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Is there some alternate Wikipedia out there that's not a bureaucratic, inefficient, often self-destructive mess?

If I drew anything from Wikipedia, I'd draw the conclusion that this sort of 'non-political' technological organization becomes intensely political, with most decisions made through behind-the-scenes rules-related politicking by the people with the most time to burn.

Horrifying, because the people with the most time to burn on any particular issue are usually the extremists. I can't imagine the distopia that'd result if things like zoning laws or environmental regulations were decided by the same process.

I can't imagine the distopia that'd result if things like zoning laws or environmental regulations were decided by the same process.

You have a brutally dry sense of humor.

Thank you. I like to post where it's appreciated.

Yes, of course Wikipedia is often bureaucratic, inefficient, and self-destructive. I wouldn't recommend putting a lot of time into it. But sometimes it's pretty efficient: some edits are simply accepted.

Why on Earth would TED publish this garbage then? TED is at its best when it's concrete ("here's what I've done") or rigorously descriptive ("here are the statistics"). When it starts getting speculative or political (e.g. "here's how to fix education") it's ridiculous.

"Singularity may rid us of death, but it won’t abolish backscratching."

Wikipedia ,which is basically composed of many small non-connected parts. But a project like python where the parts are more dependent on one another do need a leader and some hierarchy.

And self organization is at the basis of market capitalism. So TED do seem like the same old political agenda packaged with a bit of techno-optimism.

tangential question: what's the difference between "I believe there are no gods" and "I do not believe in gods"? Aren't you, in both cases, saying that the world, as you believe it exists, contains no X where X is a god? I think atheism is still a belief, even if you stick a "not" in front of "believe". (then it just seems like it isn't a belief, as an artifact of English syntax).

I think the second version "I do not believe in gods" is more like agnosticism than atheism. The law of the excluded middle does not necessarily apply to the statement "there is a god". You might consider it unknown or undecidable.

I disagree strongly with most of the points you make.

I don't think this is a case of sour grapes... and if it is, so what? Because the argument made is entirely reasonable and well done. Whether you agree or not, it is an important view point that has to be aired more often. I personally agree with the author's premise and I think your view that TED doesn't have a political agenda is naive in the extreme.

I think the argument is neither reasonably made nor well done. It reads like a laundry list of gripes the author has, like "oh yeah, and one more thing, and look at this word, and what a fool this guy is, and one more, and and and" but with some nice verbage.

What he doesn't get to the heart of is, aside from the fact that the book may not be very good (which I can easily accept), why the central systems-and-data-driven plank that comprises much of TED-esque thinking is bad.

To take one example, he seems to find the whole notion of a hybrid age, or the singularity, as dangerous technocratic political thinking, something to be stamped out. Whereas look at the actual smart-device search-engine semantic-social world we're creeping toward and the post-political person understands that those are just inevitable outcomes. It's not whether the singularity might happen (or could be prevented) but when, and so the forward-looking thinking person should be trying to figure out the best uses of that.

He's also missed the pointed examples of Signapore and China by a country mile, mistaking older ideological associations (which, again, every forward-thinking person understands need to be resolved) for the efficiency argument. The reviewer's point is that efficiency leads to brutality, which is a very old-school political idea, but the TED-esque view generally looks for efficiency to promote/empower humanity.

Again, like Wikipedia, both more efficient and much better (but let's instead get distracted by talking about Jimmy Wales and how he named his children).

So, you know, like that. Morozov seems to want to make a middle-20th century argument about early 21st-century ideas, and it shows. He writes passably well (though this review could have been cut in half with no loss imo), but the core conceit (this TED stuff is techno-politics) is just fundamentally wrong.

There is no way we are going to agree on much in this domain. I just so strongly disagree, it is painful to me!

Consider your 'post-political person'. I believe this is a conceit. In my opinion no such person exists.

Are you seriously arguing that politicians will soon be a thing of the past? That, in essence, is the conclusion you must reach. A little further down the line, I expect the Singularity will happen as well, yet I have a sneaky suspicion the first to get there will execute the ultimate political act which will be to deny access to the several billion people that weren't part of their cohort.

-Supplemental-

Since we don't really know how the Singularity will express itself, 'get there' should be read as 'to contact', 'integrate with' etc

That ideas are not recent is not an argument that they are wrong, it's just an excuse to be historically illiterate yet still claim credibility.

>To take one example, he seems to find the whole notion of a hybrid age, or the singularity, as dangerous technocratic political thinking, something to be stamped out.

No, he finds the idea of a immanent techno-millennium ancient, familiar to most culturally literate people, and articulated more convincingly (or rather more coherently) by people a century ago who were also wrong. He argues that the "hybrid age" is a vacuous restating of a basic condition of man that is not only older than Twitter, but older than books. He argues that the rewarming of these old ideas masks personal agendas of the traditional sort, namely the accumulation of wealth and status by serving the traditional players in their traditional totalitarian political agendas.

You may not agree, but you also are not disagreeing coherently. At least until you can define to your audience what "semantic-social" and "post-political" mean before you use them in an argument.

>The thing about TED is, wild-eyed though it may be, it's not a political agenda.

Actually it very very much reeks of political agenda from miles away.

There are few things more political (in that they have very specific political consequences) than denouncing politics and trying to present yourself or your activities as apolitical.

Presenting technology as beyond or above politics is even worse.

>If you are used to seeing life through a political lens (as we might hazard the New Republic does) then TED looks like an agenda by a different name.

Politics is the ideas behind our actions: what we want our actions to achieve and how we want to shape the future.

So you cannot escape politics, it's not merely "seeing things through a political lens". Things are inherently political.

It would be like saying we should not see things through a "reality lens". Reality is inescapable.