We Need to Talk About TED

http://www.bratton.info/projects/talks/we-need-to-talk-about-ted/

by TimSAstro • 13 years ago

415 184 13 years ago

JonnieCache2• 13 years ago

There was a time when TED talks were mostly academics squeezing their usual hour long presentation into 20 minutes by simply talking really really fast. Those were fun.

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...

vanderZwan4• 13 years ago

There is still the occasional gem where an actual scientist shares actual new insights (for those outside of his/her field) that are exciting and fascinating, and for a moment you feel like you're watching the old TED, but even that's not what made TED stand out for me at first. When I first watched the talk by Clay Shirky[1] giving really good arguments for why the internet already has changed and will change everything, it wasn't inspiring or just "insight porn", it was educational, and it ended with an open question for us to solve.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_...

rhizome• 13 years ago

There is still the occasional gem...

"Filmed Jul 2005"

saraid2163• 13 years ago

This is his original claim to fame, from 2003: http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enem...

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.

xerophtye2• 13 years ago

For me it was Sir Ken Robinson's talks. Those were thought provoking

josu• 13 years ago

A sunny and very cold Friday morning, while waiting for the bus, I overheard this conversation between two elderly women. They were talking about how the sky used to be bluer when they were younger and the cold used to feel better. They were arguing that the cold nowadays is too cold, and how the old cold used to be more forgiving.

JonnieCache2• 13 years ago

The difference being, we can travel back in time and see what TED was really like 5 years ago:

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.

cLeEOGPw• 13 years ago

I think both nostalgia and going mainstream contributed for the quality (at least seem) to go down.

xixi775• 13 years ago

Exactly. It's a near perfect example of brand dilution; the quality controls started slipping pretty fast, and TEDx just dropped the floor. You cannot maximize both content production and quality at the same time -- 99.9% of ideas out there are not really worth spreading.

The OP itself is as good example of a "self-promoting psychobabble-spouting android" as it gets.

po2• 13 years ago

I submit that Astrophysics run on the model of American Idol is a recipe for civilizational disaster.

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.

ama7294• 13 years ago

Prizes are also essentially worthless to promote science, people need money from the beginning to do science, if they don't, then there isn't going to be anything to receive the prize for.

tfgg2• 13 years ago

I think if they were serious about supporting science, they'd be giving out medium-sized early researcher grants (maybe £/$10k-100k), but then they'd actually have to think about who to fund and take on the high risk involved in science. This way they get to take credit by osmosis for important developments after the fact.

JumpCrisscross• 13 years ago

It would seem the X Prizes made it easier for research and development teams to raise money. Having a tangible $x million prize at the end broadens the field of potential sponsors.

streptomycin• 13 years ago

See also science crowdfunding like Microryza https://www.microryza.com/ current headline of the first research proposal shown: "How does a parasite create zombie-like behavior?" I guess it's a good time to be a researcher who is working on something where you can fit trendy internet words like "zombie" in the title.

xixi775• 13 years ago

Has it ever been different? As long as science depends on funding, and funding always has (and always will) come from people who know and understand little of science, so persuading them to part with their money, and to give it to your particular project, is quite an essential requirement -- although of course scientists are usually better off delegating that persuading to professionals.

po2• 13 years ago

I can think of a range of models for getting funding for research:

- 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.

gilgoomesh• 13 years ago

You should clarify that this is a TEDx conference (the 'x' is the important part). It's not really "TED" in the truest sense and is just a TED-like conference hosted by a third-party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)#TEDx

panacea• 13 years ago

I think his arguments apply to the mothership, just the same.

nailer2• 13 years ago

The quality of TEDx however should make TED think twice about licensing their brand:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbtl0Q81igc

Fat_Rat• 13 years ago

Let's not forget about vortex math!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oRnhrOf0r0‎

davidgerard3• 13 years ago

Nobody cares. If TED want to rent out the brand name, they get to keep both pieces of the resulting reputation.

Goladus5• 13 years ago

Additionally, I haven't noticed a substantial difference in the marketing or publishing of TEDx videos on the web. While obviously anything can go viral, one can usually only distinguish between TEDx talks and TED talks by reading the fine print.

vdaniuk6• 13 years ago

I do care about difference between TED and TEDx. So you are by definition of word 'nobody' is wrong.

wavefunction2• 13 years ago

I view the TED and TEDx talks as the same: "science-lite for people who want to be thought of as intellectuals."

simonrobb• 13 years ago

Or, you know, people who aren't trained in science but are interested in it when it's presented in a language they can understand.

