cause a sort of “intellectual jam session”, using an app to make the contents of their meetings available to all

7. Use others frequently and shamelessly 
Wurman exhibits another enormously useful, unmistakably childish behaviour — the wanton manipulation of people for personal gain. He is a user of legendary proportions, a man who, back in the TED days, was known to introduce himself by saying, "You don't know me, but you owe me." Harry Marks, the man with whom Wurman started TED, was so disturbed by his partner's exploits that he sold Wurman his half of the enterprise for one dollar. Wurman later offered to return Marks' 50 per cent ownership stake, but he refused. "He uses people in a way I can't deal with," Marks told Wired' s Gary Wolf. "I couldn't face them."

Wurman, by all accounts, feels none of his friend's misgivings. "I live by two credos," he says, "If you don't ask, you don't get. And most things don't work."

Throughout the interview, Wurman asks questions about me — how old are you… where are you from… what did you study… Towards the end, I mention an exhibition that I'd curated the previous year together with Ai Weiwei. The intention of that show was to stretch to the definition of design and I point out that Wurman's notion of designing your life jibes with it. This elicits no response, but my reference to China's most recognisable artist/ activist clearly intrigues him. A new set of questions follows, about Ai's work, personality and current condition. "Is it possible to get to him to have a conversation?" he asks. "He's allowed to do that?" I answer yes and then it hits me: I now have something Richard Wurman can use! I feel redeemed and then ashamed and in that micro moment of doubt, the master makes his move: "And you can… get me to Weiwei in some way?" Brendan McGetrick, architecture critic and journalist 

Born in Philadelphia, Richard Saul Wurman studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1959. He worked for Louis Kahn, and his official biography states that "the only two bosses he ever had who didn't fire him were Lou Kahn and Charlie Eames". After abandoning architecture, Wurman turned to the most diverse scenes. In 1976 he coined the term "Information Architecture", and subsequently published 83 books of essays and guides to all manner of subjects. With Anne Tyng (see Domus no. 947), in 1986 he edited What Will Be Has Always Been, a collection of Kahn's writings and lectures.

Esri Hosts WWW Conference—Reinventing the Art of Conversation

ArcNews | Winter 2012/2013

What happens when some of the world's brightest minds come together in one location to talk one-on-one about anything and everything? No script. No preparation. No podium or teleprompters.

It's more than an interesting premise or an esoteric exercise of what if.

This past fall, it was a reality. The result was open, honest conversation about topics ranging from climate change to video games, insects, the inner city, and even the end of the world as we know it.

September 18–20, the WWW Conference made its worldwide debut in Southern California—opening at the historic Mission Inn Hotel and Spa in Riverside and concluding with two days at the state-of-the-art theater on the campus of Esri in Redlands. Richard Saul Wurman—architect, cartographer, and founder of the now globally recognized TED conferences—created this new and wildly inventive forum as the "anti-conference." While TED talks have been elevated to near pop culture status, receiving millions of views online, they have a practiced, polished, and professional look and feel today that's different from their initial iteration in 1984.

Wurman, who also created and participated in the TEDMED Conferences 1995–2010 and many other conferences and events, sought to break new ground—and looked to do so by celebrating improvised conversation. The result was truly inspirational, instructional, and a perfect nexus of art and science.

The WWW Conference provided three days of dynamic dialog. Wurman's mandate was simple: pair amazing individuals together and spark conversation with a simple question, idea, or premise. Then let the conversation evolve, naturally and organically, without rehearsal, preparation, or planning of any sort.

And while the idea might sound otherworldly, its originality proved to be enticing.

From musician and producer Quincy Jones to ocean explorer Dave Gallo, magician David Blaine, Tony Award-winning film and musical director Julie Taymor, experimental psychologist Steven Pinker, The Simpsonscreator Matt Groening, theoretical physicist Lisa Randall, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C. K. Williams, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, nearly 50 renowned personalities across diverse disciplines agreed to join in the intellectual and artistic stew.

Conversations lasted from 30 minutes to more than an hour. There were musical performances; poetry readings; and guests, such as astrophysicists, microbiologists, researchers, actors, playwrights, and CEOs, reinvigorating what it means to create truth, knowledge, and understanding.

"It was an energetic exploration of the lost art of conversing," says Wurman. "The most innovative ideas come from conversations between two individuals."

When it came time to pick the perfect venue for the event, Wurman turned to friend, collaborator, and Esri president Jack Dangermond. In addition to delivering a keynote at the 2010 Esri International User Conference, Wurman has worked with Dangermond on several projects over the years. The two agreed to have Esri host the conference.

That the world's great thinkers descended on a location where geography is the great denominator of understanding our world was hardly an accident. What better place to have conversations around the theme of understanding our world?

"Richard Saul Wurman is a true visionary, and his work as author, architect, urban planner, and founder of TED put him in a unique position to carry out the WWW Conference in magnificent fashion," says Dangermond.

The Esri auditorium stage featured three couches. Two faced each other for the participants, and the third was placed between, where Wurman would kick off the conversation. To the audience's left was a magnificent interpretive glass arrangement called Macchia Forest by artist Dale Chihuly, and to their right, a grand piano. The simple and spartan design kept the focus on the people and the dialog they would exchange.

"It's an amazing place," Wurman said during the first morning at Esri. "I hope you see the contrast between this and the chapel [at the Mission Inn]. Only this is a chapel to understanding, of understanding our world through maps."

Each day featured an hour break in the morning and afternoon, and another hour-plus break for lunch. All breaks took place at the Esri Café, resulting in more conversation. And during those breaks, speakers and attendees alike often received high-tech demos of the latest geospatial solutions and best practices in places around the world. This, too, was off-the-cuff. People would wander out of the auditorium and into Esri technical areas to get a glimpse behind the magical map curtain.

Day two featured a special event that further explored the dynamics of location—in one room was a live camera feed to innovators in China that spurred impromptu conversation between a handful of attendees in Redlands and their counterparts halfway around the world.

"It's nice to have it in a city like Redlands, where I don't have to worry about losing people," said Wurman to the audience.

The Greatest Commodity of the 21st Century

What also attracted Wurman to creating the WWW Conference was cultivating the greatest commodity of the 21st century: understanding.

For years, Wurman has held that understanding precedes action. The type of intellectual honesty offered at WWW would be something never before seen, which leads to the question—and understanding—of what the letters WWW represent.

According to organizers, the first W stands for World. And from there, it gets interesting. The other Ws stand for a whole host of words and ideas: Water, Wealth, Women, Waste, War, Well-being, Wildlife, Witness, Wilderness, Work, Wisdom, Wit, and the Waking Dream. That's for starters.

"WWW was a gathering of the greatest, most interesting, and curious minds in the world," says Wurman. "We celebrated the 21st century while drawing attention to new patterns and convergences affecting our health and our planet."

The event itself demonstrated improvisation at every turn. Opening night at the Mission Inn kicked off with virtuoso cellist Yo-Yo Ma making a last-second decision to perform before the 300-plus audience seated in the Mexican-Baroque styled St. Francis Chapel. Wednesday morning at the Esri campus went off script as well, with renowned soprano—and recipient of two double-lung transplants—Charity Tillemann Dick singing a personalized rendition of "Happy Birthday" to Norman Lear for his 90th birthday, which had just taken place in July. Then another birthday song was sung for the audience members whose birth year ended in a 5 or 0 (20, 25, 30, 35, etc.). There were moments of true spontaneity—like when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mary Jordanwas overcome with emotion talking about her experiences as a journalist traveling around the world and reporting and the need for individuals to reach out and do good to others. She shared a story about a woman working in a Mexican prison, who helped comfort prisoners who were forced to sleep on the ground outside the prison walls because there were no more rooms available.

A collaboration by Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens and musician/composer Cristina Pato on the bagpipes brought the crowd to its feet. It was preceded by a lighter moment.

"The brainpower in this room is different than the Viper Room," quipped Stevens, who was headed to perform at the notorious Los Angeles nightclub immediately following his session at the WWW.

A bus transported attendees and speakers alike to and from the Mission Inn and the conference each day. Even that commute yielded unscripted verbal exchanges and illuminations both during and after the actual conference.

A few of the conference highlights included the following:

The Maestro

Richard Saul Wurman mentioned during the first night that what the country needs is a "Secretary of Understanding." While that's something he's talked about for years, this created quite a buzz during the event. Understanding was a central theme throughout the entire event—for the humanities as well as the sciences.

The Performers, Entertainers, and Writers

Award-winning television producer Norman Lear and Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg both discussed the social, artistic, and technological influence their movies and television programs have held with society. Katzenberg spoke about the rate of technology change and the opportunity it provides today's filmmakers. He also talked about the first gifts we are all born with—watching and listening—and how the next phase of technology will involve moving from texting toward video, moving to the most fundamental, intuitive approach to consuming information. Lear talked about the social impact of All in the Family and the fact that he saw the ripple effect it left with people watching the show from all the mail he received.

Grammy Award winners and multiplatinum performers alike, Herbie Hancock and will.i.am spoke about the need for science, math, and technology education in the inner city. Of all the speakers, will.i.am brought an energy and engagement that was unparalleled. He proclaimed society didn't need another musician from the ghetto; it needed another Mark Zuckerberg from the ghetto. He talked about the work he's doing for his childhood neighborhood of Los Angeles. He leads the implementation of a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) program at Roosevelt High School. For this and for all his philanthropic endeavors, he meets remarkable people so he can "sponge it up" and go back to the inner city where he can "rinse it out."

Yo-Yo Ma and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Brooks talked about the conditions and requirements for the life of music and writing. While one is a virtuoso and the other an insightful wordsmith, both touched on the discipline that goes hand in hand with creativity. Yo-Yo Ma described his formative years, age 4 to 15, as a focused, concentrated time with thousands of hours spent forging his art. Brooks talked about the daily work—the tumult and toil—that goes into writing a weekly political opinion column, particularly in today's fast-paced society. The challenge is to focus our attention. As he put it, you have to be so committed to something that you lose yourself to find the meaning of things.

The Scientists, Architects, and Researchers

When asked about how he approaches a new project, architect Frank Gehry (whose projects include the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain) responded with a lesson a teacher gave him at an early age: no matter what you do, always make it the best. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Neurology chair and award-winning researcher John Mazziata's study of the brain through scanning and imaging helps people understand more about how we learn: the types of information, how it is presented, and at what age it can be processed. Gehry posited how we teach students who don't fit into the traditional education system. Both of his sons did not do well on standardized tests, yet both succeeded in life. How do we help artists who don't know they are artists?

Botanist and environmentalist Peter Raven joined Esri president Jack Dangermond to discuss biodiversity, sustainability, climate change, and the need for greater awareness of these issues. Raven stated alarming statistics: there are three people alive today for every one of us when we were born. Another billion will be added to the population in 12 years. Both agreed—nations and corporations must get together to solve the problems of sustainability. Both also agreed that GIS is a fundamental platform for understanding. It brings people together to see, understand, and act. Raven summed up a life's worth of observation: learn all your life. Keep voting. Keep teaching. And above all, educate and encourage children.

Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist—and lover of ants and ant colonies—E. O. Wilson sat across from Will Wright, cofounder of Maxis and inventor of the wildly popular video game SimCity. Wilson went from discussing his research that involves complex social behavior in organisms, such as ants and bees, to a question for Wright: can we create games that take a person back in time 375 million years so that they can walk down a path in a cold forest during the Paleozoic period? That, said Wilson, would be a wonderful game—and teaching tool. Wright agreed. Wright shared that he felt games and storytelling are both educational tools. We have a limited bubble of experience. We supplement that with games and storytelling. They give us experience without risk.

The Next Big Thing(s)

Building on the themes of WWW, Richard Saul Wurman already has plans for more outlier events; in spring 2013, Prophesy 2025 will take place over five sequential Mondays in five cities in five countries around the world, each a one-day event. An expert leader will make a prophecy—by way of long-form conversation—on what can be expected to happen in the next 12 years. It will invite conversation and connection between the generations. At least two of the five speakers will be from the region where the event takes place. The themes will not be religious or doom and gloom but rather constructive ideas for the near future. Similar to WWW, the events will propel innovation, inspiration, and intellectually invigorating conversation by the world's finest thinkers. The results will be broadly distributed through world media.

"Richard Saul Wurman somehow managed to undo all of the rules and redefine the conference format that he invented 30 years ago," says Paul Soulellis, a New York-based artist and creative director. "I left with the feeling that a few of the world's most brilliant minds had shared some of their passions and dreams. WWW was generous and intimate and of the moment."

Information Anxiety: Towards Understanding

Scenario Journal | Scenario 05: Extraction | Winter 2012

“Communication is equivocal. We are limited by a language where words may mean one thing to one person and quite something else to another. There is no ordained right way to communicate. At least in the absolute sense, it is impossible to share our thoughts with someone else, for they will not be understood in exactly the same way.”

Richard Saul Wurman, “Chapter 4: Language,” in Information Anxiety (note 1)

 

Richard Saul Wurman describes his work as the promotion of understanding. “I am in the understanding business,” he writes. As the founder of TED conferences, his projects and writing examine information, architecture, design, and communication. Coining the term “information architecture” over thirty years ago, Wurman studies the processes behind which we understand, communicate, convey, and use information.

