We Need to Talk About TED
bratton.info
bratton.info
First of all, as others mentioned, TEDx events are independently organized. There are over 3000 of them in the world and obviously quality varies greatly. Getting a TEDx license is pretty trivial and there is no real oversight on quality. Yet, there are some great videos out there.
Second, nobody pretends TED is an academic conference. I see a TED talk as the blurb on the back cover of a book. The speaker's job is to pique your interest in a topic during that 18 minutes. Pique it enough that you'll go on and research the topic in greater detail. Nobody expects to be a master in anything after sitting in a chair for 18 minutes. But if you've never thought about a problem, 18 minutes may push you to do it. And it's true some talks are mostly inspirational, with little informative value - we usually put a couple in the lineup as a breather.
Third, TED is about cross-pollination of ideas. You hear an idea in neuroscience and it inspires you to do something in CS. Happens all the time. You will not act on 99% of the information you learn (be it in news, books, internet, HN) anyways, but it does expand your horizons.
Lastly, TED's biggest value is in developing countries. If you live in NYC or SF, there are dozens of conferences you can attend every week. So the marginal benefit of going to a TED event is little. However, TED as a brand is really well known in developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe (like mine), inhabited by few, if any, world class innovators. In those countries, people do find TED really inspirational and often the local TEDx events are one of the very few decent conferences you can attend.
1: Switzerland
2: Sweden
3: United Kingdoms
4: Netherlands
5: USA
6: Finland
7: Hong Kong
8: Singapore
9: Denmark
10: Ireland
Source: http://knowledge.insead.edu/innovation/the-worlds-most-innov...
I always take these types of rating with a pinch of salt but it does give an indication.
Edit: I cannot English.
More than pinch... a dump-truck full perhaps.
This sort of list, backed by impressive-sounding acronymonic international agencies or well-known publications (even fairly respected outfits like The Economist pull this sort of stunt way too often) pops up regularly on all sorts of righteous-sounding topics ("Most Green City," that kind of thing). Typically they claim some sort of quantitative legitimacy but the results have little apparent connection with the real world.
The fundamental problem seems to be that such things are extremely hard to define, much less measure, and so being not really willing to do the really hard work of trying to find a definition that really works, the writers fall back to just using whatever measures they can find that are easy to evaluate and have some sort of vaguely appropriate name. As you'd expect, the results are consequently barely better than random.
There's little real repercussion, the winners crow a bit, some pompous headlines are written, buzzwords are sprinkled liberally, and nobody else really cares.
A quick glance suggests that their framework is quite detailed but I do not know how well it reflects reality. (p. 30 in the report)
Your comment would be much better if you actually had anything to back up your claims. What supports your statement that these reports are no better than random?
Report: http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/freepublications/en/eco...
I don't think the quantity of conferences and scientific / academic output are really good indicators of innovation.
I think he is just applying Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap), and then and then the law of large numbers to conclude that the average video is crappy.
By the way, TED never expected TEDx to grow this big, so there is little strategy in what's been happening so far. There are I think 6 or 7 TED staff responsible for the whole TEDx program, with its 3000+ events.
Worse, if TED inspires people to get involved with pseudoscience causes, then it's actively harmful to it's own purpose.
The stark reality is that you cannot possibly continue to generate new amazing videos about the latest breakthroughs year after year, conference after conference. There just isn't enough content.
There just aren't enough breakthroughs, aren't enough new amazing things. Sooner or later you'll run out ...and then you turn into google-X; tech startups pitching their ideas, and the odd art/performance piece thrown in.
This is not necessarily true. Some like Ray Kurzweil argue the rate of innovation is increasing. Others like Peter Thiel believe the rate of true innovation is decreasing. But hardly a settled question.
The one caveat is that by extending their brand, they are giving fuel to their detractors. If you say, "Well anyone can get a TEDx license," then you are admitting to brand dilution. (The same way high end car companies dilute their brands with low end models)
It's YouTube for conferences.
TED Global 2014 will be hosted in Rio, Brazil, at US$6,000 per person. This is 4 months of a local mid-level web developer salary before taxes [1]
Locals cannot afford to attend TED. TED is made by the elite, for the elite, with the occasional feel-good-save-the-planet token NGO from Africa.
