Living from air: Lalo Mir at TEDxRíodelaPlata

Lalo Mir has been a radio speaker for more than 45 years and has a main role in the history of Argentinian radio. In this talk, he shares his experience on living from air.

[Ideas that transform]

(Music)

(Applause)

Thank you. You are very kind.

I'm not that techie.

I don't have a tablet, yet.

This being said, I'll call to my tech side

and present you my notebook.

(Laughter)

This notebook has been with me
for many, many trips

and... this is the pen
to touch the notebook's screen.

It's wireless, as you can see, very updated.

When I was proposed
to speak in front of you,

besides being glad
and flattered with the idea, I told them:

"What should I speak about?
It's about sharing experiences, right?"

And then, an interview
that Bacanal magazine

did with me recently crossed my mind.

It's a magazine about bon vivants,
about drinking expensive wines,

and eating in opulent restaurants.

The reporter titled the interview
"Living From Air".

And I was really surprised,
because I suddenly understood that,

everything I did during my life,

or at least in the last
40 years, was to live from air.

Right? Literally living from air,
because everything I do, is air.

It doesn't exist.
Can't be seen, can't be touched.

It's an idea, and an idea
is like the air, right?

When we think, our ideas are not
in any specific place,

they are "over there", in our minds.

That's the imagination.

It's the imagination of the others
and the words,

which carry the idea through the air.

What I do in radio can't be touched,
can't be seen, but still,

you end up seeing it in the mind,

in the imagination of those
who are listening to the radio.

This is why I always compare
the radio with literature,

because a book is the same,
even though it is not air.

It's paper, and it's ink.

But we all read the same book.

For instance, that novel which
may be written in another language,

but the words are the same,
from the same author,

black ink over white paper.

Identical, equal, similar.

However, the image that is being
formed while reading that novel

is completely different
in each one of the heads reading it.

It's full of subjetivity.

It's about our experiences,
it's about our hard drive,

it's about what happened in our lives.

So we imagine the same
in a personal way, in a different way.

And that's radio, right?

It's words, is air.

Words that travel through the air,
sounds that travel through the air.

And depending on who we are,
our background,

the way we live and the culture we have

and what we've learned
and the parents we had...

we are going to handle it differently,

and we are going to include different images.

small or big differences, but different.

So I think: "Wow!
This guy could summarize

with the words "living from air"",

what I've done all my life, right?
Which is, living from air.

Living from this that can't be touched.
The radio is air, is imagination,

is ideas.

If I remove the people from the radio,
only antennas, transistors, disc players,

mics would be left.

But nothing would happen.

We must put humanity in it,
we need to put people,

we need to put ideas and imagination,

and there in the air, the images
take shape and the speeches appear.

Everything we listen to everyday appears.

So then, I also think that the idea is air.

I mean, radio is a concept, is ideas.

It is someone who's thinking
and saying things,

or playing a guitar, or singing songs.

And that's it.

Radio is just that. It's pure sound.

We can't add color,
we can't add odour.

It is just people speaking,
people thinking, people with ideas,

and I thought that the idea
is also a bit similar to air.

And what gets the radio going,
which is the idea and the imagination,

is also what keeps our lives going.

Let me propose this exercise now:

I've been 40 years on radio now,
so I'm a well-known professional,

more or less respected... sometimes.

So why am I on radio?

What exploded inside my head
in order for me to spend more than 40...?

Did I want to work on the radio or not?

I ended up on radio because one day,
Fernando Bravo

came back to San Pedro
with a brand new salmon-colored Peugeot.

(Laughter)
(Applause)

That's the original idea.

(Applause)

That's the first idea, and
I later painted it carrot-color.

Right? Because it's just like
the carrot and stick.

The car was that.

It took me a long time
before I could buy a new car.

And it wasn't
salmon-colored, but carrot-colored,

because it took me
to the radio and I felt in love with it.

With this radio that can't be seen,
this radio where everything is possible.

Where any story is possible.

Where I can make a
Spielberg movie with no dollars.

Because special effects are sounds
and we can even make them with the mouth.

So I fell in love with this radio,

this radio that you can't see,
because of that idea of the new Peugeot,

because we, who worked
in San Pedro's radio, thought:

"If he can, we can, too."

So the idea transports you,
the first blow,

when you think about pursuing it.

That is was we need to do,
we must not lose it.

Get hold of the idea, and go after it.

The radio is a display
of one senseless idea after another.

Marconi didn't invent the radio
in order to make the radio we know today,

Marconi wanted to send
wireless telegrams

that could reach the ships,

because the navy, the war,
the armies needed it.

Just two points joining:
"beep, beep, beep, beep",

and they were sending Morse.

They wanted to take the wire off,
so they racked their brains

to find a system to transmit the sound,

"beep, beep, beep, beep", and
then they decoded the morse code,

and they listened wirelessly, unplugged,
for instance,

off the shores in the deep sea,
on the ships.

The first guy who transmited voice
over the radio that made "beep, beep"

was a radio operator who was
at the NYC port, just messing around.

There were mics already.

This device existed, too,
so the guy thought:

"What if I connect the mic
to the beeper, to the beeper wires,

and instead of going "beep, beep", I speak?"

So he said: "Hello!"

Can you imagine the shock
every radio operator on the ships got?

(Laughter) (Applause)

Nobody had ever talked to them
through the radio; radio didn't exist yet!

