Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley's books have sold over 800,000 copies, been translated into 27 languages and been short-listed for six literary prizes. In 2004 he won the National Academies Book Award from the US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine for 'Nature via Nurture'. In 2007 he won the Davis Prize from the US History of Science Society for 'Francis Crick'.

At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley showed how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It's not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

Matt is married to the neuroscientist Professor Anya Hurlbert. They have two children and live at Blagdon near Newcastle upon Tyne.

SPEECH TOPICS:

RATIONAL OPTIMISM: despite disasters the world has been getting better and better for humanity over the last two centuries, we will continue to improve in this century and that the pessimists who dominate the public discourse have repeatedly been proved wrong. In our lifetime, per capita income has trebled, lifespan has increased by one third and child mortality has fallen by two thirds.

IDEAS HAVING SEX: the secret of prosperity is exchange. The invention around 100,000 years ago of the habit of swapping one object for another had the same impact on cultural evolution that sexual reproduction had on biological evolution. The consequence was burgeoning collective intelligence in which the objects we create embody the combined ideas of many different people, alive and dead.

THE HUMAN FOOTPRINT: far from increasing, the human footprint is shrinking. By using less land to produce each tonne of food and less land to produce each kilowatt-hour of energy, humanity is actually reducing its impact on the earth. As population growth continues to slow, this will become ever more apparent. Yet the environmental movement urges us to adopt policies that would increase the footprint: renewable energy and organic farming.

THE SOURCE OF INNOVATION: new technologies do not come from individual genius, or from academic science and philosophy, but from the collective sharing of small, incremental improvements in existing technologies. This bottom-up view of innovation suggests radical new policies on intellectual property, science and trade.

NATURE AND NURTURE: recent discoveries in the human genome have led to a resolution of the old conflict between nature and nurture. Genes, it transpires, are at the mercy of experience, because they are switched on and off by what we choose to do in our lives. The result is that nature works via nurture, not versus nurture.