And so much for their "scientific" approach, given that they hate when a contrarian challenges them. Case in point: Sarah Silverman. [2]
Here is a true grassroots and inclusive event for the developing world: Campus Party [3]
[1] http://www.profissionaisti.com.br/2011/02/qual-o-salario-med...
After the first couple of ones that were public and on the internet, the usual self-promoting psychobabble-spouting androids moved in and now it's entirely worthless. Someone spins 30 seconds worth of insight out for half an hour, and you still somehow feel stupider when you've finished watching it.
In one of the recent Gladwell threads, someone on here coined the phrase "insight porn". TED is basically insight dogging.
EDIT: to be fair, if TED is insight dogging, this place is a sticky floored insight dungeon in some godforsaken soho basement...
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_...
"Filmed Jul 2005"
Back in the day when TED's internet presence was pretty new and Google Reader still was alive and kicking and had a social sharing aspect (remember those golden years?), almost all of the TED talks were shared and debated heavily among my friends. Then we started sharing less and less of them, to the point were one friend shared a talk saying "finally, a good one again" and we all chimed in on how it got too popular and big for it's own good.
Shirky was one of the original thought leaders of the social Internet. The value of his talk isn't that it's on TED. It's that it's Clay Shirky.
The added value of TED was that I got introduced to all kinds of thought leaders that I never heard of before.
http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_full_on_animal_movement.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEZrAGdZ1i8
Notice that I still picked a heartwarming personal story for the second one. See how different it is in delivery and intent to the heartwarming personal stories you get on there today.
Let me reiterate: I don't care about the audience - they don't affect me. It's the type of speaker which is attracted by the new, larger demographic that I don't like. The talks aren't written for the room any more, they're written for youtube, and by extension, the speaker's resume and lifetime earning potential. Compare the speakers' eyelines in those talks vs the new ones.
The OP itself is as good example of a "self-promoting psychobabble-spouting android" as it gets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
(There are more if you want to find them, I didn't want to pollute commentspace with too many links)
[1] The Onion is a satire newspaper, one of the first newspapers to heavily adopt an online format. They just killed their print edition for good last year.
Minor nit - only because it's so recent. They just killed their print edition for good last week. Thursday, to be exact. I know they dropped a bunch of cities last year though so maybe you're thinking of that.
The Onion originated online actually. The print edition was mostly an experiment.
[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11...
There's a repetition, a shallowness, a formulaic manipulation to evoke an emotional response, a smugness to the presenters, a greater smugness to the privileged attendees sitting there in the audience, grinning vacantly.
They trot an African kid out on stage who built something out of recycled parts, and everybody instantly connects to him, understands the plights of his existence, and shares in the celebration of his achievement. Then they drive back in their expensive cars to their expensive houses in the privileged enclaves of Los Angeles or San Francisco or wherever. They did their part.
I'm glad somebody's discussing it, but this talk is in many ways yet another TED talk. Identify a complex problem that can't possibly be tackled within the confines of the TED format; say non-controversial things as if they were controversial; name drop big issues (the negative aspects of drone warfare, consumer capitalism, NSA spying); provide a rushed, hand-wavey solution without an implementation; but leave the audience feeling like the veil has finally been lifted on this issue, and now they're on the precipice of positive change.
That was the one that turned me off to TED for good. It just felt awful to watch. Like watching Shamu chase the ball at SeaWorld. I could almost hear a "majestic and magnificent creature" VoiceOver. I couldn't even watch it all the way through.
> Part of my work explores deep technocultural shifts, from post-humanism to the post-anthropocene, but TED’s version has too much faith in technology, and not nearly enough commitment to technology. It is placebo technoradicalism, toying with risk so as to re-affirm the comfortable.
> The most recent centuries have seen extraordinary accomplishments in improving quality of life. The paradox is that the system we have now --whatever you want to call it-- is in the short term what makes the amazing new technologies possible, but in the long run it is also what suppresses their full flowering. Another economic architecture is prerequisite.
> The potential for these technologies are both wonderful and horrifying at the same time, and to make them serve good futures, design as "innovation” just isn’t a strong enough idea by itself. We need to talk more about design as “immunization,” actively preventing certain potential “innovations” that we do not want from happening.
