Speakers Parag Khanna: Global Theorist; Guest Host at TEDGlobal 2012

Political scientist Parag Khanna travels the world with his eyes open--and has become a trenchant critic of the standard wisdom about the second and third worlds. Khanna's 2008 book, The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century, looks at the epic political manipulations of nations small and large struggling to end up at the top of the global heap.

In his 2011 book, How to Run The World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance, he limns a 21st century that has much in common with the feudal 16th century, where non-state actors have as much influence on the course of world events as countries do. 

And in a new short book for TED, Hybrid Reality, Parag and Ayesh Khanna explore our complex relationship with science and technology--and how it could create new and unexpected lifestyles and social structures. He's a director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, where he helps explore human-technology co-evolution.

For TEDGlobal he has curated and will guest-host the session “The Upside of Transparency”.

"Here's one view of America circa 2008: The US is a modern-day Roman Empire--overstretched, underperforming, slowly crumbling into history's dustbin. Here's Parag Khanna's view: Nonsense. The geopolitical wooziness Americans are feeling isn't decline. It's realignment."

Daniel Pink, WIRED

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