Some of the world’s leading scientists, business and technology leaders and scholars are gathered this week at the annual TED conference in Long Beach, CA. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, consists of a series of tightly-timed “talks” by speakers — some famous, many not — on big ideas.  I’ll be posting short reports on the conference over the next few days.

You can also follow the conference’s live photo and Twitter feeds here at the TED site.

Futurist Juan Enriquez kicked off the 4-day conference this morning on a sober note, addressing the economic crisis before moving on to discuss the future of genomics and robotics. Technology will be key to growing the economy again, he said, but the U.S. has to get control of the federal deficit .

Enriquez is a former Harvard business school professor who now runs an investment and research firm that helps fund new genomics firms.

He criticized the recent wave of federal bailouts. “We thought we were putting off this debt to our kids, but we’re not,” Enriquez said.
“It’s not a question of who deserves a bailout anymore. We simply can’t afford to spend any more money.”