I do think his assessment of "placebo technoradicalism, toying with risk so as to re-affirm the comfortable" was accurate and insightful, but only at TED's worst. To talk about how all this is so "harmful," etc., seems like an insight into the speaker's own self importance and 'thought leadership.' That being said, it comes with the territory for any TED talk. Really, what's the harm, is kind of my thinking.
It's a social event. Look at all the cool people! I want to be one too!
Nothing wrong with that. Just important to recognize it for what it is. I love watching some of those talks.
And yes, for a lot of folks that confuse tools and research with presentation skills, they're going to walk away with heads full of buzzword technobabble. But guess what? These folks weren't hitting on much to begin with. They've always just wanted to skim the surface and hang out with the smart kids. That's why these things have always been so popular.
EDIT: There is one thing that is very interesting that has developed: the elimination of the middle-man between science and populist bullshit. Used to be scientists were just concerned what what is, not what could be or what we should do about stuff. Not any more. Now scientists, as this author points out, are supposed to be entertainers. Everybody's their own little self-promotion machine. Extra points to figure out if this is good for science or not (it isn't).
The key difference between a traditional academic lecture and a TED talk is the audience. Here, the TED audience functions as a cultural sieve. Yes, a "dumbing down," relatively speaking, but then again, lay audiences are so by definition; academic lectures are attended by self-selected experts in a given field. TED audiences, on the other hand, are usually a collection of diverse specialists and semi-specialists from different fields, and thus may be considered a lay audience for all intents and purposes. Moreover, the internet audience is almost entirely a lay audience.
The benefit of TED is, as others have stated, the "cross-pollination" of ideas that one would likely not have exposure to in other ways. And, unfortunately, that implies a lay audience, with all that it entails.
So, yes, that implies showmanship. It implies humor. It implies oratory skills. Because that's how you reach a lay audience.
Good presentation has much in common with good leadership skills. Per Howard Gardner, there are 3 key points that many good public speakers and leaders possess (http://ecglink.com/library/ps/stories.html):
1. Having a central story 2. Fitting the story to the audience 3. Data is not enough.
This is something that speakers like Gladwell get.
It also means that academic lecturers need to up their game. And this gives them a model for what a lay audience wants.
I once had a lecturer who was very proud to tell his postgrads "real science is boring". Yes, it often is. And for those of us who can stomach boring, it's a paradise of intellectual nourishment.
But most people aren't like that. Most people need shiny things to guide them.
Is this fundamentally a good thing? Probably not. But we don't have the luxury of pre-screening an audience through self-selection, as is the case with most academic audiences. An academic may be absolutely brilliant, but if he/she can't connect with the lay audience, it does no good for the ideas he/she espouses.
Just view the TED talk by Marvin Minsky to see a good academic flounder in front of a lay audience. http://www.ted.com/talks/marvin_minsky_on_health_and_the_hum...
Take home point: yes, this is a dumbing down. Take it for what it is. Instead of complaining that audiences don't react to dry academic lectures, academics need to study people like Malcolm Gladwell to emulate his delivery and rhetorical style, without sacrificing their academic integrity. Easier said than done, but there are plenty of substantive talks on TED to suggest it is possible. If indeed the medium is the message, then academics lecturing to lay audiences need to get the message.
P.S. For those worried about TED's influence on academia, methinks it will be minimal. Academia is a very conservative endeavor, and whereas sales-pitch talks (like TED) may get sexed up, academic lectures to academic peers will continue in their wonderfully "boring" approach, for many years to come (and thank goodness for that). Why? Because academics will never cease to try to poke holes in others' ideas. Intellectual snark works in academia. It doesn't work with a lay audience. However, narrative does.
In other news, Zuckerberg and others launch a new $3 million Breakthrough Prize stating, "The Breakthrough Prize is our effort to put the spotlight on these amazing heroes. Their work in physics and genetics, cosmology, neurology and mathematics will change lives for generations and we are excited to celebrate them"
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2014-breakthrough-pr...
So... yeah we're already there in some sense for better or worse.
Actually, on the same model, they also could give 1000 $3000 prizes, that wouldn't make a very exciting press release, but I would posit it would do much more good, because it's much more likely to target someone that really needed a bit of positive reinforcement, rather than the guy that already received lots of award for an important discovery. And this is especially important in field were prizes are rare.