This emphasis towards understanding and the problem of too much information complicating the ability to do good work are key themes underlying  Information Anxiety (1989) and Information Anxiety 2 (2000). The following excerpts look at the problem of too much information, how we create understanding, and the beauty of what may be a lost art form: conversation. How we use information matters and particularly in the work of design: The purpose of technology and good communication is to create possibilities for ideas that, before, you hadn’t imagined or considered.

Information Anxiety: A word in search of a definition (note 2)

The word “information” has always been an ambiguous term, wantonly applied to define a variety of concepts. The Oxford English Dictionary describes the word as having its root in the Latin word informare, meaning the action of forming matter, such as stone, wood, leather, etc. It appears to have entered the English language in its present spelling and usage in the sixteenth century. The most common definition is: “the action of informing; formation or molding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching; communication of instructive knowledge.”

This definition remained fairly constant until the years immediately following World War II, when it came into vogue to use “information” as a technological term to define anything that was sent over an electric or mechanical channel. “Information” became part of the vocabulary of the science of messages. And, suddenly, the appellation could be applied to something that didn’t necessarily have to inform. This definition was extrapolated to general usage as something told or communicated, whether or not it made sense to the receiver. Now, the freedom engendered by such an amorphous definition has, as you might expect, encouraged it liberal deployment.  It has become the single most important word of our decade, the sustenance of our lives and our work.

Information anxiety has proliferated with the ambiguity of the word “information.” This mantra of our culture has been overused to the point of senselessness, in much the same way that a word repeated over and over will lose meaning. The word inform has been stripped out of the noun information, and the form or structure has disappeared from the verb to inform. Much of what we assume to be information is actually just data or worse.

Raw data can be, but isn’t necessarily, information, and, unless it can be made to inform, it has no inherent value. It must be imbued with form and applied to become meaningful information. Yet, in our information-hungry era, it is often allowed to masquerade as information.

So the great information age is really an explosion of non-information; it is an explosion of data. To deal with the increasing onslaught of data, it is imperative to distinguish between data and information. Information must be that which leads to understanding. Everyone needs a personal measure against which to define the word. What constitutes information to one person may be data to another. If it doesn’t make sense to you, it doesn’t qualify for the appellation.

In their landmark treatise in 1949, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, authors Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver define information as that which reduces uncertainty.

The differences between data and information have become more critical as the world economy moves towards information-dependent economies. Information drives the education field, the media, consulting and service companies, postal services, lawyers, accountants, writers, certain government employees, as well as those in data communications and storage. Many countries already have a majority of their work forces engaged in occupations that are primarily information processing. The move to an information-based society has been so swift that we have yet to come to terms with the implications.

Understanding lags behind production. “The channel, storage, and retrieval capacities of electronic hardware are rapidly growing, such as in the field of laser optics or microcomputers,” said Orrin Klapp in Overload and Boredom: Essays on the Quality of Life in the Information Society. “… There hasn’t been a corresponding gain in human capacity. Better information processing can speed the flow of data but is of little help in reading the printout, deciding what to do about it, or finding higher meaning. Meaning requires time-consuming thought, and the pace of modern life works against affording us the time to think.”

Information Anxiety 2: Talk is Deep (note 3)

The industrial design critic Ralph Caplan was talking to a woman who was trying to explain something to him. “I know what I want to say, but I just can’t put it into words,” she told him. Puzzled, Caplan asked her, “Can you tell me what form it is in now?

There is still only one method for transmitting thought, for communicating information in a manner that somewhat captures the spirit of the mind: the medium of conversation. Conversation can be a mirror of the mind, a petri dish for ideas. It enables us to communicate our thoughts in a manner that closely models the way they occur in our minds.

Without words, we would be severely handicapped in both shaping our thoughts and communicating them to others. While not the only tool, words elevate communication and lend an unparalleled degree of sophistication to expression.

The implicit and explicit goal of all conversation is understanding. Whether conversations occur between loves, friends, relatives, or business associates, they have as their express goal to get ones’ point across, to make a connection between one’s thoughts and another person—that is, the outside world; conversations are an understanding machine, an imminently satisfying forum for the exchange of information.

A conversation forms a two-way communication link. There is a measure of symmetry between the parties as messages pass to and fro. There is a continual stimulus-response, cyclical action; remarks evoke other remarks, and the behavior of the two individuals becomes concerted, cooperative, and directed toward some goal.

Time and time again, studies have shown that the best communication occurs face to face. We just can’t deny that.  People still fly halfway across the world to meet clients for the first time. In many organizations, 40 to 60 percent of the workday is spent in meetings. Managers need to be talking to their employees, real-time, one-on-one, telling them what is going on in their organization.

The lost art of conversation (note 4)

Alas, too often the human voice is lost, and our communication skills come up short. As Henry Miller once said, “We do not talk—we bludgeon each other with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines, and digests.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the business community. Studies have shown that poor communication is one of the main problems facing businesses today. Executives consistently rate communications among themselves as their main area of difficulty, according to Robert Lefton, president of Psychological Associates Inc. in St. Louis. High on the list of employee’s complaints are lack of communication with management and difficulties getting along with co-workers. If companies can’t communicate among themselves, how can they be talking to clients and customers?

As Malcolm Gladwell writes in The Tipping Point, we use influence to convince our clients and prospects to believe in us. We use the art of persuasion and consistent messaging to build trust with employees and our market.

When we are trying to convey an idea or attitude or product tip, we’re trying to change our audience in some small yet critical respect: We’re trying to infect them, sweep them up in our epidemic, convert them from hostility to acceptance. That can be done through the influence of special kinds of people—people of extraordinary personal connection.

Conversation is a viable, appropriate model for the communications industry, but it is largely untapped. It is a simple-minded principle imbued with extraordinary complexities, nuances, and ephemeral magic.

This is a book about clarification. And the most basic conversation that we have takes into it an enormous complexity, comments about weather, dress, nuances of the visual (someone nodding, blinking eyes, promptings, or lip movement) that show they want clarification or want to interrupt. It’s the best of what we do, the most complex thing we do. It has in it the possibility of great creative activity.

There is nothing else we do better when we do conversation well. There is no other communication device that provides such subtle and instantaneous feedback, nor permits such a range of evaluation and correctibility.

Words are strung together seemingly without hesitation in phenomenally complex sequences and thoughts.  They, in turn, work with each other to form new meaning. By its existence this process allows for the development of new ideas. Ideas are created in conversation. E.M. Forster used to say that to “speak before you think is creation’s motto.” Although spoken language is learned, it becomes natural and seemingly it becomes instinctive. It is our pipeline to understanding. We have more skills to put thoughts together by language than we do visually.

TEDMED & ME

By Paul Kandarian | 04 November 2015

TEDMED and Me, or My Four-Day Piss in Charleston.

I never had a four-day piss before, and not sure I ever will again.

But I did in 2004, thanks to Richard Saul Wurman, with whom I was working on a project at the time, when attending my first-ever Wurman conference, the TEDMED in Charleston, South Carolina.

Richard had told me that learning something new and valuable is like having a piss, feeling that warm envelopment of the new, the sweet embrace of useful information overcoming you, that is not unlike the sensation of taking a leak when you’ve held it a long time. It’s relaxing and energizing all at once, it sweeps over you.

Information. Pissing. Only Richard could make that connection. And in his world of understanding, it makes sense.

Here’s a guy who spent his life making the complex understandable so when he equates learning, and remembering what you’ve learned with a bodily function, I go with it. And that’s precisely the feeling I got at my virginal Wurman conference experience.

The stuff there blew me away. Hugh Herr, who lost both legs in a climbing accident, developed prostheses that allowed him to be a better climber, and was working on fake feet that would “feel” the sand under them as users walked on the beach.

John Donoghue created an implant that he put into a quadriplegic’s brain that allowed him to play video games – by thinking about it.

Gregory Stock talked of the day when couples would mix and match sperm and eggs to engineer the best possible child.

Truly mind-boggling shit. Or in Wurman Speak, like taking a long-awaited piss.

And it happened this way:

 

OCTOBER 10

Richard meets with volunteers in the morning and lords over the set-up process. I walk into the Riviera Theater where TEDMED is and outside are David Wolfgang-Kimball, a volunteer since TED8 and James Home, volunteer since TEDX. They are excited about working on another Wurman effort and speak in near reverential tones not so much about the boss but the experience.

“I kept coming back and they kept giving me more responsibilities,” says Wolfgang-Kimball, a neuroscience lab worker at the University of California in San Francisco, sipping a coffee in the moist, gathering heat of a Charleston Sunday. “It’s one of the most rewarding things I do even as it can be the most frustrating.”

You get a lofty view of people, he says, then have conversations with them and understand they’re just like anyone else. Months later, you see projects come from these companies that sprang out of meeting other people at the conference.

I mention the Wurman allure, and he says “without him, I wouldn’t have done this. I worked at the TED after Richard and I wanted to flee, it was horrible.”

Home, designer of interfaces, websites and applications in San Francisco, says attending these things is one of the most important things he does.

“This is the place to come,” Home says. “It’s where Richard is.”

I ask if it’s like a cult.

“It’s different in that people who come already have their own sense of identity and are here to share ideas and cultures and get out of it what they can get out of it,” says Wolfgang-Kimball, with Home adding “I like how Richard does what interests him and no one else. Being that self-secure is appealing and makes for a more honest, enlightening conference.”

Inside, the theater is cavernous, an ancient, renovated space that is somehow still warm and welcoming. People scurry about setting up the stage and a large conference area behind it where displays are going up. Volunteers haul chairs into Richard’s preferred geometric form, the circle. Richard pulls a couple over himself, then sits to talk, holding court to address his volunteers.

They beam at the guy, some looking scared, perhaps a bit unsure of what to make of the man they’d only heard about. Richard talks softly, telling them he’s lost track of the number of conferences he’s run, maybe 20 in all, adding “By now, I think I’ve gotten it right.”

He speaks of this being the most polished of his conferences, of the Riviera being the perfect room, a room filled with energy. He talks of Steelcase, Philips, Apple, Kodak, IBM and other businesses represented here.

“It’s gonna be great, “ he says, then adding with a disapproving look downward, “if they’d just change the fucking carpet.”

He speaks of the tight shooting script, the number of sessions, the badges, the Pavlovian response attendees have when they hear his purposely pompous Aida march blare over loudspeakers to signify entry. And he also talks about volunteers having fun.

“The spirit of the conference has to do with how good people feel and you have to do with how good people feel,” he says. “It’s as personal as it can be. I’d like you to see as much of the conference as you can, but that’s not a guarantee you’ll see every minute of every day. It’s my intention that you have a great experience; it’s only by you having a great experience and enjoying what you see and hear and do and meeting the people you meet, that everyone feels good in the room.”

Above all, this is his conference, he created and designed it and says, “the buck stops with me. I’m in charge. I’m egomaniacal.”

Conversely, he says with a sincerity not usually found in egomaniacs, “If it’s fucked up and lousy, it’s my fault. I’m not blaming anyone else.”

He takes questions and keeps an eye on construction going on in the background, telling volunteers he hopes they find the conference as curious and interesting and pattern revealing as he does.

“I love these four days,” Richard says. “I’m never more relaxed. Stuff comes in easier here and touches my memory banks and my pattern-making places easier than any other time of year. I love to have you here, I love you sharing it with me. Godspeed and have a good time.”

He wanders off to direct this and that. Later, the place is shaping up, Steelcase workers putting up skeletal structures that will house displays.  I move around, bugging volunteers again, hoping to hear that Richard is the draw. It is not. The conference is the thing.

Mindy Cheng, a young Californian, is washing down stools. This is her first conference. She met Reven Wurman, one of Richard’s children, in New York while visiting a friend, telling him she was in pre-med but unsure she wanted to do the doctor thing. She opted to volunteer at TEDMED to broaden her views.

Gloria Hernandez owns a real estate management company in Los Angeles. Today, she’s polishing glass cases, among other tasks. It’s her first Wurman conference, brought here by a friend and fellow classmate at Wharton, Mark Abramovich.

“Mark was so excited about it and said ‘I thought we were all smart at Wharton, but we’re a bunch of idiots’,” Hernandez laughs. “He said the people here are brilliant, they make it personal and share things you don’t read in articles.”

I also chat with Steelcase’s Kathy Waterman, a bundle of energy supervising her company’s work. I ask if Richard’s tough to work for.

“He’s a great guy,” she smiles. “He’ll leave me a voice mail or email saying ‘Kathy, you’re awesome’, and I never get that. But I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.”

Ken Eddings is from Apple, overseeing computer setups. He agrees part of the conference’s power comes from its creator, something Eddings calls “the force of Richard. He calls up Steve Jobs and talks him into sponsorships.”

Eddings had a snafu at a previous conference trying to connect a T1 line through AT&T but couldn’t get through because he’d asked what network was being used, was told it was proprietary information and then was hung up on.