Also, hard science isn't all that comes out of TED (see the "E" and "D" in "TED")

tfgg2• 13 years ago

I agreed with a lot of what the article said , but then the author seems to go full-TED-bullshit-buzzword towards the end with little evidence or citation and falls into the pseudo-intellectual knowledge-lite trap that he's criticising:

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.

spinchange• 13 years ago

It strikes me that a TED talk about TED talks being 'all talk' isn't incredibly substantive either. It's like the random comment or tweet referencing something only because the author says it isn't worth your time.

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.

stdbrouw• 13 years ago

There's some good points in the piece, but I can't help but think it's funny how everyone used to love TED... until "everyone" became a really big group and overnight TED became uncool and passé and insight porn. There's a fair bit of posturing and snobbishness going on here, too.

makomk2• 13 years ago

Not everyone loved TED. I've seen people pointing out that they're essentially selling the wealthy a way to feel good about themselves and spinning it as something world-changing for years.

rmrfrmrf• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure I was talking about how much I liked TED last month on HN. Now, suddenly, I'm re-evaluating whether or not I actually enjoyed those talks or if I just thought I enjoyed them.

mark_integerdsv• 13 years ago

There are many ways of seeing a thing.

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.

sliverstorm2• 13 years ago

As someone who has never liked TED (take my word for it, for a moment) I think there is an "emperor has no clothes" moment going on. As a critical bystander, it is my impression that the talks have been getting worse, and (as a result of TEDx) the brand has been getting more dilute. As it becomes more and more plain to see, people begin to realize.

(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)

sz4kerto• 13 years ago

I can't comment below the video, so I do it here: Thank you, Benjamin Bratton.

DanielBMarkham• 13 years ago

TED is the OMNI magazine of the 2010s: light, fluffy, shiny, sexy. Smile and nod; there's nothing of major important entering your mind today, except perhaps groupthink.

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).

unsui• 13 years ago

Let's play Devil's Advocate here, and possibly suggest that this may be a good thing. Bear with me on this...

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.

gsk• 13 years ago

This is very well said. Thank you for posting.

api4• 13 years ago

OMNI was a bit more adventurous than TED is today. It routinely delved into very weird topics like "psi" and such, but in a way that avoided being either fluffy-woo-woo or completely dismissive. I personally have a lot of respect for people who can talk intelligently about out-there possibilities. It's hard.

rwissmann• 13 years ago

Now that is the kind of article I come to HN for.

andr4• 13 years ago

Hi, organizer of one of Europe's largest TEDx events here.

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.

room271• 13 years ago

I'm surprised you describe Europe as lacking in world class innovators. There are loads of conferences in most of Europe and the scientific and academic output in general of European countries is incredibly high. The same is likely true for lots of Asia and Africa too, though I lack first hand knowledge.

andr4• 13 years ago

I meant some countries, mostly in Eastern Europe.

pathy2• 13 years ago

To strengthen your point: INSEAD's "The World’s Most Innovative Countries: The Global Innovation Index 2013":

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.

SkyMarshal2• 13 years ago

He said "developing countries" in Europe. Former soviet bloc namely.

notdang• 13 years ago

Europe is not just European Union. There are a lot more countries.

crazy1van• 13 years ago

I'm surprised you describe Europe as lacking in world class innovators. There are loads of conferences in most of Europe and the scientific and academic output in general of European countries is incredibly high.

I don't think the quantity of conferences and scientific / academic output are really good indicators of innovation.

krutulis2• 13 years ago

As the number of conferences and speakers grows, are you concerned that the Law of Large Numbers will exact its toll and make the sample of speakers more typical of the population as a whole? Inviting the flashiest of SF and NYC to speak is quite a builtin selection bias, but there seems to be no apparent strategy for preserving the distinctiveness of speakers as TEDx scales.

huherto• 13 years ago

I am not a mathematician, but I think the law of large numbers is not applied like that.

andr4• 13 years ago

Yes, the average quality will probably fall, but the total amount of "good" talks will vastly increase. As with any popular content platform. A problem yet to be solved is how to highlight the better talks, because the current approach of featuring a talk a day on TED.com doesn't scale.

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.

shadowmint• 13 years ago

It depends entirely on the content; if there's no meaningful content, the entire point is, as you've pointed out, a waste.

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.

andr4• 13 years ago

"Everything has already been invented." Less than 1500 people have spoken at TED over the last 28 years, so I think it's a bit early to say we've ran out of people with stuff to say. Plus, TEDx events give stage to topics of local importance, too.

SkyMarshal2• 13 years ago

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.

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.

mathattack• 13 years ago

Great defense of TED. It's not a MOOC, and it's not a book, and it's not a documentary.

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)

Spooky23• 13 years ago

I think that dilution is magnified because the lower quality TEDx conferences attract local high noise/low signal speakers, and gives them a veneer of credibility to new/uncritical eyes.

saraid2163• 13 years ago

It's not a MOOC, and it's not a book, and it's not a documentary.