But now it feel like the equivalent of 7 guy/gals winning the lottery. I highly doubt it will change much in their research (if not negatively if they decide to retire) and they wont be able to invest it in other people's work, except with great difficulty or lack of agency. I fail to see where science is gaining much.
Well, it's my understanding that most prize money won by scientists are not reinvested in their research, meaning that it act more as a regular enterprise bonus than a kind of research grant. Is it false?
In that case, I think it was proven than passing a certain mark, the amount of money in a prize get diminishing returns quickly, thus the proposal that it's more interesting to give to a lots of scientists a small sum (not necessarily $3000, that was derived from the $3 million) than for a few a big one.
However, it's grant money, not prize money, that I get. I have no idea how on earth I could ever win a prize for math since I'm not in line for the Fields, Abel, or Alfried Krupp prize.
Wait ... you were not sarcastic? (Inverse poe law, here I come!)
> I have no idea how on earth I could ever win a prize for math since I'm not in line for the Fields, Abel, or Alfried Krupp prize.
There are no smaller prizes in mathematics? (I don't have any knowledge in that area)
They made a policy decision to work in the existing structure, not try something new. They seem fairly honest and serious about it. May not agree with their plan, but thats a different issue.
This is not a bug, this is an essential feature. This effectively generates matching funding, and thus multiplies the amount of money and effort spent on a problem.
It is hard to figure out which idea works best; some inevitably won't work out and result in a loss -- but in this case much of the loss is covered by outside investors (including those investing their own time), competing with each other for the prize.
Also, I would trust people putting their own money down more than a grant committee, and people in general tend to be far more efficient when trying to beat competition, not when working on a set project.
Also, a smart graduate student is likely to be better at producing research, not at writing grant applications. Let the results speak for themselves.
- convince a single person or small group knowledgeable in your field of study to invest in your research or fund it yourself
- convince a non-profit that your research will have social impact
- convince a corporation that your research will pay off
- convince a government body knowledgeable in your field of study that then invests tax money on behalf of the general public
- convince the general public to vote directly for your research with dollars
You can be sure that the type of research that gets done is going to be different with each of these. Certainly the last two are going to be widely different even though they are both pulling funding from people who generally understand little about the science they are funding.
And I'm not sure there is really such a big difference between (4) and (5) -- most of the time when we actually see general public funding science directly in any appreciable amount, it's done through some form of a private foundation that is not very different from a "government body knowledgeable in your field" in how it operates.
I have a friend who teaches middle school Biology, and his students (in his words) "light up" whenever they watch a great TED talk about the similarities between chickens and dinosaurs or the way a gecko can swim through the air while falling based on something way up it's evolutionary tree. I think science-driven TED talks fill a great purpose in inspiring people that may not (yet) be scientifically minded.
Perhaps it isn't as bad as Bratton believes it is, because I can still show a good TED talk to my non-techy mother or father and blow their minds. My father is a deep thinker, but just doesn't come across deep or novel ideas very often in daily life. He is a football coach, so he just doesn't get a lot of that between dealing with kid problems and trying to win. TED has been wonderful for delivering him a nice, distilled idea to think about.
If nothing else, TED gives the general populace a starting point for the state of high-level research and a chance to think about something other than their mortgage or drama on twitter. And it does so in a manner that can be highly entertaining. It is sadly surprising how many people live a whole day, a whole month or a whole year without being inspired by anything at all. Anything that can inspire the public positively should be protected, refined and celebrated.
I do not believe this is clear when you consider the phenomenon of pseudoscience being presented under the TED brand as "TEDx".
Blatantly mindless entertainment like the Jersey Shore does not sell itself as mentally nutritious, and as such, it does not satiate any sort of intellectual curiosity. Watching it only burns time, which is not intrinsically problematic.
TED on the other hand sells itself as educational, or at least edutainment. It satiates intellectual curiosity without providing any real mental nutrition. It leaves you feeling as though you have just learned something, as though you have just gained some sort of profound insight, but that sensation is empty.
i take issue with that. You're saying that it's better to do /absolutely nothing/ with your time then stimulate intellectual thought, even if it's just surface? If you're not getting people interested in the pursuit of solving problems, then you're never going to have any problem solvers.
I have noticed that the local PBS station runs a bunch of program in the evenings that are very much like TED talks. Most of them are doctors talking about health and nutrition.