“I told Richard, Richard calls the head of AT&T and says ‘I’m a simple soul who doesn’t get this stuff but I have a guy who can help’,” Eddings says. “My pager was ringing before I got off the phone.”

Jakob von Moltke, a 24-year-old New Yorker, heard about the conference from a volunteer friend who said it was life changing, so Moltke decided to find out for himself, volunteering “because of my passion for learning.”

I find Abramovich swabbing glass cases. In the real world, he’s an equity research analyst. This is his second Wurman conference.

“Where else can you find yourself in a place talking with a Nobel laureate like Marvin Minsky about what’s gonna happen in 50 years?” he says. “It’s astonishing, this is the guy who invented artificial intelligence.

“I think I get more value out of it than I put into it,” he says. “I get put up, go to a conference that costs $3,500 and have dinner with people I never would have otherwise.”

Richard walks by, looking over the progress, hands on hips, drinking it in, a near smile on his bearded face. I mention that it looks like he’s making sure things are going as expected.

“I’m an architect, I don’t just stand there,” he shoots back with a smile. “I designed this. I micromanage down to everything, every details, and then people pull it off. There was a speaker case that was just a bit off, so I had someone move it. It doesn’t mean a thing, it didn’t make a fucking bit of difference, but I wanted it that way. Nobody cares, it doesn’t matter. But I care. It matters to me.”

Later, the place is shaping up, looking futuristic. In the middle of the conference room is a spoke work of slate-gray strands with mesh netting to be used for displays, and computer workstations. Richard walks through with Reven and above the music blaring through the newly moved speakers, shouts “It’s beautiful!” and then lauds Waterman for the tables he says look like they were built just for this conference.

On stage he directs where he wants his chair and table, where he’ll sit. He is also concerned about people falling off the back of the stage where the black backdrop hands and wants something put up. And it will be. He also doesn’t want black drapes on the huge speaker stands.

“I don’t like it and want it gone,” he says.

Not long after, it is gone.

And before he leaves for another room to micromanage, he says to no one in particular, “Everyone’s doing a good job.”

 

OCTOBER 11

Reven Wurman meets with lead volunteers and assistants, and says the posters for the conference are in, but they need 30 easels to hold them. He stresses the importance of getting the easels – at all costs.

“Go to the hotel next door, divert a bride’s attention at a wedding reception by saying, ‘Hey, look, the Pope!’ and then steal the easels!” he says.

He seems to be only half kidding.

There are boxes of swag all around, bags of this and that all waiting to be sorted and bundled and handed out to eager attendees, many of them richer than rich. Rich people love free shit. I know because Richard says so.

“I was tossing out t-shirts once and there were millionaires and billionaires fighting over them,” he shrugs.

Downstairs, the AV system is worked on.  Yesterday, Wolfgang-Kimball tells me, everyone got out at 5 p.m., a far cry from other conferences where they work into the wee hours.

"We were waiting for the other shoe to drop,” he says. “Late last night, we saw a Philips truck go by and wondered if that was the other shoe.”

He speaks of the registration crush on the day the conference starts and says tomorrow will be the eye of the storm. He said at TED conferences it is intense and insane but he once got to see Martha Stewart’s driver’s license. So naturally we joke about the state of West Virginia now having her license and he says maybe they should have a TED prison just for her. I go with TED CORREX. He says TED PEN.

I run into Eddings and Richard talking about Steve Jobs.

“He’s a great guy, he never comes to the conferences but give me whatever I want,” Richard says. “I got a call late Saturday night from him in fact, he says ‘Richard, what do you want?’” and then laughs, clearly pleased by the benefits of his self-admitted starfucking.

Body parts are being unpacked, courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, the head of which is Adrianne Noe, a speaker here. Richard talks about William Tsiaras doing a film on cataracts, “because I’m getting them and that’s good enough” as the reason.

Richard says there’s also a film by John Perry Barlow, cowboy and former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and a long-time abuser of drugs and alcohol. The film’s about his cleansing process at the fabled Canyon Ranch.

Richard also talks about John Donoghue’s brain implant in the quadriplegic.

“It’s all a very expensive way of having conversations,” Richard says. “That’s why I do this shit.”

All around the floor are seeming miles of gray, black, blue and white cables, high-tech spaghetti splayed and strewn, coiled in or curled around corners, destined for purpose.

Richard talks to his AV people, saying “This will be a short meeting. But dwell on it,” and then goes on about how little delays add up to big problems.

Translation: There will be no little delays.

By late day, it’s almost there. All the body parts are up, including a sectioned male with penis, a deformed foot, dried lungs. Posters are up on the new-found easels and the Philips flat screens are beaming information.

At the side of the big stage, Richard sits, rocking slightly side to side, watching the screen. They’d just done a run-through with some minor fuck ups, including the misspelling of David Macaulay’s name. A guy talks to Richard about lighting and says there’s not enough of it, but Richard says the spotlights in back are hitting him in the eyes and wants it taken care of.

I tell him that when the conference starts tomorrow, I’m going to wander around, sit wherever and observe, figuring that since I was here on his dime working for him, I should let him know.

He looks astonished.

“You’re free, white and over 21, right, you can do whatever you want,” he admonishes, rocking in his chair.

From now on, I’m not announcing my intentions, I’m just doing. I’m learning something new already.

 

OCTOBER 12

Conference day. Let the piss begin.

Everything is in place early in the morning before things kick off in the afternoon. Someone shows Richard how to make coffee in one of a zillion coffeemakers Philips has here, a java junkie’s wet dream come true. He’s gracious and later I notice someone’s left a buck near a machine. I wonder if it was Richard.

One the big screen is an exploded artist’s cross-section rendering of a woman’s nether region, with big splashes of spotty color that someone calls “The confetti vagina,” and which Wolfgang-Kimball says is “more like the cannon confetti vagina.”

Honestly, this vagina is huge. One techie says the more upstairs you walk, the more the light seems to focus on said vagina. Another techie says “I get the feeling I should go home.”

I offhandedly ask Richard if the progress so far makes him happy. He clears his throat. He puts his Philips coffeemaker-made coffee down on a Steelcase, potato-chip looking stool. And he launches into a five-minute dissertation on being happy versus being competent.

When will I learn?

“It’s not about being happy, it’s about meeting expectations and if expectations are met, fine, but that’s not happy,” he says. “Happy might come when expectations are exceeded. I’m an architect, that’s my training. I make drawings and I give them to people and they do it. I’m not on my knees, I’m not getting dirty, I’m not plugging anything in and I don’t feel guilty about that. I set up instructions. I’m an instructor and inside are the parameters for competence.”

I shuffle nervously, hoping he’s done. He is not.

“People are happy to be competent, too many people,” he says. “Sorry to rain on your parade, but that’s how I feel.”

Well, it’s not a steady rain, more like a drizzle. I offer that “you’re one helluva planner,” to which he responds “I think no one else does what I do. If they did, I’d have heard about it.”

Then he lifts his coffee to his smiling lips.

“This is better than I expected,” he says, sipping. “This makes me happy.”

What clearly does not is later when I point out there are bunches of Philips cardboard placards next to the coffeemakers marked with their cost - $69.99. I know he’s dead set against advertising at his conferences, so I mention it to him.

“I didn’t know about that,” he says, and then as luck would have it, a Philips guy is walking by. Richard stops him, points out the mistake and says “We cannot have this.”

Soon, all offending dollar amounts have been obliterated by White-Out.

Richard walks around, watching, observing, instructing. You’d think a guy running a conference charging 3,500 bucks a head for roughly 300 heads, around a million bucks total, would be a little nervous before it starts, even a guy who’s done it so many times.

Most people feed off nerves, getting little adrenalin infusions that keep them sharp. Not Richard. Looking more like a curious guy who wandered in off the street rather than the guy running the place, he walks around in a black shirt, scarf, baggy khakis, cap on his head strolling calmly through the lobby as Aida booms to a teeth-chattering level.

It’s 11 a.m., and the conference starts at 3:30 and it’s a ghost town in the lobby. People are coming from New York, planes not landing until noon. Two guys are outside talking, and when Richard ambles out, one fairly bows as he approaches. He then stands, looking down the street, waiting for something.

I talk to Michael Weiner, CEO of Biophan. This is his third TEDMED and he has a dozen of his people coming, lead scientists and engineers, a reward for special people, he says. One of Biophan’s companies, Myotech, is unveiling a new machine that massages the heart from the outside and will save lives, he says.

“I’m happy to be here since the thinkers, not the bean counters, will be here to see it,” he says. “I really like what Richard does. He creates something magical and the best way to describe it is that it’s like Cirque du Soleil for technology.”

Jack Sullivan, two-time volunteer, stands by the stairs. He owns a small engineering company in California and loves the tech stuff here, saying “It’s all in one location, you don’t have to go searching for it. All the candy is in one place.”

We chat about Richard and the people he knows as Richard stands on the balcony, looking down. Just then, TV journalist Forrest Sawyer walks by in black pants and black t-shirt, throws his hands in the air and roars, “My brother!” and gives Richard a big hug. They walk around, Richard showing him the rooms.

It’s 3:10, 20 minutes to show time. There are a lot of people registering now, renewing old acquaintances, making new ones, kisses, hugs, handshakes all around. The party Richard always wanted to throw, which is what he calls his conferences, is about to begin.

Aida blares, Pavlovian responses kick in, people trudge up the stairs en masse. Richard is on stage, nodding, saying hello. When all are settled, he speaks.

“If you’re sitting next to someone you don’t know, introduce yourself. If you do know them, tell them something new, tell them where you have a rash or about the gas pain you had last night,” he says to great laughter.

And turn cell phones off, he admonishes sternly, “As I’ve been known to stop and hiss when I hear a cell phone.”

Throughout the conference, phones do chirp with people uttering a desperate “Shit!” as the struggle to silence them and avoid the hiss.

Richard introduces Jill Sobule, one of his favorite musicians, a delightful waif of a girl who sings “Lucy at the Gym” while he watches, giving a thumb-up as she finishes. She asks him to hold up the words to a song she wrote on the plane ride in, with Macaulay on vocal accompaniment, a song ending with “Love is DNA.” Richard roars with laughter.

It’s all mind candy, one warm piss after another. Macaulay shows some remarkable drawings he’s done on the human body, laid out as if the body were being assembled in a factory.

Richard speaks between presentations, mentioning WSJ – the Wall Street Journal – as a sponsor and that “I have the egomaniacal bent to call myself RSW so I call the Wall Street Journal WSJ.”

He says the WSJ had an ad in yesterday’s paper about this conference, adding “it doesn’t do me any goddam bit of good,” since the conference was a day later.

He introduces Laura Landro, assistant managing editor at the WSJ, who has written about her cancer survival. He speaks about Walt Mossberg and Carl Swisher of the paper, and how he was asked if he’d do TEDMED again after the last one – and said no.

“But they said they’d be partners and as a poor Jewish orphan from Philadelphia, I couldn’t resist the prestige of working with the Wall Street Journal,” he says. “And I’m not an orphan.”

Alexander Tsiaras, president of Anatomical Travelogue, presents a remarkable film showing the architecture of men and women and provides a Velcro-like, stick-in-the-memory-banks explanation of how the body works, with humor, saying the clitoris has twice as many nerve endings as the penis, and that “It’s probably God’s construct because man is lazy.”

Gregory Stock speaks and this adds to the “Eureka!” moment Richard has talked about, that warm spread of new information. This is a genetic guru, author of “Engineering the Human Genome,” and throughout his speech talks about the future of genetic engineering, concocting a selective sperm-and-egg milkshake of sorts to create the perfect child.

Heady stuff and the grist for the ethics mill of future generations. Our grandparents could not envision what we have now, so our grandchildren, when all this comes to pass, will accept it as their norm, he says.

When he puts it that way, it makes sense, it’s a pattern and pattern recognition is what this conference and its creator are all about.

When Richard speaks between presentations, he delights the crowd, which in turn pleases him. He says if enough people want it, they’ll show the presidential debate tomorrow night on the big screen and “laugh in unison” over the antics of those “two lying characters.

He calls for a pee break, and throngs take it. Later, as they file back inside, Richard tosses out TEDMED hats, yelling to the grabby rich people “Don’t blindside or sue anyone, please!”

He introduces John Abele, head of Boston Scientific, who gives a literally hip presentation on, among other things, his hip replacement. Abele shines, telling the crowd about all his various ailments and how he actually loves them because of the gadgets installed in his body due to them.

“I love gadgets,” he says. “And medicine is all about gadgets.”

After Abele speaks, Richard says anyone who hasn’t spoken should tell a story because “story attaches to people. You will not forget a story.”

And he tells one about a “medical oops” of his.

“I had bronchitis years ago, my wife took me to Rhode Island Hospital because I was having trouble breathing. I was out of it and they gave me an EKG. But I wasn’t out of it enough to know that my EKG, when it’s supposed to go up, goes down, so it looks like I’m having a heart attack. So they put a nitro patch on me, which gave me what was close to a heart attack, until my wife – who is not shy – ripped it off and said ‘Get away from him!’ And thus I didn’t have a heart attack and I’m here.