It's YouTube for conferences.

felipe• 13 years ago

Lastly, TED's biggest value is in developing countries.

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...

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci5p1OdVLAc

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_Party

new299• 13 years ago

2070 Paradigm shift sums up Ted pretty well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yFhR1fKWG0#t=30

binocarlos• 13 years ago

TED is brilliant - I've sat there many times and said 'wow' after the talk. I've also worked for a lot of councils and education authorities in the UK and sat in on some evangelical 'how to improve kids education' meetings.

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'.

wavefunction2• 13 years ago

The "doers" are already "doing," they don't need any encouragement. In fact, they're so busy "doing" they don't have time to waste on TED talks. They're not going to gain anything by going to a TED talk.

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.

kaiwen1• 13 years ago

I think he (and others here) are being too hard on TED. TED is not a forum for research or a focused campaign for change. It's a forum for 15 min talks. It's an educated sort of entertainment where some interesting ideas get shared. The author claims to have something better in mind. I hope he builds it. I'll sign up. Until then, when I want to unwind, I'll watch a little TED instead of Breaking Bad.

makomk2• 13 years ago

Here's what TED have to say about themselves on their website: "We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. So we're building a clearinghouse of free knowledge from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other."

mcv• 13 years ago

I'll watch a little TED instead of Breaking Bad.

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!

melling• 13 years ago

This is exactly how I feel about HN:

"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?

npsimons• 13 years ago

Ideas, potential and enthusiasm are easy; sticking with something, especially something untested/untried, especially something that may fail, now that's hard.

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).

VLM2• 13 years ago

"I submit that Astrophysics run on the model of American Idol is a recipe for civilizational disaster."

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.

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

I'd go further than "middlebrow megachurch infotainment". I'd say, "high-IQ house-slaves".

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.

phpnode• 13 years ago

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.

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.

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

do you have any evidence for this?

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.

craigyk2• 13 years ago

There's some truth to this... but even if true, things could be a lot worse than having the uber wealthy become patrons of smart people. I suppose the danger comes from the smart people realizing that it's a lot easier to gather kudos for putting together good talks than from doing actual quality R&D. Then again, it's been the case for a long time that PIs are really spokesmen for their groups, and are usually quite abstracted away and have less input into day to day research. I say as long as TED helps spread ideas across fields, and inspires rich people enough to fork over $$$, it's all OK.

simoncion2• 13 years ago

Momentary derail:

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.

michaelochurch4• 13 years ago

You're wrong. People downvote the off-topic and obnoxious comments. I've been posting here for 3 years. Off-topic negativity (and I've made some boneheaded comments, I'll admit) gets exactly what it deserves: downvoted to shit.

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.

elsurudo2• 13 years ago

Well, I liked your comment, and didn't get what you were talking about with the rankban until I read your username. That "rankban" you mention, that's a pretty shitty thing to have in a forum that is supposed to be about ideas.

pulmo• 13 years ago

TED sometimes seems to me like a collection of sales pitches for books that take four to ten scientific papers about a topic and go on and on ... and on about it. I liked this kind of book but now I give up on them after one or two chapters and read about the main ideas on Wikipedia.

But ... there is a lot of good stuff on TED too like Bruce Schneier's talks.

grimaceindex• 13 years ago

A TED talk that complains about TED talks and even uses the tidy acronym TED within the talk? Thou hypocrite! First cast out the beam from thine own eye; and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote from thy brother's eye.

robertjwebb2• 13 years ago

Thank you for making this talk.

jimmytidey• 13 years ago

Nothing as popular as TED could be any good.

simonsarris• 13 years ago

If you haven't seen The Onion's[1] Onion Talks and want a good satirical criticism of TED, I highly recommend them:

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.

chaghalibaghali• 13 years ago

Sam Hyde's 2070 Paradigm Shift is also a great parody (delivered at an actual TEDx event) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yFhR1fKWG0

AndrewBissell• 13 years ago

We looked at the data. WE LOOKED AT THE DATA.

kgermino• 13 years ago

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.

mcintyre1994• 13 years ago

Ha! This one feels relevant :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o

Houshalter• 13 years ago

That was made last year? Wow. That's surprisingly prescient.

nether• 13 years ago

[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.

The Onion originated online actually. The print edition was mostly an experiment.

mbrubeck• 13 years ago

The Onion has been in print since 1988, and wasn't online until 1996. Source: The Washington Post [1].

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11...

soitsmutiny• 13 years ago

Looks like someone's launched a TED Offensive.

dm2• 13 years ago

There are definitely still great talks being produced. There are a lot of not so great ones, but maybe the solution to that would be better website that sorts and allows for ratings of TED videos. Kind of like a porn website but with only TED videos.

