The elephants in the room at TED
scobleizer.com
scobleizer.com
If I didn't know that this is just how Scoble writes about everything, I would have come away with a worse opinion of TED than I had going into it. TED is supposedly about "ideas worth spreading", not how awesome it is to be rich and white (or fashionably ethnic). If I wanted to know about things rich people do that I will never do, I'd watch My Super Sweet 16. It's no wonder they don't hand out more press passes.
I think the way to address complaints of elitism is to not. If being an exclusive event is how the sausage gets made, great. Reasonable people understand that the hype and pretense surrounding TED does not negate the value of the content that it produces. Reasonable people skip the unbearably pompous intro music and the punctuating two minutes of advertisement for things that rich people care about and simply enjoy the talks. Reasonable people don't care about how awesome it is to get into the exclusive club.
How much faster would our world develop if all education was made available this way, financed by people who have the money to spend to be the first to learn something/have the benefit of real-life interaction with the original professor?
More surprising is that Scoble's been doing whatever it is he does for so long and he doesn't have $6000.
Mark Thornton at Mises.org has one thing right: "I believe in the unrestricted right to gamble."
But he goes on to say: "Despite this, I oppose the adoption of a state lottery." I would like to agree with him here but I think he's missing the point.
I don't oppose people setting up a lottery, even if those people call themselves a "state." I do oppose those people forcing out competition at the point of a gun.
So go ahead, "state," and set up your lottery with your ridiculously horrible odds. But when the competition arrives and provides far better odds with ease, and you send armed men to shut them down, that is where you cross the line.
I just like to focus on the truly important moral principle at stake, which is to avoid initiating force against other people.
However, there are myriad ways to legally pay zero tax and many people do it every year.
I would be in favor of overhauling the tax system so it's more like TED, and would happily pay TED-like taxes where I get a high level experience for an expensive price and the whole world benefits as well. Also, it's optional and you don't get arrested/shot for not buying a ticket.
Not gonna happen.
What could happen, though, is that you could start something like TED, and charge wealthy people for a high level experience, and let the whole world benefit as well.
Don't get me wrong, there is spectacular information being distributed by TED, but I almost feel tricked into obtaining it. The conference is so heavily designed around status, and ego that it seems like more of a marketing tool for the intellectual elite to boost their personal brand than a platform to share ideas. It's inefficient, and deceptive.
What I'd like to see instead of 5-20min presentations is one html webpage with bits of text and perhaps a few high quality images, or at least the option to access the information in this format. To me, everything else is fluff. I just want the information, not the ego, not the voice, not the brands, not the emotion, not the cheering. Just the information.
I know I might be coming across as snarky, or counter-elitist, but it really isn't my intention. I love quality information, and TED confuses me. I often want to idolize and praise these wonderful people that give wonderful speeches more than their ideas, and I'm saddened. Would the information be any less profound written on a bathroom wall? I'm definitely torn, but I'm beginning to think it doesn't matter...
This sounds really weird to me. I think what makes TED TED are some amazing talks by interesting people.
We can watch it on the net. Who cares how rich the audience is?
If anything, I suppose the audience is partly the cause of what I dislike in TED: the almost stereotypical Stuff White People Like content and tone of some talks.
Maybe, but then where is the "stuff non-white people like" conference that everybody is watching? Everybody is free to organize a conference, so why do only the stereotypical white people seem to bother doing it?
To be clear, I don't want to imply that "white people" are better somehow, I just have troubles grasping the "stuff white people like" complaint.
Also, maybe there really is a non-white TED out there, which right now has 200 votes on non-white Hacker News. If so, it would be very interesting to hear about it (both the conference and non-white hacker news).
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/
and thought it would be understood.
What I mean is stuff that is too "liberal", too bland, too politically correct for my taste. A bit hypocritical at times. It's just my opinion; perhaps I should have phrased it differently.
This is only tangentially related to race, by the way. People all over the world (including me) love classical music etc, but by using a derogatory term I'm implying only the stuff I dislike. ;-)
What would be a more exciting event? I suppose there already are some?
What would be an example of a talk that's more interesting than anything at TED?
And why couldn't such a talk simply be given at TED? Because "white people" wouldn't like it? Why not?
Some concrete examples would be a great help.
Annoying's not so bad, I wouldn't go as far as to say I was offended, although it's more out of repetition and boredom from the stereotype of certain subjects being cast as a white thing. I'm old enough to be over that kind of thing but can't pretend I don't notice. I'm not white and I love pretty much all the TED content - the SWPL comment just takes me back to high school.
If it makes you feel better, non-white people aren't immune to unintentional and mild racism either - nobody is. My in-laws constantly make jokes about white people and it grates my nerves when they do it too - they don't get a free pass just because they're Hispanic.
I'll take a wild guess, East Asian or South American? Yes, there is a cultural difference in a conference like TED and the rest of the world. But it is an amazing and inspiring conference that hosts some of the most accomplished people in the world as speakers. The fact that you dislike it because culturally it is different than you says more about your openness than it does about the quality of TED. Why is a cultural difference cause for dislike?
Oh, I happen to be South American, but it's not at all about that level of cultural difference. In my country there's a clone of the SWPL blog called "stuff middle class people like". On the other hand, someone very white like Mark Steyn would likely agree with me.
While I found both of those interesting, I'm really looking forward to a few of the others and only 1/day being posted is brutal.
Honestly, TED seems like a much better investment than an elite college. Four years' time and $100-200k, at an age where it's mostly impossible to predict who will accomplish anything, with those "future leaders" selected by unqualified bureaucrats? Or $6000 for face-time with sure bets? Just sayin'.
There are a lot of problems with our society and with parasitic elites, so don't get me wrong: I'm all about busting and beating on those who try to hoard power. I'd love to see a car bomb hit Skull and Bones, and I'd gladly contribute to an Internet hit pool on anyone who attended the Bilderberg conference. But we have to pick our targets carefully, and TED does not seem to deserve our indignation, at least not based on what I've read. My understanding is that it's relatively easy to get in if you have the $6000 (again, cheaper than college) and sign up early; it seems like it's difficult to enter because there's so much demand that the spots fill up early. Well? That's life.
Where I live, a bachelor's degree is about 15k (total), and is about learning engineering, physics or whatever you want to do. Going to TED twice won't give you quite the same skills...
Certainly college doesn't provide "nothing but networking", nor does going to TED. You learn a lot in the process, sure.
The reason American tuition is so high, however, especially at elite schools, is because a lot of Americans believe that attending the right college is a golden ticket of sorts.
I guess my point is that there's no sense in being indignant about $6000 to attend TED when Americans are willing to spend an additional $250k over the cost of attending a first-rate state university (including the prep high schools required for most people to have a decent chance at the most prestigious college) for the supposed networking advantages.
I'd be interesting in a few of the "many" examples you have of this type of talk you object you. If you wouldn't mind, please link to a few here. I haven't seen a single TED talk that fits the "corporate speaking circuit" test.