“How many people have a story like that?” he finishes. “We all have oops stories.”

The day ends with “Damaged Care,” Drs. Barry Levy and Brad Ross who are a riot, doing song parodies of health care, not much of it flattering. They rock the place and it’s a great way to end the first day.

That night I sit with a few folks at the Palmetto Room at Charleston Place, drinking, eating and ruminating on the day’s events. I offer that I’m a clean slate eager to be written on and come away mesmerized by the depth of interest presented here. Others who’ve been here nod and smile at the recognition of new knowledge acquired.

I was warned by one veteran attendee that all of it makes it hard to sleep at night.

In my room later, I try to assimilate all I’ve heard, in phone calls and emails to people explaining what this is all about. But I can’t. The guy was right. I can’t sleep, too much mind-racing going on.

It has been exactly as Richard said it would be and nothing like I imagined.

I can’t wait to piss tomorrow.

 

OCTOBER 13

Happy birthday to me, today is my 51st. I think what a great gift it will be to learn this day. You can’t put a price on that kind of present.

As the day starts, Richard exhorts people to say “Good morning” in unison as they take their seats. They do. He tells them to say it louder. And they do. Mind you, these are CEOs, heads of companies, high-powered types, big shots who daily tell people what to do and here they’re being told to chant “Good morning” louder and louder by a dumpy guy in sweat clothes until it makes him smile.

He introduces singer Baby Jane Dexter, saying he and his wife met her years ago while scouting for the first TEDMED location and loved her. Then if the Philips coffee doesn’t jolt us awake at 8 a.m., Dexter’s booming contralto does as she belts out “Everybody Hurts,” which judging from the late hours kept by some availing themselves of the free booze last night, is true for many.

Scott Menalis, associate professor of media arts and sciences and biological engineering at MIT, gives a rather dry and boring presentation about microfluidities, which is a better way to diagnose disease. Finally at the end, the boring isn’t and what he’s saying becomes understandable: There is a certain item common in millions of homes and offices– the inkjet cartridge - which follows the same microfluid idea.

Another Eureka moment of understanding.

William Tsiaras, professor and chair of ophthalmology at Brown University, talks about cataracts, how they’re found in one of two older Americans, how they’re reversible. He talks about the great painter Monet having cataracts and his work getting blurry and muted and how after he had cataract surgery, saw his earlier stuff and said “It’s shit.” Now that brings it home and so does a graphic cataract surgery film that has the non-medical types in the audience squirming.

Things bog down a bit with Joseph Jacobson, who leads the Molecular Machines group of the Center for Bits and Atoms, a bright kid but my God, is he boring and sluggish. For the first time that’s not wine related, I find myself getting groggy. Richard looks a tad sleepy, too, be he graciously takes it in.

Then Spencer Tunick presents, an artist who has had HBO specials and documents the live nude public figure, not as salacious as it sounds. His work, using HIV-positive people, is electrifying, thousands of nude bodies as living, breathing and hoping sculpture.

Tunick is slightly strange, disarmingly passionate, powerful, shy-seeming and ultra-focused. He shows some phenomenal slides of his work including one using 7,000 nude people in Barcelona and says the hardest part was getting government approval. Which doesn’t always happen. He’s been arrested many times and his stuff is arresting, itself, nude bodies hunched over like eggs or mushrooms, the nude en masse as art.

Then the first Richard-brought-to-tears moment occurs. As he watches Tunick’s presentation, his eyes flow with his laid-bare emotion.

“You know me,” he says unapologetically as Tunick finishes. “I cry. I’m so moved.”

After a break, Richard tells the crowd that some people are lactose intolerant and he’s now declaring himself “empty-seat intolerant,” after seeing too many of them. He also tells us about the Kodak 3D machine downstairs that we all must see that shows in very up-close detail the workings of the body as a diagnostic and operations tool.

“It’s not on the market yet,” he says. “That’s what makes this special, you see things you’ve never seen before.”

He talks of Kary Mullis and David Fischell who will speak, both Japan Prize winners, more rare than Nobels – which they’ve both also won.

“They should lone these people,” Richard says, giving the impression if that technology would become available, he’d run a conference showing it first.

Dean Kamen comes up, inventor and physicist, holder of some 200 U.S. patents, inventor of the first insulin pump, the Segway, the IBOT, a truly remarkable guy who borders on if not falls into the altruist category, having perfected a water-purification device he hopes to see in many Third World countries where the shits from bad water kills people.

“I’m playing this game under protest!” he laughs, joking that Richard wanted him to talk about the water project but that Kamen also wanted to talk about FIRST – For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology – a much-lauded program to motivate youngsters in science that Kamen founded.

Richard nixed the idea, Kamen said, but he sneaks in a FIRST update at the end of his presentation. Richard doesn’t mind a bit.

The height of the presentation is when they drink Richard’s piss. No lie. Kamen’s purification system cleansed it and he talks about the process, showing a very funny video where white-clad workers wheel in Richard’s piss in a biohazard container, then how it’s purified and shipped to Charleston.

Reven Wurman brings out a white bucket with ice and his father unbundles the sample and plunks it inside.

“It’s much better when chilled, “ Kamen cracks, and then he and Richard drink the purified pee, Kamen saying “Drink up,” Richard adding “L’chaim.” Now that’s a connection that sticks.

Robert Fischell, CEO of Angel Medical Systems, co-inventor of the stent, presents and Richard asks about President Clinton’s bypass, Fischell saying it could have been presented with the use of a stent. This prompts cardiologist Dr. Mehmet Oz to dispute it from the audience, so Richard calls him up and Fischell and Oz engage in a rather lively conversation, pro vs. con, interesting stuff that makes for a good, impromptu dynamic.

Fischell also says that his company is making devices that give heart attack victims a few days warning and one that is more immediate, adding that if it goes off “get your ass to the hospital or you’re a dead person.”

The embrace of knowledge continues with Gerald Kleisterlee, head of Philips, talking of companies sharing medical information for the benefit of the consumer, Alexander Tsiaras showing a remarkable birthing film, Adrianne Noe showing some interesting stuff from the Museum of Health and Medicine and having Richard and others coming up to guess what they are, a reliving of one of Richard’s favorite old shows, “What in the World?” One of the things she shows is a rectal cooker. Ouch. But damn interesting.

After a break, Richard thanks volunteers, saying “remarkable…they pay their own airfare, they all must have graduate degrees” and has them walk through for applause, then talks about making connections and taking them home, saying that conversation “if it’s interesting, is as good as it gets.”

And then it gets more interesting. Isadore Rosenfeld is a very funny elderly doctor who slays the crowd, asking Richard if his mic is on and upon being reassured it is, cracks, “Oh God, then I was just in the men’s rom with mine on, too.” He talks about how he got a better physical at the airport than at his doctor’s office, when he was told by security after passing through the scanner, “You better get your prostate checked.”

Rosenfeld reflects on how things have changed in medicine, how when he was five and sick his doctor made a house call and they talked, he showing the boy his stethoscope and explaining things, laying a hand on him and saying “You’ll feel great tomorrow.” That spoke of magic, the old physician says now, and “it became my passion to become a doctor.”

Medical students these days “don’t want to be so much a doctor as they want to get into medicine,” he says, adding his concern is that they don’t have the role models he did. He marvels at the modern era, saying “nothing I learned in medical school is valuable today,” that there were no angiograms, no heart surgery, no cardiac drugs.

“If you had chest pains,” he says, “you took nitro and got some rest.”

It is a wonderful conversation he has with us, not preaching but imparting the knowledge of experience, and it sinks in, it is understandable. He is a man in awe of modern advances, but not health care: “It’s broken, doctors are fixers, not healers. Everyone’s angry, doctors are angry because they’re not being paid enough, patients are angry, no one’s happy despite all these tremendous things.”

After the 2004 presidential election coming next month, Rosenfeld says, health care has to be taken out of the politicians’ hands and made free, there must be tort reform so doctors aren’t crippled by malpractice insurance fees and drugs must be made free or cheaper for patients; a third of his can’t afford them.

There are a lot of doctors in this crowd and they nod their assent as one of their own speaks.

Kevin Helliker, Wall Street Journal bureau chief in Chicago, gives a slow, somber and poignant talk of surviving an aortic aneurysm, saying it’s not something doctors look for but rather find. His was found when he had a scan for a story he was writing. He tells an incredibly compelling story of a 19-year-old man who died from one, whose uncle died from one. When his other son had chest pains and doctors were going to send him home, the father insisted his son stay and get scanned. He got the operation that saved his life.

This is literally life-and-death stuff that has us on the edge of our seats, eager for understanding.

Jeffrey Hawkins speaks, author of “On Intelligence,” a book about the brain’s inner workings. But during his talk, Marvin Minsky gets riled up about what he’s saying and snorts, “This stuff isn’t new so don’t get carried away.”

He asks Hawkins if he’s read a certain book. Hawkins hems and haws and says no, giving Minsky, who knows a lot about intelligence, artificial or not, the upper hand. I, and others, feel badly for Hawkins, a clearly brilliant man, on being scolded by Minsky. But it’s an interesting if not grating addition to an already interesting conference.

Things lighten up by day’s end when Richard takes questions from the audience, and is asked how he knows so many people.

“I don’t play golf, and early in life I did, and do, seek out everyone smarter, quicker and more talented than I am,” he says. “I didn’t want a pick-up team not as good as me.”

He had mentors, he says, which his wife calls “my old farts.” He speaks of his glory days at the Aspen Conference, saying “I don’t know if it was embracing the starfucking thing or just wanting to be around smart people.”

He also allows that TV and TiVo are his life, he loves watching “shows about insects eating other insects,” and when he does, “I’m like a pig in shit.”

Someone asks where he gets his scarves.

“People give me very expensive scarves, and you are welcome to do this,” he says, adding as he fingers his, “It’s a very silly costume.”

Silly indeed. But there’s nothing silly about a man wearing a scarf who can bring a conversation like this one together.

 

OCTOBER 14

This conference can’t get better. But it does.

Hugh Herr speaks about losing his legs in a climbing accident and how in college he’d add an inch to his height every day with prosthetics to see if anyone would notice. It wasn’t until he was nearly seven-feet tall and almost touching the ceiling that they did.

He also speaks of developing a process that will allow amputees to move their feet by thinking about it, and of some day having prosthetic feet that feel the sand on the beach. Ordinarily I’d say this is far-fetched stuff, but based on what I’ve seen so far, I think it will happen. In our lifetime.

Lauren Ward Larsen and George Schreiner talk about preeclampsia, a hypertensive pregnancy issue that globally is the leading cause of maternal and infant death. Larsen had it, she was a mess, suffering kidney and liver failure and bringing her near death. She tells a powerful and touching story that true to form has Richard crying as he watches, along with more than a few audience members.

Schreiner, president of R&D and chief scientific officer at Scios Inc., talks of developing drugs to combat the disease, a skin patch for hypertensive pregnant women. He links it to Kamen’s water-purification machine where those running the machine can test village women for the illness and hand out patches. A remarkable connection, a pattern, which is what TEDMED is all about.

Richard talks about shoes Nike had given him and he is now giving away, playing the crowd, clearly in his element. A guy really named Charlie Brown had won a bike already that he swapped with someone else, prompting Richard to say there should be a ban on swapping and if he’d drawn a name like Charlie Brown, he’d have tossed it. The crowd eats it up.

Mark Liponis, medical director of Canyon Ranch, appears with Barlow, human guinea pig in a project filmed by Alexander Tsiaras. It is a remarkable film on Barlow, who throughout a long and indulgent life did every bad thing he could to himself.

Barlow narrates the film in a gin-soaked, smoky voice, saying he was 52 with the body of an 80-year-old, and for the cleansing at Canyon Ranch was scanned more than most astronauts, giving up a gallon of blood in the process of examination and redemption.

Richard addresses the audience, pleased by the presentation and suggests to those giving meetings that they not be as narrowly focused as they might otherwise be in the quest for a great meeting, saying “I suspect our palate of interests allows us to see connections between things.”

Then he pauses as a cell phone chirps, shooting an icy glare its way, growling “I haven’t gone through a session yet without a cell phone ringing. That might not bother you, but it bothers me - and it’s my party.”

Dr. Oz comes up and there on the table is a bag of guts. Really. Hearts, lungs, kidneys, guts in all their necrotic glory. It makes for a good show. He has Richard put latex gloves on and feel around, showing him good organs and bad organs, feeling a cancerous lung that Richard shrieks at. But he’s also clearly as happy as a pig in shit doing it.

Oz, famous for his TV and news appearances, is a good showman, joking “Did you hear about the doctor who used two fingers for a rectal exam? He wanted a second opinion.”

He is smooth talking, tall, handsome and an exceptionally good spokesman for cardiac care, saying “ the penis is a dipstick,” and that if it’s erect, it shows good overall blood flow in its owner.

The boner barometer, what an appealing theory. And one that hits home.