If you look at TED as a new form of TV channel that runs on Internet TV (rather than broadcast TV), then it makes more sense.
That's setting the bar pretty low.
Contrarians are seldom wrong because in essence, lots of shit kind of sucks.
It is easy to find the ways in which a thing sucks, specifically after a good deal of exposure.
That's seldom all there is to it though.
Often there are very good and enjoyable aspects to things that also happen to suck in other ways.
So I figure you did enjoy those talks and your also seeing a side to them that could be considered as sucking in some aspects.
(I mention my continuing personal dislike because it means I have been a third-party observer of the TED phenomenon for many years now- my vantage point has been distant and generally not changed)
In other words, it seems we don't really know how to make innovation happen at wish. It works better in the universities in the undergraduate studies, where over months people genuinely interested in same intellectual pursuits have a chance to meet and get to know each other thanks to the wide range of classes and activities and people involved. They also get to share a common background, so they can understand each others work and their potential relations, a lot of important scientific work happened in "schools" which started with some figure great either at science and/or at organizing science, and which spanned several generations. So it's a slow process, it happens over years and takes sustained dedication of a large group of people, how would someone expect to contribute to this significantly via a one day event? Conferences are mainly social events in my view, and there is nothing wrong with that.
And then there is the general question how much influence do so-called "intellectuals" have in the world, as compared to the Napoleons and Alexanders.
There's a place in our culture for real science that is easy to understand, presented by people who know how to present. We need something non-scholarly to keep people interested in science and technology.
That said, we've had a lot of TED talks (especially at TEDx) that are simply sales pitches, fantasy, or completely false. There's a problem here that needs to be fixed. Keep the accessibility and the inspiration, but lose the factual errors and lack of fact by mandating vetting by qualified actual experts.
"Real science that is easy to understand" tends to be shallow and hard to distinguish from sales pitches, fantasy, and lies.
Not to another scientific expert. This is why I mentioned proper vetting.
I think that's the entire point: TED is entertainment, not some serious forum for change. It's bad when it pretends to be that forum, but as a substitute for TV it is fantastic!
I've lost count of how many times someone has complained about an overly political, low quality talk and seen someone else come along and try to explain that it wasn't a real TED talk because it was a TEDx talk. Except on Hacker News, that person is usually just ignored. TEDx is substantially diluting the TED brand. Growth of TEDx has been far too fast and reckless.
1. People who watch TED and TEDx are quite intelligent.
2. There are no TEDx videos on ted.com, only on subdomain http://tedxtalks.ted.com.
3. Every TEDx video has this disclaimer: This video was filmed at an independently organized TEDx event and uploaded by the organizer. To flag a video (good or bad!), use this form.
So yeah, this was a gross exaggeration.
That's what they like to think, yes.
If you're talking about acolytes who watch large numbers of TED talks then yes, most of them very likely know the difference. Many have probably even attended TEDx events. But TED talks have spread to far more casual audiences-- people who share merely share the links on twitter and facebook and have probably watched less than 10 talks in their life.
> 2. There are no TEDx videos on ted.com, only on subdomain http://tedxtalks.ted.com.
When I visit that link, I see the large TED logo in the upper left corner (with no 'x' by it). While it doesn't have the flashy video cloud thing that the main page does, the theme is identical. Additionally, I do not need to visit the site to watch the talk, TEDx talks are mostly on YouTube. This talk does not even have the splash page: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDpuJXgD7Rs
Sure it says "TEDx" but how is a casual viewer supposed to know what that means? How much effort am I really going to devote to the implications of the phrase "independently organized TED event" if I'm inclined to care at all?
> 3. Every TEDx video has this disclaimer: This video was filmed at an independently organized TEDx event and uploaded by the organizer. To flag a video (good or bad!), use this form.
I'll admit, I did not notice that disclaimer without you pointing it out. I'm not sure why, the font is large enough. Maybe it's the light gray text.
> So yeah, this was a gross exaggeration.
Nobody cares.
Also, hard science isn't all that comes out of TED (see the "E" and "D" in "TED")
"So much potential and enthusiasm, and so little actual change. Are the ideas wrong? Or is the idea about what ideas can do all by themselves wrong?"
I believe that the world is better with both TED and HN, but they really could be so much better. How to take them to the next level?
