Larry Brilliant's 2006 TED talk on coming pandemics is prescient, and well worth the watch. Yes, it's ominous, but it also shows that humanity has the ability to beat pandemics & eradicate entire diseases, as we've seen with smallpox and polio.
The other standout talks that year were Jeff Han showing off multi-touch interfaces before the iPhone existed, Al Gore debuting his Inconvenient Truth talk on the climate crisis, and Mena Trott trying to warn the audience about the rise of targeted harassment on social media. 🤔
But aside from proving that we don't heed warnings that come from TED Talks, it's instructive to look at our attitudes about polio & smallpox. For my family, these are real threats; I have family members who'd likely be alive today if they'd only had access to those vaccines.
For most people I know in wealthy countries and communities, though, the danger of those previous pandemics was abstract, almost imaginary. A threat to people "over there", not to "us". Maybe now we can all see that "over there" *is* us.
