OK... another experiment. My book publishes a week today. I'm posting here, exclusively on X, the full first chapter. Fingers crossed that some one out there likes this! Ready? Here it is.... --- YOU WOULDN'T THINK that a cluster of atoms weighing less than a trillionth of a gram could amount to much. Yet one such cluster, following a tiny tweak to its shape, entered a human body in late 2019, sparking a chain of events that killed more than seven million people and shut down the world economy. Among the many lessons of Covid-19, one of the most profound is this: You don’t need to be big to be powerful. You just need to be infectious. Any pattern that can replicate itself can have unlimited impact. Coronaviruses do it by avoiding human immune systems, creating billions of copies of themselves and then triggering us to cough or sneeze those copies into other people’s air supply. But many other types of infection are possible. I want to persuade you that one such possible contagion could actually transform the world for the better. Its name? Generosity. If we figured out how to make generosity truly infectious, it could turn the tide on the growing divisiveness of our world and usher in a new era of hope. Generosity? Really?! It’s an odd word, to be sure. A little old-fashioned, perhaps. It seems, on first blush, too soft a force to be deployed against the challenges we’re facing. You, as an individual, may be as generous as you like, but how can your well-intentioned individual gestures and sacrifices amount to anything? But that’s the whole point. They can. Any generous act can have extraordinary impact if it can make the leap from isolated to infectious. With a few little tweaks to their shape, acts of generosity can become explosively powerful. This book is devoted to showing you how. Generosity’s infectious potential draws from two key drivers: human nature, and the connectedness of the modern era. In the chapters that follow, I’ll describe how overlooked traits that lie deep inside every human can combine to create chain reactions of generous behavior. And how these ripple effects can be turbocharged by the Internet for world-changing impact. The Internet is of course famous for enabling contagions of all kinds, from social media memes to viral marketing. As with a virus, humans are the vector for the Internet’s infectiousness. Instead of replicating in noses and lungs, words and images ignite in our brains, provoking our fingers to press Like or Share. Alas, many of the contagions that spread online are not healthy. Fueled by ad-driven business models that seek to glue people to their screens, social media platforms have turned the web into an outrage-generating machine. Instead of seeing the best in one another, we’re often seeing the worst, and it’s driving us apart. I’ll be tackling this problem head on. Along with many others, I used to dream of the Internet as a force for bringing people together. And I’m not willing to let that dream go. I believe there’s a pathway to reclaiming a healthier Internet, with infectious generosity playing a starring role. In fact, this book is anchored by two complementary themes: The Internet can turbocharge generosity and Generosity can transform the Internet. Each theme feeds the other. If we see the Internet as a scary, inhuman mass of strangers ready to judge and exploit us, it will be hard for us to trust it with our good intentions. But without people making efforts to connect with others online in a generous spirit, the Internet can’t deliver its potential as a force for good. It’s tempting to dismiss the Internet today as a downward spiral of interactions. What is desperately needed is for us to start an upward cycle in which the growing visibility of a more generous version of humanity inspires people to play their part in contributing to the common good. I feel a real sense of urgency about this. We’re in the early stages of seeing our world turned upside down by artificial intelligence. Guess what the source of the power of AI is? It’s the Internet. In essence, the most powerful AI systems are designed to digest the sum of what humans have posted online and create predictive models. Do we want to rely on AI trained with today’s Internet? No! We really don’t. We’ll risk amplifying much that is dangerous. If we can find a way to nudge the Internet to a kinder, more generous, more positive place, it could have an incalculable impact on our future, both directly and by providing a healthier foundation for AI. It may seem absurd to you to imagine us humans, with all our imperfections, ever overcoming the Internet’s woes: division, disinformation, data surveillance, addiction, social media-fueled insecurity, and so much more. I hear you. But I invite you to suspend judgment just for a bit. Under the radar, there are remarkable things afoot. They’re worth learning about. Moreover, we must take on this problem. I see no choice. Our whole collective future is at stake. Paradoxically, the very urgency of the problem may help us. The greater the sense of crisis, the more humans shift from me to we. We’re in a moment when people are really worried. I think that means we’re also craving things that could draw us together. The good news is that the ingredients to infectious generosity are hiding in plain