(Photo: Twitter.com/U2tour)

Around this time last February, New York magazine wondered whether the golden age of ideas, sorry idea conferences, would leave “the clusterfuckoisie" without the uplifting epiphanies they paid so dearly to experience firsthand. "Might there be a cap on the number of interesting ideas in the universe?" asked Benjamin Wallace.

But the DAVOS-TED-Summit Series circuit has come back with a rejoinder in the form of rockstar-venture capitalist Bono (still listed as "Bono Rockstar" on Crunchbase, for those of you keeping track at home) who took the stage this afternoon in Long Beach.

We're not sure how Bono is tied to the theme of TED2013, "The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered,"--the middle one probably, right?--or what his title of his session "Progress Enigma," even means. Something about defeating poverty? But who cares when you are dropping jargon like this billionaire.

Bono not only proclaimed the end of his kind: "Exit the rockstar. Enter the evidence-based activist." He also experimented with meaningful word rearrangements: "The power of people is so much stronger than the people in power." Really makes the price tag worth it--besides the gift bags and private pools, of course.

Like we said, try as you might with your half-assed #fivewordhashtags, you can't out-TED a TED talk, people. When the planet is in embers, the only thing left will be cockaroaches and Tony Robbins wondering why we do what we do. On loop.

via Wikimedia

Yesterday, NME reported that once Facebook hit the stock exchange, Bono would usurp Paul McCartney's role as the richest musician in the world. That's because Bono (or "Bono Rockstar," as Crunchbase lists him) invested in Facebook through Elevation Partners, which owns 2.4 percent of Class B shares. Based on the IPO pricing, that makes Elevation Partners stake worth more than $1.5 billion, whereas Mr. McCartney's fortune is estimated at £665 million or $1.05 billion. 

However, NME didn't take into account the fact that (1) it's unlikely that all of Elevation Partners' shares are going into Bono's pocket and (2) that Elevation is only selling $200 million shares as part of today's offering, as Dan Primack has noted. Their remaining position in Facebook is worth $1.32 billion.

Of course, between Elevation Partners investments in Yelp and Dropbox and future earnings based on proximity to Mark Zuckerberg, it seems likely Bono will take Mr. McCartney's title someday soon.