Sobule sings again, but before she does talks about the amazing things she’s learned here and how she counts the days to any Wurman event like a kid counts the time to Christmas. She connects the experience to doing the New York Times crossword, which is easier on Monday, hard as hell by Thursday and has her feeling “slightly moronic…but I don’t care,” she adds with infectious smile.

After a break, a panel discussion is led by Forrest Sawyer that includes David Lansky, Newt Gingrich, Reed Tuckson and Robert Moroni. This is unusual. Richard hates panels and never has them. I fear the worst – and get the best.

This panel rules, full of brains, balls and ideas. Gingrich rips the healthcare industry and the media for not covering it because “it wasn’t negative,” and saying “No one wants a rental car and our health-care system is a rental car.”

All panelists agree health care is a bipartisan issue, Gingrich saying all sides must work together to ensure sharing information for the benefit of the patient, and if doctors don’t, “they won’t be doctors for long.”

Steve Petranek, editor of Discover magazine, one of Richard’s favorite reads, a bunch of which are here for free, closes out the day by giving out the mag’s annual awards.

“Steve will give them out instead of Mike Eisner,” Richard jokes. “Whom I fired.”

 

OCTOBER 15

You know the feeling when you’ve been away, had a great time that you didn’t want to end but were anxious to get home anyway? Today is like that. It’s the last day of TEDMED and I’m eager to go home and resume real life, but not keen on stopping the warm feeling, that four-day piss, that extravaganza of learning and understanding and interest and connection and story.

But it must happen, and the last day flies in style. On stage, Richard is giving away swag, drawing names, tossing some as he picks and chooses who gets what, basking in the attentive glow of rich people eager for free shit.

Then Sobule sings a song she wrote for him, just for him, “11 Summers,” based on Richard’s observation that he has maybe 11 summers left in his life, summer being a seasonal metaphor for the good life.

She sings softly, gently and Richard cries throughout. On the last line, “11 more summers with all of you,” he is outright blubbering and in all actuality, Sobule’s beautiful words bring tears to a lot of eyes. Mine included.

Rick Satava, a surgeon who works with the armed forces, speaks about the virtual soldier, of having hand-held electronic dog tags that give detailed health information about soldiers. He talks of doing pre-operative planning, practicing remote, virtual surgery that will allow a doctor to warm up before doing the real thing. He shows an absolutely amazing film about a new medical evacuation machine to be used to retrieve wounded soldiers, and by remote control allows doctors to do surgery out of harm’s way.

The machine is in prototype, he says, invoking the name of Steven Spielberg when he says there’s no such thing as science fiction, just scientific eventuality.

John Donoghue speaks, the man who developed the brain implant he shows in a film where a quadriplegic plays a video game by thinking about it. This can’t be real, but it is, there on the screen, real as hell. Scientific eventuality indeed.

Steve Charles, eye doctor, talks about creating surgical devices that reduce the weight of tools used that can tire a surgeon after hours of use, tools that can also preset the force used to lessen the chance of a drill or saw popping through bone into something it’s not supposed to drill or saw.

The conference is winding down in fine fashion.

Then it gets better. Dexter booms out “Forever Young” directly to Richard, and later Quincy Jones ends the day. Richard introduces him, saying that due to a bad knee, Q was in the emergency room last night.

“And he’s still here,” Richard says with unabashed admiration. “Fucking amazing.”

Jones talks about how getting older means seeing how things turn out and that “like all of you here, I’m a junkie for trying to make a difference. I’d give two years of my children’s education to let them travel, not to the Bahamas or Jamaica, but out in the real world.”

Jones doesn’t play but holds the audience as rapt as he could if he were to perform any of his dozens of major motion picture musical scores. He talks of traveling with others into impoverished areas, of trying to make a difference, of meeting Nelson Mandela, of seeing the tragedy of drugs and violence.

He is involved with wearethefuture.org, and shows a film where Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli performed with a young female protégé as both deliver a performance so outright powerful it raises goose bumps on the flesh, brings tears to the eyes and the entire audience to its feet.

And then it is done, over, finished. But never complete. Thoughts, ideas, connections, patterns, understandings germinated here will continue to grow.

“Thank you for being a wonderful audience,” says the teary-eyed Richard in bidding everyone goodbye, and they reward him with a standing O. He shakes hands, hugs, bids farewell to all.

It is over. Until the next one. If there is a next one. With Richard Saul Wurman, you just never know.

 

A WEEK LATER

I realized that I’ve never had a life-changing experience. Some who have attended TED conferences or TEDMEDs have said it changed their lives, so profound was what they’d heard, so powerful the patterns revealed, so poignant the connections made.

TEDMED didn’t change my life. It enhanced it. And that’s not a bad thing

Richard and I talked about TEDMED a week after, what it was, what it meant to him. He said it was “a good meeting.” In understatement there is understanding.

“It was important to me in the meeting not to rely on some of the extravaganza clutches I have had in the past, with $20 million worth of cars, magicians, dancers, and to keep the core referent always to health care,” he said.

“This is not to say that when I drank my purified urine that it wasn’t somehow show biz, but it really wasn’t,” he said. “There was no way to make a point clearer about what he is trying to do and perhaps can do than the indelible memory of that act on stage. And the entertainment as understanding that it represents.”

He spoke of the thanks and praise heaped on him for the conference, and wondered if that’s what he needs.

“I don’t quite know how to deal with that because if those people didn’t come up to me and say nice things, would I then feel badly?” he said. “Have I become so dependent on the compliment and the reassurance that even though intellectually I can say it doesn’t mean anything, is it not what I expect?

“And would I feel as a movie star who hates the paparazzi but if they’re not there, do they underhandedly try to get them there so they can object?” he said.

The conference was a peculiar four days, he said, because for those four days a year he has a persona some have for 365.

“Because so many of the people we see in the press, the People magazine population, have a control, a focus, a visibility for 365 days a year,” he said. “It’s what they want, it’s the measure of their success. And my God, it would be terrible. But it’s so many people’s fantasy life. It’s like the Chinese curse, ‘May you get everything you want’. And then getting hooked on the need for it.”

Gloria Nagy, Richard’s wife, makes no bones about his starfucking, his need to surround himself with the rich, the powerful, the famous, something he defends as his need to be around people smarter than he, accomplished people who represent things he’s interested in.

“She feels I’m hooked on the conference, the phony accolades, the phoniness of all the people who come, she feels I’m really hooked on it, that I need it, or why else am I still doing it?” he said. “I would feel badly if they didn’t stand up at the end and give me a standing O. And this was a conference that except for the last speaker and myself, and Quincy Jones, no one got a standing ovation.

“But it was a conference where not one speaker made the cheap shot of trying to get one,” he said “That says something about the quality of the presenters.”

He seemed to be more thinking aloud than talking to me when he said “It’s undetermined in my mind the value of such a meeting. There were quite a number of stories where people had done projects that came out of my last meeting, or their lives were changed by attending my conference.

“Dean Kamen met quite a few people who helped fund what he was doing and continues to do, at one or another TED,” he said. “Macaulay meeting Hawley and working together on some things. Alexander in his early conferences getting amazing visibility, and so on. It seems to accelerate meetings between people in a setting that allows them to work together. David Berlinsky and Rick Satava, Satava and Tsiaras.”

He paused, thinking, remembering, wondering.

“But it’s a strange thing to come and go,” he continued. “And to have the feeling that some of the conversations you have and things you see should be the way you live your life rather than the focus of four days of your time.

“In the end,” he said, “I wonder, am I contributing anything, am I leaving a mark?”

For what it’s worth, he has. Adopting Richard Saul Wurman’s egotistical need of doing things for himself simply because of what he can get out of it, what he did was very much worth it to me.

Thanks for the four-day piss, Richard. I couldn’t have taken it without you.

The Wurmanizer

www.wired.com | By Gary Wolf | Published 01 February 2000

On the stage of a small auditorium, Nathan Myhrvold falls to his knees. Myhrvold, the billionaire CTO of Microsoft, on his knees. Not a bad tribute, eh? Not bad for a little pisser like Richard Saul Wurman, for a schlepper, for a smelly old man!

Downstairs, in the lobby of the city convention center in Monterey, California, there's a great commotion. The people arriving for TED, the technology, entertainment, and design conference Wurman holds every year, are greeted at the door with dozens of gifts – too many to carry. Later, in the auditorium, Wurman comes onstage with good news: "Free shipping, ladies and gentlemen, to your offices and homes!

"This," says Wurman, waving a piece of paper, "is an overnight-delivery slip. In order to have your bags shipped, you'll have to fill this out. Many of you have never filled out your own delivery slip before, but it is easy, and somebody can explain if you get stuck."

Wurman is a 64-year-old designer who was trained as an architect. He has a closely trimmed white beard, and his eyes, which bug out slightly, gaze at you with genial incredulity, as if he's just caught you in a little fib but is willing to overlook it. The TED conference, which he owns, is arguably the hottest gathering around for media and technology executives. Tickets cost $3,000 and sell out a year in advance. The tenth TED, aka TEDX (styled with a Roman numeral, Wurman says, "because I wanted something a little more pretentious"), is being held February 23 to 26. As his facetious offer to help with airbills at last February's conference suggests, Wurman likes to have fun with the fact that nearly everybody at TED is a big shot.

In the lobby at TED9, an angry man argues with Kimberly Gough, who has worked for Wurman since 1995. The man pushes his picture ID toward her face. "It's an old photo," he snaps. Gough just shakes her head. After a few minutes of lingering in the lobby, the man returns. "I came over to apologize," he says. "You were absolutely right. The picture wasn't me. This conference cost my company a lot of money. Can you give me a badge with my real name on it, and I'll give you my real ID?"

"No," says Gough calmly.

Gough is very important to Wurman. When somebody calls him for tickets he doesn't want to relinquish, he says, "Gee, I'm out of the loop on that – you'll have to talk to Kimberly." Then Gough has a friendly conversation with the person and refuses.

Wurman has lots of acquaintances who think he owes them a favor – understandably so. It would be very expensive to run an event like TED if the presenters – many of whom are prominent executives, scientists, writers, and business consultants – charged their customary fees. Wurman covers their travel and hotel expenses but doesn't pay for their time, even though TED is a for-profit operation that grosses more than $2 million a year.

Wurman also convinces corporate sponsors to foot the bill for most of the incidentals. Almost everything at TED has a corporate patron. There are breaks for IBM jumbo hot dogs and Rockport fruit and coffee. People who sponsor something at TED feel they're entitled to a little consideration, and sometimes they show up without tickets or try to sneak someone in from their firm who didn't register in advance. Wurman rarely gives them satisfaction. "It wouldn't be fair," he says.

Wurman is never short on help. Each year, a dozen volunteers – many of them accomplished professionals – don red T-shirts and move furniture. Others donate money. Penelope Finnie, VP of product development at Ask Jeeves, spoke with Wurman the day after her company went public in 1999. "I love talking to rich people," he told her. Then he asked her to pay for a TEDX cocktail party, and Finnie said yes.

Wurman's manner is so brazen that his friends can't resist joking about it. "Have you heard his famous conversation-starter?" asks Stephan van Dam, a well-known graphic designer in New York. "He says, 'You don't know me, but you owe me.'"

Maybe they do. For 15 years, Wurman has tracked the convergence of media, technology, and business so closely that he can pose half-convincingly as ringmaster of the digital economy. In 1984, at the first TED conference, Apple introduced the Macintosh, Nicholas Negroponte discussed his plans for the new Media Lab at MIT, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to do wonderful things with fractals, and Sony executive Mickey Schulhof gave away samples of his company's new medium, the compact disc.

Unfortunately, the room wasn't even halfway filled: It was still too soon. The technology people had their own conferences for new stuff, while media and entertainment people didn't understand why they were supposed to care. Wurman and his partners lost money, and the second TED wasn't held until 1990.

But by 1992, when TED3 took place, the world had caught up. The hall was sold out for appearances by Bill Gates, Adobe cofounder John Warnock, information-design guru Edward Tufte, futurist Paul Saffo, and John Sculley, Apple's CEO at the time. Jaron Lanier explained his experiments with virtual reality. MIT AI professor Marvin Minsky, entertainment technologist Bran Ferren, and computer-interface pioneer Alan Kay also presented and, like most speakers, sat in the audience for the rest of the show, mixing it up with the conferees. Conversation between sessions was lively. In the ensuing years, as cross-pollination took off, so did TED's influence and the number of people anxious to get in.

So when Myhrvold falls to his knees at TED9, the longtime TED speaker is having fun with the subservience of powerful people, including himself, to the whims of their host. And with Wurman, there's no distinction between big and little whims. For years, attendees were afraid to book rooms at the nearby Doubletree Hotel; Wurman had feuded with the management, and they didn't want to be persecuted by association.

Wurman's belligerence is well documented. Michael Everitt, who worked in Wurman's design studio for more than a decade, has vivid memories of his boss's talent for imposing his will. "Whoever was in the office was subject to a barrage, often very insulting," he remembers. "Some people were shocked and couldn't handle it. Others took it as a good-natured and very intimate kind of joking. The worse the abuse was, the more they laughed – and the more Richard got his way. My mouth would just hang open sometimes. He would be in the office in a food-stained, mismatched jogging suit, and he'd be joking about the way people looked and about what dumb ideas they had." Everitt laughs. "He was a real pig, and I'm sure he'd say the same thing."