sight. Simple, ordinary, unremarkable human kindness, for example, now has the potential to  ripple outward like never before. Take the following story. You’re sitting in your car at an intersection when a rainstorm hits. You notice two people by the side of the road getting deluged. One of them is in a wheelchair. So you jump out of the car, run to them and give them your umbrella. No doubt acts like this have happened countless times throughout history between people stuck outside in rainstorms. It might seem mundane. However, when this act of kindness happened in Washington D.C., in 2022, a stranger in another car captured it on video. When the clip was posted online, it attracted millions of views and more than ninety thousand likes on Reddit. Comments from inspired viewers poured out: “I wanna be like him.” “Gives me hope.” “If he did that to me I'd feel the inescapable urge to pay it forward.” “I’m going to start carrying extra umbrellas.” An act that, pre-Internet, might have meant something to just three people ended up inspiring a multitude. But an instance of everyday kindness captured on a viral video is just one example of infectious generosity. There are countless other ways to ignite it. Everyone can do something that has the potential to spread: A retired engineer posting invaluable knowhow on YouTube. An artist sharing work that provokes and enchants. An act of human courage that inspires millions of people on social media. A company that offers free courses on a technical subject in which it has expertise. A storyteller who highlights a powerful cause that an online community can fund. Or just someone who wakes up grateful for something in their life and decides to pay it forward, sparking an online chain reaction. *** As head of TED for the past twenty years, I’ve had a ringside view of many of the world’s most significant discoveries, inventions, technologies, and ideas. A friend asked why I chose this specific topic to write a book about. My answer was that I’ve come to see generosity as the essential connecting thread between the most important lessons I’ve ever learned—as an individual, as the leader of an organization, and as a citizen of the world. For years, TED’s tagline has been “ideas worth spreading,” and I have come to believe that generosity is the ultimate idea worth spreading. How can that be? Does it even make sense to call generosity an idea? Wouldn’t it be more apt to call it a virtue or a character trait? Well it’s certainly those things. But it’s also a giant, glittering idea, and arguably the best idea humans have ever embraced. It is the idea that we should make efforts on behalf of others, not just ourselves. As we’ll see, generosity is fueled by deep biological instincts. But those instincts are fragile. They need to be strengthened and shaped by our reflective minds. In every religion and most every enduring culture there has been an effort to elevate the role of generosity, because it is the key to realizing our potential. It is generosity that inspires reciprocal trust and makes cooperation possible. Cooperation is what allowed us to create civilization. Generosity is therefore core to all that humanity has built, and to what we might yet build in the future. Of course, building thriving societies took more than generosity alone. We needed many other drivers, including the rule of law and regulated markets. These have played a key role in constraining non-generous aspects of human nature and turning them into something productive for the common good. Adam Smith’s wonder at the benevolent effects of people trading with one another is well-taken. It really is incredible that millions of people working largely in their own self-interest can create benefits for everyone. But history reveals that every institution we’ve ever built has been subject to flaws and needs constant tweaking and improvement. Usually those improvements have been driven by people who are passionate about the common good; reformers and advocates fueled by a generous public spirit. This is how we’ve fought back against child labor, slavery, price-gouging, pollution, and unfair exploitation of all kinds, fights that continue to this day. The Internet has the potential to be as significant an invention for humanity as regulated markets or the rule of law. It connects us all and opens the door to unlimited human potential. But in its current state, it is deeply flawed. The Internet is crying out for generous-minded reformers who can reclaim it as an amplifier of kindness instead of meanness. Because of the power of infectiousness, each of us can contribute more than we know. Generosity has played a key role in building the tools, the ideas, and the institutions that have allowed civilization to flourish. But it is also essential for something else: our personal happiness. Generosity is a key ingredient for a contented life. People often tell me the main reason they watch TED talks is to answer this question: How can I be my best self? They say that speakers inspire them to think more expansively about how they could contribute to the world. Indeed, perhaps the simplest, most powerful moral question anyone can ask of their own life is this: Am I a net giver, or a net taker? The answer to that question will come from taking stock of our lives. The people