"We are still asking the question."

The Electric Rise and Fall of Nikola Tesla

At the end of Marco Tempest's story, he says "'Tell me, what will man do when the forests disappear, and the coal deposits are exhausted?' Tesla thought he had the answer. We are still asking the question."

Marco Tempest is a magician who in this instance, uses an amazing set of illusions and interactions with them to tell the story of Nikola Tesla. He outlined the number of patents and inventions that he had to his name (over 700!), such as radio, wireless telegraphy, remote control, robotics, and even x-ray tech. He does note, however, that after such great success, it didn't last. Tesla had an image for the world that he was inspired to create, where the poor were not humiliated by the rich and where people thought of the future and the next steps possible for science and humanity. I think that this was the most profound point of Tempest's story.

The story begins with his birth and then moves to his astounding brain power, outlining not only how incredibly intelligent Tesla was, but how he was able to construct his ideas and inventions inside his mind, what Tempest says could have been a form of synesthesia. He then connected the story of Nikola Tesla to himself, telling an interjected story about how Tesla became a showman to show the public that the volts he would need to pursue his idea of the alternating current were safe, praising the magic of science.

Tempest creates an illusion to illustrate the life of Tesla and the ideas he's presenting, even taking of the persona of Tesla at points, making him speak directly to the audience. This creates a more personal connection with the audience which helps them to empathize with him as a person, not just an out of reach part of history. When discussing his grand ideas, inventions, and aspirations he uses rising, inspirational music and speaks excitedly, wrapping the audience up into the feeling. He's attempting to make the audience be excited as well and understand just how great Tesla was. However, when it begins to look into how Tesla's career began to fall a bit, his ideas were discarded and finally died with the amazing ideas he had lost forever, the music was sadder, and there was more dejected injections from Tesla's character, and he speaks about the great loss of knowledge and image the world suffered with his dismissal. Here Tempest is trying to make them see Tesla as he does and feel the same loss.

Tempest is an illusionist, and while many would consider what he does a hoax or just generally believe him to be unreliable, he shares that trait in common with Tesla. He uses that common outlet to connect with Tesla, and finds him an inspiration worth sharing. He uses a lot of quotes of Tesla's and isn't really portraying much of an opinion most of the presentation. He also, if you think about it, has no reason what-so-ever to lie. He wants to portray as much information about Tesla as he possibly can, and for that I think that he is a credible source. While he may not be the traditional scholar we've learned to trust, what he does, how he has researched, and his own expertise makes him just as valuable a source as any other.

While attempting to portray to the audience how important Nikola Tesla was to our society today and how his ideas should serve as inspiration for future development, Tempest describes the genius of Tesla throughout his [this is where my blog deleted the next four paragraphs, so it's gonna be nowhere near as brilliant as it was, sorry] brilliant imagination, negating his need to make plans and prototypes and instead build the finished product. He also described his over 700 patents, how crucial his inventions where and are, and how they are still pertinent today. Having the showmanship in common with Tesla and his personal connection and enthusiasm for the subject does create some bias in that regard, but his passion doesn't make it so that he's giving false or overly exaggerated information, so his reasoning is still sound. His persuasiveness, the presentation manner and the amount of evidence given is all strong and sound, even when describing his downfall. 

Personally, this TED talk was really interesting to me, not only because I found the content interesting, but because I found the quotes provided by Tesla really inspirational. I chose this talk because I thought that the points brought up were very important. I'm not sure how to phrase it, but I think that the message the Tempest was trying to convey was amazingly important for all manner of people to hear. I also connected with this talk as an aspiring scientist, finding inspiration in his ideals and what he was working for. I think that some of the story-telling used in this talk relates to what we've begun to talk about in class concerning identity. Tempest is an illusionist, that’s what connects him to Tesla. Tesla used the illusion to make his science appear more appealing, giving it another face essentially. He created another identity for the millions of volts he needed in order to make it more acceptable for the public. In his shows, Tesla also introduced a duality in his work, making it both science, hard facts, tangible experimentation, as well as magic, intangible, fantastical, and unfathomable. As Tesla put it, “the magic of science.”

[I had so many other ideas and it was phrased more effectively before, the internet sucks.]

The dedication and admiration that Tesla had for his work and what he was working for, ("Everything I did, I did for mankind") should be an inspiration, for if this man, so many years ago, dreamed of a more equal future with its problems solved and science working for the betterment of all could see it, we should too. Tesla and his ideas and hard work are underrated. Tempest is trying to communicate how important it is for us to expand upon Tesla’s ideas and ideals. I think he’s hoping that at least the people in his audience will take something away from his presentation and be inspired to think about the difference that they can make.