[Video] Bad design decisions as economic stimulus

I have an iPhone TED application and I have, as you can see in the siderail of this site, a number of videos from TED, a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. TED started in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. What could be more closely aligned to the intersection of my passions, eh?

Some of the talks are timeless and riveting from the first frame. Some are actually a little dense and challenging to track to a key takeaway. I try to select the videos in my Vodpod Vodspot that are most accessible to the broadest group of readers. But occasionally I want to highlight some of the more arcane videos I love, and here's one I'd encourage you to watch, even though the set up to the key takeaway requires a little investment.

As you can see, during the early days of the Internet, people had not really envisioned all the implications of the design decisions engineers made. What innovators can contribute to the economy can occasionally be the necessity of continued support of a bad design decision.