Pretty close: "I don't have proper filters between my brain and my mouth," Wurman admits.

But there are no food stains on Wurman's shirt when he takes the stage in the main auditorium at TED: He wears white cotton trousers, a multicolored Missoni sweater, and a long scarf. There's something medieval about the way he carries on. He is lordly, appetitive, and impulsive. He makes attendees submit to an elaborately ritualized hierarchy. You'll be one of either 500 or so VIPs in the main hall or the 250 also-rans in a nearby "simulcast room," and you'll wear your rank on a color-coded name tag for the duration. (When I arranged to go to TED9, I discovered the lowest rung yet recorded. "You can come," Wurman said, "but you can't sit down.")

Wurman expresses amazement at his apparent power. "I have limited intellectual capability," he says. "I was just clever at the right time." But modesty is one of the more difficult virtues for the founder of TED to pantomime, and even his wife, novelist Gloria Nagy, finds it irritating when he tries. "I've figured out your self-image," she told him once. "You're a little piece of shit at the center of the universe."

TEDgoers often wonder how Wurman came to preside over such an elite group. Most of the presenters are industry old-timers who have built something, invented something, run something, or sold something. What can Wurman take credit for – aside, that is, from his yearly party? Is Wurman's importance merely a convenient fiction that enables four days of California schmoozing?

It drives Wurman crazy that he might be remembered only as a guy who threw a good bash. He recites his list of accomplishments with the fluency of a man long misunderstood. He has written or published more than 60 books. He built his own design studio and publishing company, which he sold for millions of dollars to HarperCollins in 1990. Most important, the host of TED has challenged architects and designers to rethink their professions' boundaries by defining a new discipline – information architecture.

A Wurman coinage, information architecture combines all the design, research, and editorial arts to arrive at intelligent ways of visualizing data. Information architects design interfaces, make statistical maps, produce guidebooks, and develop signage for cities, museums, and airports. People were doing these things long before Wurman, but he synthesized them to create sophisticated new organizational metaphors and systems. "Most designers have done relatively unimportant things – corporate logos, styling, packaging," says Ralph Caplan, a New York-based designer who sits on the advisory board of IDCA, the prestigious International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado. "Ricky moved the field."

But TED has almost completely obscured Wurman's lifelong career as a publisher and designer. Perhaps the trade-off has been worth it to him. TED itself is a triumph of information design. The meticulously tended social dynamic of the conference is the crowning achievement of a talented man – one who realized long ago that the presentation of information can be more important than the information itself.

Wurman's gregarious and insistent style is a family legacy. His father, Morris Louis Wurman, was an executive at Bayuk Cigars and a respected man in Philadelphia's Jewish business circles. He was abrupt and gruff, but also generous and sophisticated. He was a macher, a player. He knew his way around Havana, how to get the best room in a hotel, the best table at a restaurant. His son wanted to be a painter, but this struck Wurman senior as insufficiently professional, so he arranged for aptitude tests. The results suggested three career paths: architect, archaeologist, or hairdresser. Ricky, as he's known to longtime friends, chose architecture.

In the '50s and '60s, Philadelphia architecture meant Louis Kahn – absent-minded, impecunious, visionary Kahn. In 1959, when Wurman graduated, Kahn was establishing himself as one of the major American architects of the 20th century. He put up celebrated buildings around the world, including the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. All the best students at the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school worked in Kahn's studio. They ate with him, drank with him, and loaned him money. Most of all, they listened. Kahn designed by talking and would enthrall his students with musings like, "The sun never knew how great it was until it hit the side of a building."

During Wurman's first year in the studio, Kahn sent him to London with sketches for a barge. It was to be anchored in the Thames and used as a setting for musical concerts funded by H. J. Heinz, the ketchup king. When Wurman arrived, he went for a pint with the naval architects supervising the construction and showed them Kahn's rough sketches.

"But where are the working drawings?" they asked. There was an awkward pause. Wurman suddenly realized what Kahn had sent him to England to do. Creating all the drawings and mastering the construction details would take months. He had little money, little experience, and a wife and newborn waiting for him in Philadelphia. For days, Kahn refused to take his phone calls. When Wurman finally got through, Kahn told him, "Well, come home, then, if you can't do the work." Instead, Wurman stayed for six months, bluffing and bullying until the barge was done. At the opening concert, Wurman sat next to the American ambassador in the grandstand. He was 25 years old.

"Lou was demonic and adored," Wurman remembers, smiling. "He didn't obey the rules because it didn't occur to him that there were rules."

In 1963, Wurman started his own firm with two Penn graduates, John Murphy and Alan Levy. The partnership lasted 13 years, but the going was rough. Murphy Levy Wurman did small design jobs in downtown Philadelphia – signs and banners and the lobby of a bank, buildings for some of Morris Wurman's business acquaintances – but big commissions were scarce. Levy remembers talking once to Ed Bacon, head of Philadelphia's city planning department, when they ran into each other on a commuter train. "I'd help you guys," Bacon said, "if it weren't for your partner." Wurman had problems with clients, and they with him. "Ricky always said you have to force your ideas on people because people don't have any ideas," Murphy recalls.

The highlight of Wurman's architectural career was an ambitious plan for the redevelopment of Penn's Landing, a run-down parcel along the waterfront. There was an international competition for the job, and Wurman and his partners brought a single page, laminated like a menu, to a meeting with city officials. "You don't need to see our work," Levy recalls Wurman proclaiming. "The role of this one-page document is to say, 'You don't know what you want. We will work with you to help you figure it out.'" The outrageous pitch won the firm the job; the partners produced an elegant plan of giant circular developments that included a boat basin, a sculpture garden, and a shop-lined waterfront.

Maybe if the economy hadn't tanked in 1973, Penn's Landing would have been completed, attracting other large commissions. But a building falloff in Philadelphia shut it down. The pressures of the recession and Wurman's temperament frayed the partnership: In 1976, it dissolved. In a way, but only in a way, Murphy says he still misses Wurman. "Ricky was a neurotic egomaniac," Murphy says, "but he loved to laugh. He was not a jerk." Murphy pauses for a moment, thinking back. "He was an asshole, but he was not a jerk."

As a sideline to his work at the firm, Wurman published books and taught architecture at several universities. His first book, Cities: Comparisons of Form and Scale, originally published in 1963, was a thin, octavo paperback produced during a short teaching gig at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. Wurman directed his design students to make plasticine models of 50 cities. The results were delightful: Shown on a common scale, the cities appeared as discrete objects, molded to the landscape and radically divergent in form.

Over the next decade, Wurman's fascination with comparative information introduced him to problems that neither architects nor graphic designers were trained to solve. He produced other books of comparisons, the most ambitious of which was a geographical tome, Urban Atlas: 20 American Cities. Wurman's idea was to display demographic, economic, and sociological data in a standardized form. How is wealth distributed? How many churches are there? What sorts of jobs exist? He enlisted architecture students at Washington University in St. Louis to painstakingly cut and paste hundreds of thousands of little circles onto maps, creating elaborate overlays.

Wurman's method of representing a flood of statistics using basic graphical elements anticipated today's computerized data-visualization techniques. The only problem was that, in the late '60s, geographers and urban planners didn't have desktop computers – or classrooms of students to hand-layer their maps. "Urban Atlas was the tree falling in the forest," says Wurman. "Back then, there was nobody to hear it."

By the time Wurman's architecture firm closed, he had two sons and was separated from his first wife, Dorothy. With no company, no secure job, and a split-up family, he continued to teach at sporadic academic jobs. Residing briefly in a Venice, California, flophouse, he even considered opening a restaurant.

Between teaching assignments in the late '70s and early '80s, Wurman had plenty of time to explore LA, a city that baffled him. Where were its borders, its neighborhoods, its reasonably priced delis? Slowly, Wurman puzzled out an answer. What LA was missing, he concluded, was him. Working with a team of young associates, Wurman produced his first guidebook, LA Access. Self-published, it was arranged by location rather than category, using a color scheme to identify restaurants, hotels, and points of interest. The book was a popular success, and, thanks to a subsequent cash infusion from Frank Stanton, former head of CBS, Wurman's fledgling Access Press grew into a multimillion-dollar enterprise that would publish dozens of other Access guides.

The books earned Wurman a reputation for transforming complicated and often dull information into user-friendly "machines for understanding," as he called them. In 1986, he got a plum job that gave him lasting influence on the new-media industry: He redesigned Pacific Bell's Yellow Pages.

To get the task done, Wurman set up a studio, The Understanding Business (TUB), in a big corner office in San Francisco's SoMa district and hired a team of designers, many of whom have since become well known in interactive media. The Pacific Bell project was a preview of the interface tasks that obsess design firms today: icons, nested hierarchies, cross-references, deep databases. Wurman's contribution was not his hands-on work so much as his metawork: He redefined the problems his designers were trying to solve. "All of Richard's work seems obvious now," says Nathan Shedroff, who worked with Wurman at TUB before cofounding vivid studios. "But, of course, once you do something great in this business, that's how it's seen."

In 1989, Wurman produced Information Anxiety, a book-length manifesto on information design. In 1996 he came out with Information Architects, an oversize, full-color anthology that highlights the work of 27 designers, along with his own contributions.

Despite these and other accomplishments, Wurman remains a remarkably marginal figure in the design world. He is critical of mainstream designers and yet bitter that he doesn't receive their applause; as with his architectural and academic pursuits, Wurman's capacity for self-indulgence has dogged his design endeavors. After more than two decades of publicly haranguing his fellow board members, he failed to gain reelection to IDCA's board, and he has fallen out with the major professional organization of designers, the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Angry that he wasn't invited to speak at a recent AIGA conference, Wurman banned the group's executive director, Rick Grefé, and one of the conference organizers, Chee Pearlman, editor in chief of I.D. Magazine, from this year's TED.

Wurman knows this behavior makes him seem childish, and he doesn't mind a bit. "Call me childish!" he says. "Childish is good. Picasso was childish. Chagall was childish. It's the twinkle in the eye! I predicted for 40 years that information architecture would become one of the most important jobs for graphic designers. They hate that I saw it coming. They think I rub their noses in it.

"Plus," he happily continues, "my pool is bigger than their pools."

Wurman's pool is 90 feet long and shaped like a half-moon. It's a semicircle of blue water that meets a semicircle of neatly trimmed hedge to form a giant zero in the backyard of his 7-acre Newport, Rhode Island, estate – a lush layout known as the Orchard. If Wurman is an outsider, the Orchard is his redoubt, headquarters for TED, and the command center from which he can control a handful of independent design and publishing projects.

On my visit there, I'm buzzed through the entry gate, then travel over an endless gravel driveway before climbing the steps between two tall, spiraling lampposts of patina-green metal and ringing the doorbell. A housekeeper directs me to Wurman: Dressed in sweatshirt, shorts, and baseball cap, he's playing computer solitaire in his office. The TED staff, housed three floors up, pesters him with a steady stream of phone calls.

Wurman takes me outside for a tour of his spread. He has scattered a dozen metal buoys across the lawns to add a sense of intrigue. He directed his gardeners to build mounds in the grass that look like the pointed breasts of female totems. There's a spiral rose garden with 350 bushes, a secret garden of high hedges, and a perennials garden. There's a circular inline-skating park (Wurman doesn't skate) and a circular putting green (Wurman doesn't putt, either – he just like circles).

Back inside the house, a marble staircase sweeps down to the entry hall; not far away, a 4-foot-long, gold-colored alligator stands guard. On the walls are etchings by Picasso, Bacon, Klee. Across the entry hall from Wurman's office is the room where Nagy, his wife, writes. "We are basic, simple people," she tells me. "We don't have a yacht. We have a nice house in a state where real estate isn't expensive." Wurman and Nagy rarely have anyone but family and staff at the house. "It's about freedom," Nagy explains. "Richard's greatest fear is losing the ability to say 'Fuck you.'"

As the afternoon wanes, Wurman, sitting with me on the back patio, looks across the pool and expounds upon the subtleties of his landscape design. You are near water, he says, which is relaxing. When you turn the fountains on, they make a soft splash that allows for private conversations. Every granite tile surrounding the pool was cut by hand to ensure the proper curve. It's very soothing to sit out on the porch, drink cosmopolitans from plastic martini glasses, and watch the breeze sway the branches of a 60-foot beech.

"Hey, Tim! Hey!" Wurman yells at a young man across the grounds.

"Yes, Mr. Wurman?"

"Two things!" Wurman bellows. "What is the switch for the secret fountain?"

The young man calls out some numbers and letters. There are so many switches controlling the Orchard's machinery that it's hard for Wurman to keep them straight.

"And the second thing! That spotlight – it's aimed wrong. It should shine right up the ass of that bronze fawn – straight in!"

"OK, Mr. Wurman."

He leans back and smiles.

