The future belongs not to those who talk about it, but to those who make it.
Ted Selker is the legendary inventor who created the TrackPoint—the little red pointing stick on the ThinkPad—and who pioneered “context-aware computing” to augment human ability at the MIT Media Lab. One question has run through his entire career: how do you turn an idea into a thing that changes the world?
An idea, as long as it stays in your head, changes nothing. Only when it is prototyped, fails, passes into people’s hands, and dissolves into daily life does the world begin to move. In this keynote, a man who has spent half a century bringing inventions into society shares the process—and the craft—of making invention real. Not academic elegance, not the logic of capital, but the act of building the future with one’s own hands.
The time for being a commentator is over. As the opening of DAY3, “CREATE,” this keynote delivers a message to everyone gathered in Tokai, the heartland of manufacturing: your idea, too, can become a thing that changes the world.
