I heard a talk last week by Walter Isaacson that was a tour de force.  He spoke without notes - granted, the subject of Einstein is part of Isaacson's life right now, but still it seemed so graceful and communicative on his part to be looking at us instead of an index card. 

I'd like to give a talk (also without notes) that persuaded everyone listening that they are part of a story that is just as creative and visual as Einstein's mind.  Something profound is going on in the world of communication that can't be finitely explained in advance.  Talking about email and VoIP and blogs is just skimming the surface.  We're inside a phase change in communication that is hard to see - there are small avalanches of changes in the form of email and blogs, but the bigger change is more fundamental.  There's a push into novelty, into the "adjacent possible," that is speeding along, catalyzed by global digital communications.

But starting this way, with handwaving and appeals to profundity, won't be memorable.  I'll need to tell stories.  What stories put across the thought experiment of a global brain?  Why would anyone want to be told they're a neuron?  ("No, not moron, neuron.")  Maybe the global brain solves a universal problem, in a way that brings makes people see things differently.  Anecdotes, web pages, videos - but is that like looking down at an index card? 

The couch potato is dead, and we're in the midst of a history of surprises. 

Isaacson had it easy, in a way; he's talking about a life that has ended, and he can look back and tell stories about how it went.  I'd like to convince people listening to my talk that we have absolutely no idea how things are going to go with the internet, and that that's as it should be.  Mind-blowing diversity is actually good, because out of sufficiently dense diversity life emerges.  Whoof - hard to visualize.