The next day, I watch him work. TEDX is already coming together in typical Wurman fashion. Each TED features a giveaway teddy bear; for TEDX, Wurman is negotiating for a special, light-furred millennium bear that will be unmistakably modeled after him. (Fights over the limited supply of bears are another TED element that verges on satire. The plan is to have enough bears to go around, but a few avaricious executives always manage to make off with two or three, leaving some of their fellow millionaires bereft.)

Upstairs, Kimberly Gough is already untangling registration problems, and another employee, David Sume, is clipping stacks of magazines and making endless revisions to early drafts of the program. Sume, amiable and easily distracted, is utterly dedicated to TED. He worked at a Seattle copy shop when he first heard about the conference, and he traveled to Monterey on his own dime to volunteer. He came back for another TED, made himself indispensable, and eventually moved into a remodeled carriage house at the Orchard. Sume does a lot of the heavy labor, tracking down potential speakers, negotiating with their staffs, and briefing Wurman on their requests.

Michele Corbeil, Wurman's personal assistant, controls the phone traffic. A Rhode Island native, Corbeil has a studied calm that contrasts starkly with Wurman's unrestrained exuberance. When Wurman buzzes her on the intercom to bring down some documents, Corbeil appears in the doorway with the apprehensive expression of a zookeeper passing dinner to a well-fed but unpredictable lion.

Months before TED convenes, Wurman begins peppering conferees with emails that offer a constantly updated schedule. Wurman has his team comb the media for mentions of the speakers, which he passes on to everybody who has signed up. "A number of TEDsters were included in recent lists in magazines," says a typical Wurman missive.

Wurman's small staff, while smart and competent, is also young: It's hard to believe he creates TED with such spare administration. When I ask Wurman why he has no disciples, why there are no trained and ambitious designers helping him out, he sighs. "Nobody comes here for me," he says. "No graduate student ever asks to work with me. Nobody calls me for a job."

After a few more hours in the office, it occurs to me that Wurman wouldn't know what to do with disciples if he had them. He makes (and unmakes) decisions instantly, without asking for advice or explaining his thinking. While I watch, he takes a call from Nigel Holmes, a designer whose work was featured in Information Architects and who is collaborating with Wurman on a new design anthology, the title of which Wurman has decided to graphically modify from Understanding USA to Understanding – with the letters U, S, and A in boldface.

"Did you see the new title?" Wurman asks. "What do you think?"

"I have mixed feelings about it," answers Holmes.

"Oh, fuck you," says Wurman, brightly. "I don't want to hear your goddamn criticism."

"Well, don't ask me, then."

"Have a nice day," says Wurman, and changes the subject.

In business matters, as in creative ones, Wurman works with partners but doesn't actively collaborate with them.

He actually had a partner in the early days of TED; not surprisingly, the arrangement caused misery on both sides. The partner was Harry Marks, a retired TV executive who was an important early adopter of computer graphics. In 1983, Marks wanted to move to Pebble Beach, California, but was afraid he'd be bored there. A friend suggested the idea for TED. Marks then asked Ricky Wurman, whom he'd met in LA, to join him in the venture.

Marks knew that Wurman had previously chaired the IDCA, organizing a popular meeting in 1972 called the Invisible City. After that, he had orchestrated half a dozen other successful events, including a series in Monterey on California architects that was held three years in a row.

Wurman agreed to sign on. For seed money, Wurman went back to CBS's Frank Stanton. Stanton, Wurman, and Marks put up $10,000 each. Since none of the partners wanted to take responsibility for a flop, they agreed that if they didn't reach their target for advance registrations by December 1983, they'd call the meeting off.

And that's what happened – sort of. They failed to reach the target, which was extremely disappointing, especially to Wurman, who had become fixated on the TEDconcept. The poster was designed and speakers were invited – Mandelbrot, Negroponte, Megatrends author John Naisbitt. The new Macintosh would be there. But people didn't register. Wurman didn't want to cancel the meeting, but he'd made an agreement with his friend and with his publishing patron and therefore felt he had a personal obligation. Still, Wurman couldn't let go of TED: He held the conference anyway. His partners reluctantly showed up.

"Frank was furious," Wurman recalls. "He never trusted me again. And Harry wouldn't talk to me, either."

Wurman admits he's ashamed he broke his word. "I was not to be trusted," he says. "I'm not trying to make excuses. But they also disliked me, I think, because I had this, this courage to do it! And it should have been done!"

It's hard not to feel sorry for Wurman's partners. He didn't respect their interests – their legitimate concerns – then he rubbed salt in their wounds by eventually succeeding. Surprisingly, they still came back. Well, not Stanton, who was a stickler for principle. But Wurman has a history of patching things up with ex-friends. "He knows people's weaknesses, and he reminds them of it," says Joel Katz, a designer who has worked frequently with Wurman (though they once didn't speak for a year). "My weakness was that I was afraid to work for him again. He used to tease me about it several times a year. He'd say, 'You don't want to work with me because my ideas are better than yours.'"

In 1989, Marks called Wurman and said that people from the first TED conference were pestering him to do another one. The Pacific Bell project was going full tilt, so Wurman hit up the phone company for $80,000 to fund the second TED. The conference drew a full house, and Marks and Wurman even made a little money. "Let's do it again," Wurman said to Marks.

But TED2 proved to Marks – once more – that he didn't like working with his friend, who insisted on getting everything for free, asking everybody for favors, and shaming people into donating their services, even as paid registrations mounted. "The math was easy to figure out," Marks says. "There were millions floating around. I was always asking, 'How can you get away with that?' Richard would tell me, 'I just look at them with my baby blues.'"

Marks wanted out so badly he sold his half of the revived TED to his partner for a dollar. This seemed unfair, even to Wurman, and the next year he offered Marks his 50 percent ownership back. Marks refused; he didn't want to be involved. "He uses people in a way I can't deal with," says Marks. "I couldn't face them."

Wurman, however, was thrilled with TED, which quickly displaced Access Press as his major interest. Yet when he sold Access and The Understanding Business to HarperCollins in 1990, he thought he would stay closely involved. Instead he was soon asked to resign: His new partners, he says, felt that his mind was on other things. By this point, he was almost able to agree; today he can even acknowledge that he's never been particularly successful in any cooperative enterprise he didn't control.

Planning for TED starts more than a year in advance and reaches its peak about a minute before Wurman takes the stage. On location at TED9, Kimberly Gough stiff-arms begging friends and strangers while Michele Corbeil helps Wurman find his sweater, tracks down the supplies that never arrived, negotiates with the conference-center staff, and oversees the control room's endlessly ringing phones. David Sume makes last-minute changes to the program, which looks like a film script broken down into half-minutes. Wurman, meanwhile, heartily greets the many friends who come to him for a preconference blessing.

I watch as Wurman works the crowd, occasionally grabbing a moment to discuss some of his side businesses. He huddles with Jay Chiat, the founder of TBWA/Chiat/Day, to chat about a secret project, then shares his idea for a new line of health guides with Horace Deets, executive director of AARP. Elsewhere in the lobby, similar reunions are taking place – some demonstrative and emotional, others polite and wary. (Old friends meet at TED, but old enemies do, too.) As the program begins, there's a rush for seats in the main auditorium, while the second-class citizens trudge into the surrounding simulcast rooms. After warm-up acts by Firesign Theatre and jazz singer Hazel Miller, the man himself – offering no welcome speech, no formal remarks – takes the mike to tell the audience how they must behave at TED.

There's something liberating about TED conferences, even when the host is childish. Especially then. "People are so much more open and approachable at TED," says Sunny Bates, an executive recruiter who has been coming since 1995. "I think they say to themselves, 'If Richard can act like that and pull it off, what do I have to be afraid of?'"

At every TED, Wurman is teased mercilessly all weekend long. Some of the gibes are about his weight or his egotism, but most are about his lust for patronage. Often, when Wurman turns his back, the conferees' good-natured facade disappears, and they marvel at what they see as his avarice and shamelessness.

Wurman has always fiddled with TED's format, but some elements remain constant. The list of presenters includes architects like Frank Gehry and Richard Rogers, tech-business big shots like Steve Case and John Doerr, and scientists like Stephen Jay Gould and George Dyson. Wurman admires showbiz types, so people like Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones are invited to perform or mingle. A core group of TED supporters presents year after year: Nicholas Negroponte and John Warnock have spoken at almost every meeting. Wurman enjoys animals and often invites trainers or scientists to bring the creatures they work with or study.

There's even a kind of predictability to the surprises – someone who isn't a designer, entertainer, or techie will show up and fascinate the audience with a refreshing point of view. Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac, gave a charmingly awkward talk at TED9 about the psychology of people who fall in love in chat rooms, and Jane Goodall explained how the lack of educational and economic opportunities in Africa has led to the destruction of the continent's primate habitats.

Inevitably, many of the sessions fall flat. The casual style and lack of a fixed theme tempt some presenters, especially first-timers, to improvise and meander – never a good idea when tickets cost $3,000. Other presentations are well delivered but opaque. Wurman used to allow questions, but not anymore. "I know the audience wants that confrontation, but I refuse to give it to them," he says. "Why should I waste people's time just to satisfy a few egos?"

Speakers do get something in return for donating their services: Wurman looks out for them, aware that his audience includes a number of dyed-in-the-wool troublemakers. In 1996, literary agent John Brockman opened a midday Q&A by telling presenter Larry Keeley, a business consultant, "I loved the charts and graphs, but I have no idea what you're talking about, and Iwonder if you do." (Brockman blithely concluded his attack on Keeley by saying, "I still want to represent your book.") Now Wurman keeps such interactions to a minimum, preferring instead to push the confrontations and disagreements out of the auditorium and into the spacious lobby.

At the first TED, presentations ran as long as 90 minutes; these days, Wurman will move as many as six speakers on and off the stage in that time. He seems to be seeking the maximum program speed, and many speakers find themselves cut off before they finish. (Wurman stands closer and closer to them as their time runs out.)

Wurman explicitly forbids speakers to pitch their companies or products from the stage, which clearly distinguishes TED from most industry conferences. TED doesn't promise deals, but rather serendipitous, cross-discipline networking. The chance to introduce themselves to an eclectic mix of highly placed executives is what attracts many of the speakers and induces them to waive their fees.

"Unlike most conferences," says Keeley, who normally charges $10,000 to $15,000 a speech, "the star attraction is the audience. Getting a speaker's fee is trivial, compared with the opportunity." Keeley sold his company, the Doblin Group, to Perot Systems after appearing at TED in 1996. He has returned regularly, and he marvels at the intensity of the schmoozing. "Before the conference starts," he says, "I get 20 to 25 emails from people trying to arrange specific 5- to 10-minute breaks."

Wurman loves to hear about every deal that was in some way influenced by a contact made at TED. His staff can reel off a long list: Stewart Brand's meet-up with Nicholas Negroponte led to his best-selling book The Media Lab. After showing off his robotic insects, Robert Full, a UC Berkeley professor, received generous funding to continue his research. Animatrix founder Marney Morris found a publishing partner for her educational software. Steve Case asked TED speaker Billy Graham to officiate at his wedding. Wired also has TEDian roots: In 1992, at TED3, Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe, the magazine's founders, reestablished an old friendship with designers John Plunkett and Barbara Kuhr, who became Wired's creative directors. (Wurman's condensed version of the story: "Wired came out of TED!") Wurman has a feeling of intimate genealogical entanglement with many of the successful new ventures sparked at TED. He's disappointed, though, that his facilitation has never been acknowledged with offers of equity or lucrative positions on corporate boards.

"I wonder what it is about me or my personality," he muses. "I don't understand it. I mean, all my friends are on the boards of directors of things."

TEDX was supposed to be the last one. Wurman understands the dramatic appeal of a swift millennial termination, and the numerology – TEDX in 2000 – was auspicious for a big send-off. A few years ago, when Wurman discussed the prospect of selling TED to BPI Communications, the rumored price was $16 million. The sale foundered during negotiations over the exact nature of Wurman's continued involvement. Absent a sale, Wurman is anxious about TED. He doesn't want it to fade away, but if he can't sell it – and he doesn't want to sacrifice its accumulated worth – he has to keep running it.

Paradoxically, this has made him want to build TED up, and he's negotiated with partners to launch a medical TED, a Canadian TED, an automotive TED. Neither of the two TEDMEDs, held in 1995 and 1998, sold out, TEDCity is on track for June 2000 in Toronto, and Wurman stopped automotive TED in its early stages because he wasn't happy with his partner. He says he's trying to "build a brand" to make a sale more plausible.

If TED is to expand, it will have to grow beyond the boundaries its founder's controlling style imposes. But there's always the danger that too much self-restraint by Wurman could diminish TED's unique appeal. If Wurman is unclonable – and ex-partners from coast to coast pray that he is – then TED itself can't be duplicated. Wurman passionately disagrees. "That's a fundamental misperception," he says. "There can't be a Disney when Walt Disney dies? Come on! Things go on – they just change."

With TEDX, Wurman is returning to his longtime campaign on behalf of information architecture – and he's using his platform to present his newest book. Understanding, an anthology of work by 12 of his favorite colleagues – including Nigel Holmes and Ramana Rao – most of whom will present at the conference, attempts to clarify America's social issues through the intelligent presentation of data. (See Infoporn, page 80.) Sequences of maps and graphs show how the government uses its budget, how income is distributed, and where health resources go, among other topics.

