Courtesy photo.
Pick up a free copy of Anderson’s new book, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading, UCSB Arts & Lectures’ Winter 2024 Thematic Learning Initiative Book Giveaway
SUMMARY
- UCSB Arts & Lectures presents a FREE event with TED’s Chris Anderson discussing his new book, Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading
- Tue, Feb 6 | 7:30 p.m. | Campbell Hall
-
- Thematic Learning Initiative Winter Book Giveaway
- Pick up a free copy of Infectious Generosity and stay for a brief presentation, Q&A and signing with the author
- Books available while supplies last
- FREE (registration recommended). An Arts & Lectures’ Thematic Learning Initiative event
- Registration & Info: www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu or call (805) 893-3535
“This book was a much-needed gift to my weary and news-battered heart.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
SANTA BARBARA — UCSB Arts & Lectures presents a FREE Thematic Learning Initiative event with head of TED Chris Anderson, discussing his new book Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading on Tuesday, February 6 at 7:30 p.m. at UCSB Campbell Hall. As head and curator of TED, Chris Anderson has had a ringside view of the world’s boldest thinkers sharing their most uplifting ideas. With his new book, Infectious Generosity, Anderson looks at one of humankind’s defining but overlooked impulses – generosity – and how we can super-charge its potential to build a hopeful future.
ABOUT CHRIS ANDERSON
Chris Anderson is the Curator of TED, a nonprofit devoted to sharing valuable ideas, primarily through the medium of TED Talks – short talks that are offered free online to a global audience. Anderson was born in a remote village in Pakistan in 1957. He spent his early years in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where his parents worked as medical missionaries, and he attended an American school in the Himalayas for his early education. After boarding school in Bath, England, he went on to Oxford University, graduating in 1978 with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. Chris then trained as a journalist, working in newspapers and radio, including two years producing a world news service in the Seychelles Islands. Back in the UK in 1984, Chris was captivated by the personal computer revolution and became an editor at one of the UK’s early computer magazines. A year later he founded Future Publishing with a $25,000 bank loan. The new company initially focused on specialist computer publications but eventually expanded into other areas such as cycling, music, video games, technology and design, doubling in size every year for seven years. In 1994, Chris moved to the United States where he built Imagine Media, publisher of Business 2.0 magazine and creator of the popular video game users website IGN. Chris eventually merged Imagine and Future, taking the combined entity public in London in 1999, under the Future name. At its peak, it published 150 magazines and websites and employed 2,000 people. This success allowed Chris to create a private nonprofit organization, the Sapling Foundation, with the hope of finding new ways to tackle tough global issues through media, technology, entrepreneurship and, most of all, ideas.
In 2001, the foundation acquired the TED Conference, then an annual meeting of luminaries in the fields of Technology, Entertainment and Design held in Monterey, California, and Chris left Future to work full time on TED. He expanded the conference’s remit to cover all topics, including science, business and key global issues, while adding a Fellows program, which now has some 300 alumni, and the TED Prize, which grants its recipients “one wish to change the world.” The TED stage has become a place for thinkers and doers from all fields to share their ideas and their work, capturing imaginations, sparking conversation and encouraging discovery along the way. In 2006, TED experimented with posting some of its talks on the Internet. Their viral success encouraged Chris to begin positioning the organization as a global media initiative devoted to ‘ideas worth spreading,’ part of a new era of information dissemination using the power of online video. In June 2015, the organization posted its 2,000th talk online. The talks are free to view, and they have been translated into more than 100 languages with the help of volunteers from around the world. Viewership has grown to approximately one billion views per year. Continuing a strategy of ‘radical openness,’ in 2009 Chris introduced the TEDx initiative, allowing free licenses to local organizers who wished to organize their own TED-like events. More than 8,000 such events have been held, generating an archive of 60,000 TEDx talks. And three years later, the TED-Ed program was launched, offering free educational videos and tools to students and teachers.
ABOUT INFECTIOUS GENEROSITY
From the bestselling author, media pioneer and curator of TED, an inspiring book about one of humankind’s defining but overlooked impulses, and how we can super-charge its potential to build a hopeful future.
Let’s face it: Recent years have been tough on optimists. Hopes that the Internet might bring people together have been crushed by the ills of social media. Is there a way back?
As head of TED, Chris Anderson has had a ringside view of the world’s boldest thinkers sharing their most uplifting ideas. Inspired by them, he believes that it’s within our grasp to turn outrage back into optimism. It all comes down to reimagining one of the most fundamental human virtues: generosity. What if generosity could become infectious generosity?
Consider: how a London barber began offering haircuts to people experiencing homelessness – and catalyzed a movement; how two anonymous donors gave $10,000 each to 200 strangers and discovered that most recipients wanted to pay it forward with their own generous acts and how TED itself transformed from a niche annual summit into a global beacon of ideas by giving away talks online, allowing millions access to free learning.
In telling these inspiring stories, Anderson has given us “the first page-turner ever written about human generosity” (Elizabeth Dunn). More important, he offers a playbook for how to embark on our own generous acts – whether gifts of money, time, talent, connection or kindness – and to prime them, thanks to the Internet, to have self-replicating, even world-changing, impact.
ABOUT UCSB ARTS & LECTURES
Founded in 1959, UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) is the largest and most influential arts and lectures organization between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A&L annually presents more than a hundred public events, from critically acclaimed concerts and dance performances by world-renowned artists to talks by groundbreaking authors and film series at UCSB and Santa Barbara-area venues. With a mission to “educate, entertain and inspire,” A&L also oversees an outreach program that brings visiting artists and speakers into local classrooms and other venues for master classes, open rehearsals, discussions and more, serving K-12 students, college students and the general public.
Chris Anderson is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures Thematic Learning Initiative.
Special thanks to our visionary partners Lynda Weinman and Bruce Heavin for their support of the Thematic Learning Initiative.
FREE (registration recommended)
To register, call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535 or visit online at www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu
UCSB Arts & Lectures gratefully acknowledges our Community Partners the Natalie Orfalea Foundation & Lou Buglioli for their generous support of the 2023-2024 season.