And all of a sudden, not only did he
speak and read the Bible, (Laughter)

but he played the violin
and really shocked everybody.

It would be long before the radio turned
into the kind of radio that feeds me

from the air, and this thing
that I live from air.

Many times kids come to me and ask:

"Has tech, Internet and PCs
changed the radio much?"

The truth is they haven't.
Radio is still the same:

a mic and some moron saying stupid things.

Or in many cases,
saying serious things, OK.

But I mean, the greatest evolution
in the radio, the greatest change

was the transistor radio. Why?

Another idea,
that had nothing to do with it.

The guy who invented the transistor
didn't know that it was going to trigger

the making of a really small radio
that we could carry in our pockets

with a set of headphones

and that we could listen to
the match at school, or at work.

In 1930, the transistors were created
and all that

but it was only in the '50s
when the transistor radios appeared.

In other words, just the same way

Fernando Bravo's car was a carrot,
an idea,

an idea that gets inside of you,
and you search and look for it

until the idea is fully developed

and someone can make it possible.

Nowadays, we listen to music
on our smartphones or MP3 players,

for me it is the same concept
of a transistor radio, nothing changed.

The really cool thing was that
it wasn't plugged to a power supply,

because it had a small battery

and you could carry it in your pocket.

Then the walkman appeared.
A copy of the transistor radio.

And then the MP3,
a copy of the walkman.

And now the smartphone,
which is all that together but....

what is that, really?

A small device that sounds in your ears.

For me, the biggest challenge, maybe,
technologically speaking,

in that thing of the ideas,

might be the rebirth of the cell phone.

The cell phone is
the most democratic thing on Earth.

I've just heard a woman
complaining on the radio, saying:

"Hey, the poor people take the money

and the first thing they buy
is a cell phone."

I understood the real democracy
of the cell phone

on a my way to dinner with friends,

when I went by a group of poor guys
collecting paper,

and one of them was talking
on a cellphone:

"(beep, beep) I'm loading the stuff,
please send me the truck."

And I said to myself:
"This is huge.

They had no way
to communicate before."

The cell phone is absolutelly amazing
and yet we haven't found a use for it.

Maybe, that idea, the one
that transforms, like the transistor,

like the guy messing around
who connected the mic to the wire.

Maybe that is the idea missing if we want
the cell phone to stop being the device

with which the companies get
their revenue, and start being that device

that helps fill the holes in our society,
sometimes far away, sometimes close,

here, in Argentina.

Education, for instance,
and many, many other things.

Living from air,
is the demonstration that,

to listen to the radio,
we don't even need an antenna,

we don't even need the transmiter,
we don't even need the idea.

In 1980, I traveled to Marocco.

In Marrackech, at Jamaa el Fna square,
I saw some guys standing on the benches

and they were speaking to groups of people.

One speaking to 10 people,
another to 5, and then,

one guy speaking to a group
of 80 or 90 people.

(Imitating Arabic)
They spoke and people listened,

and every now and then,
the people dropped a coin and left.

My guide was an Italian
who spoke some Spanish, so I asked him:

"What is he speaking about?"
So he says:

"The guy is broadcasting the news,

because almost everyone here
is an analphabet.

So he listens to the news on the radio,
retells it publicly and gets a few coins.

And then I understood the term "rating".

One had 5, the other had 100,

and I asked myself why, if they
must have listened to the same station

and were telling the same things.
So the guide said:

"Yes, but the one with 80 people
listening to him

also tells jokes and gossips."
(Laughter)

So, radio is so much living from air,

that you can make radio
without a radio, just with people.

I found it totally wonderful.

I'm not denying technology,
the hardware,

I'm not denying everything
we get from it everyday.

Absolutely not.
I was one of the first PC fans.

When the first Commodore 64
appeared, they made us learn

not just how to use it,
but also how to program it.

I started with Basic, then they wanted
to make me learn Cobol,

which was impossible to understand.

And then, when the first sound editors
appeared, the first digital editors,

I was among the first ones
uploading the tapes

and starting with PCs,
I kind of got addicted to PCs.

And then I said: "OK, this is enough,

I'll use them just for work,
and the rest of my life

can be written in this notebook,
which might not be a tablet,

but is a nice composition notebook.

It can keep all my ideas,
and in case of a blackout,

I'll be able to read it with a candle.

But, going back to living from air,
and our talk this afternoon,

we need to keep in mind that ideas rule.

We might have computers,
but what is going to lead our lives

is our ideas and our own imagination.

Ideas rule.

They always did, they do now,

and they will rule
in every machine in the world

which will join together to kick our asses.

The idea of a lone thinking man,

the idea of a man thinking
when lights go out,

a man thinking when nothing's left.

The idea is the real thing,
the idea makes us different.

The idea is ours, and the idea is nothing.
It's in the air, is pure imagination.

It's like a cosmic nonsense in our heads,

and if we use it right,
it will get us that job

that 10 other people already applied for.

Who are they going to hire?
The one who thinks better.

Or, in any other aspect of life:

Who is going to get there?
The one with the best idea.

Now, if you have good ideas,
if you exercise your imagination,

if you work hard, everything that is
just going around in the air

with curiosity, willing to play,

and, on top of that,
you have a few computers...

Then, you are ramping up your speed.

I could say that nothing will stop you,

but, if the computer takes over you
and you let it do it...

you'd be in trouble.

Because the day the computer
takes over, it turns your brain off.

I've learned that living from air.
Thank you very much.

(Applause)