Most people don't have the stamina, and there's so many possibilities (how do you pick the "right" one?) and never enough time (between family, day job, etc, etc).
Both exhibit the same moment of 'insight' that people crave. It's like the 'idea' alone is the objective and now everyone can go home.
We lack a mobilizing 'do' component in this flow of peoples attention - what that is I dunno - a TedDone conference? In councils it was 'right - so, everyone back to work'.
Now the people that do have time and resources to be able to afford the ticket to TED, they're not doers. Otherwise they'd be busy "doing." I know this is contrary to how TED presents itself, but when was the last time something meaningful resulted from a TED conference?
TED is a zoo of ideas for the great unwashed masses to filter by, to gawk at, then to go home and forget at the end of the day.
-- From the article:
T and Technology
T - E - D. I’ll go through them each quickly.
So first Technology...
We hear that not only is change accelerating but that the pace of change is accelerating as well. While this is true of computational carrying-capacity at a planetary level, at the same time --and in fact the two are connected-- we are also in a moment of cultural de-acceleration.
We invest our energy in futuristic information technologies, including our cars, but drive them home to kitsch architecture copied from the 18th century. The future on offer is one in which everything changes, so long as everything stays the same. We'll have Google Glass, but still also business casual.
This timidity is our path to the future? No, this is incredibly conservative, and there is no reason to think that more Gigaflops will inoculate us.
Because, if a problem is in fact endemic to a system, then the exponential effects of Moore’s Law also serve to amplify what’s broken. It is more computation along the wrong curve, and I don't it is necessarily a triumph of reason.
Part of my work explores deep technocultural shifts, from post-humanism to the post-anthropocene, but TED’s version has too much faith in technology, and not nearly enough commitment to technology. It is placebo technoradicalism, toying with risk so as to re-affirm the comfortable.
So our machines get smarter and we get stupider. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Both can be much more intelligent. Another futurism is possible.
As for " middlebrow megachurch infotainment." – just trolling for eyeballs.
As we often discuss when it comes to (software and technology) patents, there are oceans separating conceiving an idea and turning that idea into something real.
So I have no idea what the author is talking about.
And yet the original 2007 Gapminder talk[1] still surprised and educates people today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHK_r9RXTc
Hard to imagine how anyone could follow up after this.
But ... there is a lot of good stuff on TED too like Bruce Schneier's talks.
What do we see? We see lot of words, a lot of conclusions with no logical basis. Example: "The most recent centuries have seen extraordinary accomplishments in improving quality of life. The paradox is that the system we have now --whatever you want to call it-- is in the short term what makes the amazing new technologies possible, but in the long run it is also what suppresses their full flowering. Another economic architecture is prerequisite." -- what does he mean by "full flowering"? How does the current system suppress it? What does this have to do with economic architecture? -- of course there are no answers. Such speeches are never designed to produce anything of value, just to please people who already think in vaguely similar ways.
The only thing that scared me about TED is Eddie Huang's experience in this video about how enforcing they are in spreading their ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hwLMBdnbXk . Which does kind of make me see, oh obviously there's something manipulative about their schemes in some way.
But anyways, I haven't looked into TED that much other than watching a few of their videos and reading their about page.
It is a shame really, because some people who present at TED have really useful and important things to say. Perhaps we will see a startup enter the space to comp.ete with TED and as part of their business model they will checkout the speakers and the content of their talks, only approving the ones that are not charlatans. Seems to me that this is the key problem to be solved, not just creating another brand umbrella for public lectures.
1) "We invest our energy in futuristic information technologies, including our cars, but drive them home to kitsch architecture copied from the 18th century. The future on offer is one in which everything changes, so long as everything stays the same. We'll have Google Glass, but still also business casual."