we’ve hurt versus the people we’ve helped. The resources we’ve consumed versus those we’ve protected. The ugliness we’ve been part of versus the beauty we’ve created. And so on. It’s an intensely personal question—and it has consequences for all of us. Whether our collective future is a good one or not depends largely on whether the majority of people give more to the world than they take from it. All of this is why I’ve come to see generosity as central to everything that matters. And because we’re in an age when one person’s generosity has the potential to infect others without limit, there’s a whole new reason to spread this idea far and wide. Doing so isn’t always easy, however. Our collective future seems dangerously fragile right now, given the ugliness of much of modern culture. There’s a real possibility that we will withdraw from one another and abandon the greatest idea we’ve ever had. But there’s also a scenario in which we rediscover it, and amplify it like never before. There are so many different ways to be generous. It’s not just about giving away money. Simply adopting a generous mindset can make a difference. That can lead to gifts of time, talent, creativity, connection and basic human kindness. These gifts have always been part of what is to be a good human. But today they have the potential to create amazing chain reactions. Money matters too, of course. In the pages ahead, we’ll discover how to go beyond instinctive acts of charity to thoughtful giving that dramatically amplifies the impact of what you spend, via the Internet and in other ways. And if all this still seems daunting or impossible, remember that you don’t have to do it alone. Many of the most powerful and beautiful examples of generosity happen when people join forces: a giving circle, a local volunteer group, or an online collective. Whoever you are, the potential for generosity—as we’ll discover—is wired deeply inside you. Indeed it’s possible that your quest to become a net giver will surprise you with a renewed sense of meaning, purpose and joyful hope. It’s who I’m meant to be. This is also true for organizations, whether for-profit or nonprofit. One of the surprises of the Internet age is that generous acts often turn out to be the smartest, most satisfying decisions an organization can make. We’re taught to think of generosity as an act done purely for selfless reasons. But I’ll make the case that it can be much more than that. Today, more than ever, the decision to be generous can be simultaneously an act of sacrifice and, profoundly, an act in the long-term self-interest of the giver. The people who are generous are the people who will come to enjoy the deepest happiness. And the companies and organizations that are generous are the companies and organizations that will own the future. If we could pay a little more attention to generosity’s potential for contagion, and grow a little more creative and courageous in how we contribute to that potential, we could be transformed—in our personal lives and in our families, our neighborhoods, our businesses, and our nonprofit organizations. We’d open the door to thrilling new human possibility. *** The book has three parts: WHY, HOW and WHAT IF. Part 1 is devoted to understanding why infectious generosity’s time has come. I share the remarkable sequence of events at TED that convinced me that the Internet has changed the rules of generosity far more than I had realized, and the three big principles that I learned from those events. Then we dive into new learnings about human nature and how the call of generosity can bring us both surprising consequences and profound happiness. I give the inside story of the #MysteryExperiment, the biggest social science study yet that demonstrates how kindness begets kindness. In Part 2 we explore how to turn this theory into action. We look at what it takes to create a generous mindset, the many different types of giving that can turn into something much bigger and how we can share stories of generosity with one another. There’s an important chapter on financial giving, including how to tap into different forms of leverage to significantly amplify the impact of our money. Then in Part 3 we ask what if our world had generosity more deeply embedded in it. We’ll plot how to take back the Internet so that it can realize the dream millions of us once had, to help humankind be both human, and kind. We’ll look at how companies and organizations might be transformed by generosity. We’ll ponder how to empower our greatest changemakers to embark on truly audacious plans for change. We’ll explore the case for a pledge that everyone in the world could take that would carry us all on a shared journey of generosity. And finally we’ll ponder how we might embed a generosity mindset inside our future selves. Whoever you are and wherever you are, I hope you will come on this journey with me. There’s a good chance you’ll become infected by something powerful, something that could impact how you spend some of your future time, money and creativity. And this something may just end up infecting others. But this is a healthy infection. A beautiful, hopeful, healthy infection. You may wish to never recover. ---- More about the book, including access to our special generosity AI, at infectiousgenerosity.org