Believe it or not, I had the chance to see Prof Noam Chomsky in person!! He was in an academic exchange trip to Taiwan in the week of August 8th.
I attended one of the two public lectures in Taiwan – the one held on 9 Aug in 中央研究院.
The lecture is classic Noam Chomsky. If you follow his work, you probably have seen some of his talks on the internet. On one hand, that actually means it’s not a big miss if you didn’t attend the lecture. You can find most of the points he covered in the lecture in his books and other videos. On the other hand, it’s a once-in-my-life experience to be lectured by Noam Chomsky.
I am not the right person to give an excerpt. But, for the sake of recalling my memory, I still wanna try…
Topic of the lecture: Contours of World Order: Continuities and Changes.
He first stated that 2 recent events set the world’s contour lately – the Copenhagen Climate Conference and the UN Nuclear Conference. These two events are about the two main threats faced by human species: natural catastrophes and nuclear threads but both events virtually made no progress towards solving the problems.
In the lecture, Dr Chomsky put proportionately less time on the natural catastrophes as he thinks natural disasters caused by climate change is very obvious. He cited a few quotes from scientists and cases of recent natural catastrophes to back his argument.
On the nuclear threats front, he probably spent 40, 50 minutes relating nuclear threats to weapons of mass destruction and a wide spectrum of issues in middle east and the US trying to maintain its influence in different regions in the world.
If you follow his writing and talks, you probably have heard of his views and analysis to the situation about the war in Iraq and other issues in the middle east. Do a search in Google or iTunes. You can find tons of his work around.
In the middle of the lecture, the room was completely submerged into his intelligence. He threw in a bucket of world issues – Iraq war, Iran’s nuclear threat, Israel not adopting Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, NATO expansion, rising China and India, allocation of world’s oil reserve, etc… He related and reasoned them as the US and Western trying to maintain imperial power because of institutional facts… The response from the floor, as what I observed, people were either suffocated by his immense intelligence, or, fell asleep. 
Again, it’s not a big loss if you missed the lecture. It’s the fact that I can see this man standing in front of me explaining what he believes. That’s the big deal!
I am so inspired…
If you wanna have a glimpse of his thought, you can check one of his documentary films – Manufacturing Consent. You can get it from Amazon and iTunes (DVD, streaming rental, digital copy, etc)
You can also check a recent speech of his in Democracy Now!.
Apple is live streaming its September music-themed event tonight. You will have to stay up at 1:00 am though.
TEDx Taipei is over for more than a week. After the event Jason and Kevin went to farewell speakers leaving the town.