I recently wrote a post about this phenomenon, which I'll share here: http://www.opir-music.com/blog/culture/is-everyone-naked-in-..., but the basic idea is summed up by Fran Leibowitz: "I have a number of theories but one theory is that we live in the era of such innovation in technology,” Lewbowitz said. “It’s almost like we can’t do two things at once. If science or technology is going to be racing ahead, then the society is stuck. Also, I think it’s a way for people of my age to stay in the center of things." That itself, of course, is a just-so story. What's important here is the observation. I'd also argue that we've enabled something never before possible to happen, which keeps certain things "in the past" (like music): mass intergenerational cultural transfer. What keeps the Beatles on top of music lists of people of all ages? What causes old songs to suddenly pop up as hits, decades after their release because of a YouTube video? It's this effect which seems to cause a large chunk of popular culture firmly set in past eras. We move things at the margin, yes, and yes, we have always borrowed from the past. However, it has never before been so easy for so many to listen and look at the things past generations have created and at such scale. Since "known cultural entities" often serve mainly as a kind of touchpoint between different people, the utility of these well-known icons in the social sphere is very valuable. You can "connect" with others across generations very easily. This isn't good or bad, but I think aptly describes a very different cultural landscape than ones in the past.
2) "It’s easy to get enthusiastic about design because, like talking about the future, it is more polite than referring to white elephants in the room.."
This is the sad realization that many (ex-)activists, technologists, and other ardent idealists often come to. It's easier to deal in the uncontroversial, the platitude-ridden, and the simplistic for a number of reasons. First, exclusion - if you add in the depth, the complexity, the nuance, the difficulty - you risk alienating those that are not knowledgeable enough to contribute. Sure, some are eager to learn, and others are eager to teach, but this means lots of time spent on getting people to a baseline rather than progressing. The second thing is plain conflict - often by nominal (and erstwhile) allies. The narcissism of small differences, loudmouths with a chip on their shoulder, and plain old confused angry people serve to stoke the fires of internecine warfare. I've seen it over and over in technology circles (where it can be ugly), and also in social justice "communities" (which are sometimes a nightmarescape of identity politics-based hatred) that I've been a part of. The experienced and the jaded look at this and either exit, or stick to the milquetoast. Neither helps progress anything.
3) "The most recent centuries have seen extraordinary accomplishments in improving quality of life. The paradox is that the system we have now --whatever you want to call it-- is in the short term what makes the amazing new technologies possible, but in the long run it is also what suppresses their full flowering. Another economic architecture is prerequisite."
Although usually applied to culture, I think the idea posited by Paul Treanor applies here as well:
"What already sells well, becomes more marketable. This is a general characteristic of all liberal social structures, not just the market. Repeated transactions and interactions, on the basis of the outcome of previous transactions and interactions, have a centering effect. Deviations from the norm are 'punished' by such regimes, and innovation is by definition a deviation from the existing norm."
That same "centering" effect on culture seems like it may also affect non-cultural entities. What drives things forward may also drive them back - a forced regression to the mean.
One that inspired me recently: "How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries - Adam Savage" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8UFGu2M2gM
TED talks should be taken at face value. They don't necessarily represent the greatest thing in the world. People attach that themselves and should be blamed themselves. We ought to be grateful for the forum. Yes, it's not perfect and 80% is crap, but it doesn't preclude anyone else from communicating in other forums, either!
I know one TEDx event that asked a top ten website cofounder to apply as a speaker and then rejected him.
I attended the cofounder's talk at a top university renowned for innovation, and it was awesome.
I also attended the TEDx event this cofounder was rejected from, and it was horrible.
We left after a couple hours, uninspired and none the wiser.
Here's a time and money-saving tip: Go on Quora.
Well, OK then, there exists one solution in the problem space the author doesn't like. How bout listing one that might actually work? Go look at astrobites and figure out a way to turn that into AV speeches.
Some rich dude should host a con of astrobites level presentations.
mirror, please?
What an idiosynchratic point of view
I'm sure this isn't the intention of TED, but the purpose of this upper-middle-class boosterism seems to be deeply conservative in nature. It re-emerges every time there's enough wealth to let the 4.9% (as opposed to the 95% doomed to stagnation and the 0.1% taking everything) gain a little make-believe ground (that's chewed up by rising house prices, increasing income insecurity especially late in one's career, and education costs). "You should be proud; you get to clean the upstairs bathroom instead of working in the fields."
It's not TED's fault. The format of an 18-minute talk is a good one for a large number of purposes. The problem is that any time rich people and smart people get together, the smart people are always very willing (as a group; there are exceptions) to become the proud little house slaves just to enjoy that fleeting sense of having arrived due to the phony proximity to the true owners of this world who are running it into the ground. So most of them soften up and start spouting "status-quo-plus-plus" as soon as a few people in the true upper class start tossing them small favors. You see a lot of this in the "tech" world, especially in the VC-funded incarnation of the Valley. It's sad. We were supposed to be different.