The rest of the conference will offer a classic mix of techies, big shots, and entertainers, including Steve Case, Jim Clark, Jeff Bezos, Qwest's Joseph Nacchio, Sun's Bill Joy, Schwab's Dawn Lepore, pundit Arianna Huffington, and BET's Robert Johnson. Danny Hillis will show the first working prototype of his millennium clock. Outside the center, as in years past, GM will let attendees get behind the wheels of its concept cars.

Wurman has by now decreed that there also will be a TED in 2001. He intends to continue celebrating the new century with a program called Was and Will. The operative idea is that many of the speakers will be over 70 years old or under 30. If Wurman manages to recruit four days of plausible presenters who are at the very beginning or end of their careers, he'll at least be introducing a new cast of characters to TED.

As for 2002, things remain undecided. Ticket sales have never been brisker. Last year, before the conference was over, Wurman announced that all tickets for TEDX were gone. But popularity entails contradictions. The early sellout didn't please many regulars in the audience, who complain that the TED crowd is changing. The conference used to be invigoratingly esoteric, full of new ideas that were all the more appealing because they were far-fetched. For 15 years, the meeting bridged wide gaps between professions and industries. These gaps have narrowed, and scores of bankers and ecommerce-marketing execs now prowl the lobby. "TED has peaked," says an attendee who has been coming since 1990. "It's been taken over by vice presidents of marketing."

This is a frequently encountered sentiment among TED old-timers. Success has put the conference in competition with its own past, when a feeling of spirited opposition to the status quo made it more fun and unusual. A few TEDs ago, John Brockman began hosting an annual Millionaires' Dinner in honor of his acquaintances at the conference whose net worth exceeded seven figures. But rising equity values prompted Brockman to rename his party the Billionaires' Dinner. Last year Case, Bezos, and Nathan Myhrvold joined such comparatively impoverished multimillionaires as Barnes & Noble's Steve Riggio, EarthLink's Sky Dayton, and Marimba's Kim Polese. The dinner party was a microcosm of a newly dominant sector of American business.

Disappointment, under these circumstances, is inevitable. The gemütlichkeit of the early TEDs, the atmosphere of nerdy fellowship, was based partially on the hope that intelligent people with good technical ideas could make the world better. There were always powerful pecuniary motives, but the tension between business ambitions and nonconformist, utopian dreaming gave Wurman's meeting an energy that couldn't be found elsewhere. Fifteen years down the road, the thrill of taking a chance on a new industry has been replaced by the simple enjoyment of success. These days, there's less risk-taking at TED, but there's more caviar and better vodka.

At dinner one evening in Monterey, while Wurman dissects a fillet of sole with a fork and his right thumb, I ask if he experiences a letdown when TED is over. After all, changes notwithstanding, the gathering remains a simulation of the better world he and his prescient companions set out to create. It has many of the trappings of conventional power, but it's more intelligent, more eccentric, more interesting, more spontaneous. Commerce, while embraced, is also mocked, and corporate self-interest plays temporary second fiddle to people with ideas. Nowhere, of course, are sponsors treated as badly as at TED, where $100,000 one year can get you a rejection at the door the next. And only at TED, in an atmosphere of make-believe, will Microsoft executives get on their knees.

So isn't it a little sad for Wurman when TED ends? When the stage is dismantled? When the conferees step outside, clear their heads, and go home?

"People always ask that," says Wurman, with great irritation. "The reason they ask is that they don't want me to be happy. In our puritanical culture, you're supposed to suffer for your fun. But I'm not going to say I'm depressed, just because it would really satisfy people if I did." He stabs the air with his thumb, which glistens with fish juice. "I refuse to suffer!"

The Conversation - 39 - Richard Saul Wurman

www.findtheconversation.com | By Aengus Anderson | 9 January 2013

Richard Saul Wurman is a designer, architect, author of over 80 books, and founder of several conferences including TED, WWW, and EG. Presently, he is working on Prophesy2025, a conference about the near future.

Richard caught our attention because he is both an architect and connoisseur of conversation. Because of this, we spoke entirely about conversation itself: its forms, rituals, and value. We also spoke about broader conversation and the hypothesis underlying this project.

This episode is very different from its predecessors. It does not contain a prescriptive vision of the future, definitions of the broader good, or an exploration of a new phenomenon. It also lacks explicit connections to other interviewees, though you will hear implicit connections and think about Lawrence Torcello more than once.

Given these differences, you may wonder why Micah and I chose to include Richard’s interview in a project about society-wide conversations and the future. We have two reasons. First, Richard has thought about the details of conversation more than most of us and he provides a useful lens to examine our interviewees and the roles that Micah and I play in The Conversation (apologies for going meta). Second, while broader conversations may exist, Richard has no interest in creating or guiding them. He seeks interesting days for himself and is, generally speaking, a relativist.

We think relativism is an important idea to address.

Relativism questions the very concept of good and critiques the efforts of every participant in this series, regardless of their agendas. It also challenges The Conversation as a project and presses us to explain why we cling to our naive belief that there is something greater than solipsism and hedonism. This is a good challenge. This is why we’re posting Richard’s conversation.

The God of Understanding

www.momentmag.com | By Nadine Epstein | September/October 2013 Issue

Architect and designer Richard Saul Wurman is best known for creating TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, the immensely popular series of global conferences aimed at sharing innovative ideas in the fields of technology, entertainment and design. In 2002, after 18 years, he sold TED, which has since expanded into multiple conferences, events, fellowships and prizes, and of course, the now ubiquitous TED Talk.

Working out of the French country-style mansion he shares with his wife, novelist Gloria Nagy, in Newport, Rhode Island, Wurman has continued to launch new projects and conferences in the same inventive and rebellious spirit as TED. In 2012, he organized his first WWW Conference, which featured improvised conversations between pairs of prominent but unusually matched thinkers with curious minds. Next up will be the 555 Conference, for which he plans to select five cities around the world to host a one-day gathering of five experts sharing five predictions of future patterns in areas such as health, energy, food, urban development and entertainment. Wurman’s other projects for knowledge sharing include the Geeks and Geezers Summit—which invites dialogue across generations, the Urban Observatory—a new way of organizing and presenting live data about cities—and FEDMED, a conference that explores the relationship between federal governments and healthcare. Throughout an eclectic career that has ranged from creating the ACCESS city travel guides to a stint as a college dean, Wurman has stood out as a pioneer who makes complex information easily understandable, through what he calls “information architecture,” the science of organizing the massive amount of data in the modern world. He has written and designed more than 83 books, including 33: Understanding Change and Change in Understanding, Understanding Healthcare and Information Architects. The 78-year-old talks with Moment about his Jewish upbringing, the origins of TED, his latest ventures, intellectual jazz, the God of understanding and much more.

What was your Jewish background growing up?

My grandparents on my mother’s side were kosher butchers in Reading, Pennsylvania. Very simple people from the old country. My grandfather never learned to read English, even though he lived in America for 60 years. We lived in Philly, 15 miles away, and we went to Reading every other weekend.

Where in “the old country” did he come from?

Some shtetl around Kiev. All those things are sort of mysteries. This may be urban legend and family rumor, but my grandmother’s father was head of the town and mayorish. Very steeped in Orthodox tradition.

How have you been influenced by your Jewish background?

I went to Hebrew school and got bar mitzvahed and never went back. Judaism influenced me an enormous amount—not religion, but culture. I feel very Jewish in my humor and culturally Jewish, even though I live in a town that isn’t friendly to Jews in many ways.

You wrote somewhere that God is information.

For most people everything is information. To me information makes use of half of the word information, which is “inform.” I believe in the “inform” part of the information. 

So what do you imagine God to be?

I don’t believe in an understanding God, I believe in the God of understanding. We become human when we understand things. Whatever we choose, from insects to the sky, whatever we profoundly understand, that’s where the spirit lies. I think religions are a perversion of understanding; they might lead to belief but not understanding.

So is understanding a more modern goal than belief?

I don’t think modern or ancient…I’ll paraphrase from Leviticus: What will be has always been. That’s what I believe in.

Has Talmudic thinking and questioning influenced your work?

I feel the spirit of the structure of the design of some of my books, which include questions in the marginalia, to be in the Talmudic tradition. It is this structure that shows my deep belief in the question, and Louis Kahn, my mentor, said that a good question is better than a brilliant answer. I believe so deeply in the quest, which makes up most of the word question, that I normally do not take questions or have a question and answer period at the end of my speeches. The reason is that most questions are either bad questions or speeches.

You are credited with coining the term Information Architect in 1976. What does it mean?

It’s my passion about understanding. I’ve had five lives. I was trained in architecture but I’ve had a life in archeology, writing guidebooks, medical books, running conferences and a life in information theory. These are all separate, parallel and sometimes intertwined lives. Every one of those lives is part and parcel of the foundation of being understood. I have to make information understandable.

Can you tell me how you went from architect to information architect?

Everything I do is Johnny-one-note. I try to assuage my curiosity and fill the void with things that interest me. Whether I design furniture for my house, garden or swimming pool, or design a house or a book, or write about understanding; whether it’s health care, raising a child or dogs, it’s all the same thing.

How did TED come about?

I wanted to be around people who were smarter than me. I didn’t want to listen to white guys in suits on panels. I wasn’t interested in politicians and CEOs or having somebody read a speech. I wanted to get rid of the lectern, stay away from golf courses, not let people dress up because I don’t own a suit. I just wanted to go to a gathering that was interesting to me, particularly about technology, design and entertainment, and other people seemed to like it.

What do you think of what TED has become today?

I think what Chris Anderson has done with TED is remarkable… It’s different, and they have every right to do that. TED is no longer improvised. And the whole basis was you couldn’t sell anything on stage, but now they sell charities and missions. Nothing has to be pure, it can change. They change the rules of golf, tennis and baseball, things with big rulebooks. That’s the way it is.

You’ve gone on to produce new kinds of conferences such as the WWW Conference.

I created pairings of interesting individuals—such as an astrophysicist and a small particle physicsist who, by the way, spoke different languages; and magician David Blaine and movie director/choreographer Julie Taymor. I paired the creator of The Simpsons Matt Groening and New York Times columnist David Brooks. It was improvised conversation. They didn’t know what they were going to speak about. I had them in front of me and threw out a premise to each pairing, and they responded with conversation. I call this “intellectual jazz.”

What is the state of the art of conversation today, and where is it going?

At the opening of my last WWW conference, I greeted the audience by saying “Welcome to the Great Leap Backwards. What will take place in the next three days could have taken place 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece when Aristotle, Socrates and Plato—whoever was talking to each other at that time—were having a chat in a small amphitheater without Powerpoint or AV, and it would have been damned interesting.”

I see you are also working on a new conference called 555. How will this one work?

It will be in five different cities and have five speakers in each city on five consecutive Mondays. Each of the five will give a prediction of the next five years based on their narrow band of expertise. Then I will collect all 25 speakers in New York City and I will pair them, and they will have improvised conversations critiquing the previous 25 predictions. It will be WWW2. I don’t know how it’s going to work. For me, it’s a discovery, and it’s terrifying. I never know what’s going to happen. But it wouldn’t interest me if I knew. Why would you do something you already know how to do? It’s boring.

It seems like 555 couldn’t be more different than intellectual jazz.

555 is not improvised in the same way. I don’t think there’s a best way of doing anything.

Why are you doing this?

I’m trying to think of new models for how people gather. I just want to have some interesting things happen out of conferences.

So how do you organize information?

I have many personal theories on ways of organizing information. I believe, and it has been accepted, that there are only five ways of organizing information. I use the acronym LATCH: Location, alphabet, time, category and hierarchy. And I believe there are only five ways that one can innovate. I use the acronym ANOSE because I humorously scratch my nose when I think of a new idea. ANOSE stands for addition, need, opposites, subtraction and epiphany. Additionally there are only five categories for the display of cartographic information. This gets into a more esoteric proof of a new cartography that I won’t get into now but it is what my Urban Observatory is based on.

What is the Urban Observatory? 

Recently, after a 42-year hiatus since I first wrote the theory, I created in partnership with Esri—the largest maker of cartography software in the world—an exhibit and a web application, which develops the theory of comparative cartography. The demo shows 16 cities with 16 layers of information that you can compare. There are only five fundamental categories of land use through which you can show an infinite number of characteristics. But that’s for another conversation.

What’s the difference between data and information?

There’s an explosion of data but not an explosion of information. Many people think all written words and numbers are information, but if they don’t inform—if you do not understand them—they are data, not information. Data is the alphabet, a word with meaning is information. People should not feel anxiety because they can’t understand what they are reading; They should blame it on the authors.

What’s the next big thing in information theory?

Recently conversation has been focused upon the catch phrase “big data” as the next big thing in communication. I think that is nonsense. The next big thing is understanding. “Big data” is data with zeros after it. It’s a number, it’s not understanding. Big understanding is not big data. You only understand something relative to something you already understand. Understanding is what it is all about.