Thanks to PG's rankban (I say things he dislikes, so my comments get a personal penalty in placement) this comment will probably be in the middle-bottom (if not absolute bottom) of the page no matter how much you upvote it.
Anyway, there it is.
do you have any evidence for this? because your whole post sounds a little paranoid - not just the last paragraph. In fact a lot of your recent posts seem to have taken this kind of tone. I don't mention this out of spite, but out of concern. I hope you're ok.
Yes. I didn't talk about it until I confirmed it. Someone who knows a lot of people in the YC-sphere also confirmed.
Karma scores of others' posts don't appear here, but they are available (on old posts) using https://www.hnsearch.com/ .
If you look at your placement of an old post (> 3 months) and find yourself at/near the bottom but have the highest-rated comment, then you're on rankban (rankban seems to apply to threads that originated before it was applied).
You can also check for slowban empirically by comparing latency while logged in to what you get in Incognito mode.
At first I was furious about it, that I'd wasted so much time into comments that would almost always float to the bottom (when I used to have a ~50% top comment rate, that went to zero). Now I'm more flattered by it: it means that PG is trying to censor what I say-- that my comments are important enough to merit a personal rankban.
I also have good reasons to believe that PG is making the decision because he's been pressured by others in the VC world. I don't know that they specifically mentioned me (or even know who I am, for that matter) but he's definitely been told to "do something" about the formerly prominent anti-VC posts that tend to do well here (excluding rankban).
> I say things [PG] dislikes...
You seem to frequently and loudly say a lot of things about Google that many current and past Googlers consider to be misguided and largely incorrect. For a very long while it seemed that you were posting these statements on pretty much every Google-related article that made it to the front page. I suspect that your comments would get massively up-voted because:
1) Your writing style is strident and self-assured. Someone who writes so confidently is highly likely to be correct!
2) You're speaking poorly of an SV darling. Contrary opinions must be heard!
Time and time again, your comments became the dominating thread of discussion, even if (as was very frequently the case) they had nothing to do with the issues raised in the article that they were attached to. This distressed me and others, and was made even more distressing by your tendency to speak about one of only a very few topics. The first time I saw your complaint about Google's promotion system attached to an article about the tech behind "Google's" self driving cars, I was sympathetic. The fifth time, however...
I argue that if the ability for your comments to become top-placed comments has been restricted, it's not because you've said things that PG doesn't like. It's because you've seriously derailed productive, on-topic conversation in numerous threads by repeating pretty much the same largely-off-topic complaints about a former employer that you had several bad experiences with.
I'm a strong proponent of free speech, but I also strongly support efforts to encourage meaningful, on-topic discussion.
You make what would be a strong case if there weren't data, but I have the data from 3 years of posts (with-- again, I'll admit to this-- a wide range in terms of quality). Downvoting works and is democratic. Rankban isn't needed.
Also, I've heard that I'm not the only one put on rankban for criticizing VC.
The folks who run MetaFilter, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot, and any number of other large public forums would likely disagree with you. It seems that globs of angsty folks who up-vote off-topic vitriol (and down-vote things that they just don't like!) tend to occur in any open-access forum that becomes sufficiently popular.
Democracy is a sub-optimal tool for promoting productive, on-topic discussion in popular public-access forums. Look at the pile of largely useless babble that is Slashdot or Youtube comments, or comments on articles attached to the Reddit frontpage for supporting evidence. Hell, even when it was small, MetaFilter understood the serious need for human moderators to help keep discussions civil and on track.
> ...I've heard that I'm not the only one put on rankban for criticizing VC.
I didn't and don't expect you to be swayed by my claims. You appear to be a person with very strongly held opinions. For the benefit of others, I'll summarize my previous post succinctly.
For a several month period at some point in the not-too-distant past, I could guarantee three things:
1) For any randomly selected story that had something to do with Google that was still on the front page in the afternoon, a comment of yours would be one of the top four comments.
2) Your comment would have little to nothing to say about the article it was attached to (unless that article was about some management technique), and lots to say about what you felt was wrong at Google during your (allegedly) brief tenure at the company.
3) The volume of heated discussion attached to your comment would dwarf the discussion (either off-topic or on) in any other thread.