One that inspired me recently: "How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries - Adam Savage" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8UFGu2M2gM

nl• 13 years ago

80% of everything is crap.

And yet the original 2007 Gapminder talk[1] still surprised and educates people today

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

sethbannon• 13 years ago

I've always consumed TED talks much in the same way I might a movie trailer. The talks are normally just enough to give me an idea of whether I want to dig in deeper, but never really satisfying in themselves. If you look at TED this way, I see nothing abhorrent about it.

my3681• 13 years ago

We can say what we will about TED Talks, but it is a hell of a lot better for humanity than Jersey Shore or much of the useless crap on television. Like anything, given enough time, TED will have to fight off self promotion and the recycling of ideas to remain pure and relevant, but I am confident that the fight is worth fighting.

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.

Crito2• 13 years ago

"We can say what we will about TED Talks, but it is a hell of a lot better for humanity than Jersey Shore or much of the useless crap on television."

I do not believe this is clear when you consider the phenomenon of pseudoscience being presented under the TED brand as "TEDx".

Crito2• 13 years ago

Thinking about this more, I think I would say that TED actually is worse than the Jersey Shore, even ignoring the TEDx angle:

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.

memracom2• 13 years ago

This is true, they are better than Jersey Shore.

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.

api4• 13 years ago

"It's better than Jersey Shore..."

That's setting the bar pretty low.

mxfh• 13 years ago

Reggie Watts pretty much said it all back in 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdHK_r9RXTc

Hard to imagine how anyone could follow up after this.

adregan• 13 years ago

It's an amazing speech.

cjoh• 13 years ago

It's easy to look at this as a critique of TED, and it is, but what's interesting here is that this is a TED Talk. He was invited by TedxSD to talk about the problems of Ted. And he delivered those problems in the language and culture of TED. And whether you agree with him or not, I think it's commendable that he was invited by the TED organizers to give this talk, and that he gave it.

chris_wot• 13 years ago

So if he inspires people to abandon TED talks because TED talks don't work, all through a TED talk, then it appears that TED has worked.

simonebrunozzi• 13 years ago

Sergey Brin's TED talk on Google Glass is the worst TED talk I've ever seen. Wondering how much he paid to be there. http://www.ted.com/talks/sergey_brin_why_google_glass.html

knowuh• 13 years ago

Complaining that a 5 minute TED talk isn't "meaningful" is like complaining that popcorn isn't nutritious. This isn't worth writing about; you just have the wrong expectations.

As for " middlebrow megachurch infotainment." – just trolling for eyeballs.

stiff• 13 years ago

If TED isn't successful, how then would success look like for a conference of this kind? I don't think any conference at all is by itself a serious engine of innovation, and the more academic ones are much worse than TED talks, in my experience during academic conferences everyone pretty much expects up front to not understand anything at all from 90% of the talks, at least a half of the people will actively do something else than listening to the speaker, playing with their laptops and stuff, and pretty much the core motivation for everyone is A) the points for getting published in the conference proceedings and B) the party in the evening where one can finally get drunk and have some fun. The only chance of really learning something is if you know some work a bit upfront, or you know the people involved, and then researching it afterwards, so at best you get a little spark and you have to put in a ton of work to make something out of it. If you aren't consistently interested in some small range of topics you get nothing at all from it.

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.

misener• 13 years ago

According to the Livestream embed, "This Event Has Been Deleted"

api4• 13 years ago

... which is the other problem with TED: it's not really an open platform.

sandersaar• 13 years ago

"Content has been removed"

jayklub• 13 years ago

Yea I got this too. Happened in the middle of watching the stream.

mgr86• 13 years ago

Eddie Huang went on about his bad experience with TED on the Joe Rogan podcast earlier this year => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FNenJN4484

elsurudo2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the heads up... very interesting. I can't believe this is the first I'm hearing of this strange behaviour!

waylandsmithers• 13 years ago

A boss of mine used to talk about how organizations need both axe sharpeners (people to think about and refine ideas) and wood choppers (people to bring those ideas to life and "do the work"). Problem is, for things to get done, the wood choppers need to far exceed the axe sharpeners, and everyone wants to be an axe sharpener.

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.

jackgavigan• 13 years ago

Also, most wannabe axe sharpeners are really, really bad at sharpening axes.

diydsp• 13 years ago

This was online as of an hour ago, but I had to run an errand and it's now down the memory hole! If anyone has a mirror, please post.

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!

Benferhat• 13 years ago

This Event Has Been Deleted

mirror, please?

peterwwillis• 13 years ago

TED conferences are basically an organized unconference of incredibly long lightning talks. Of course they don't have any value, it's just a bunch of random schmucks ranting about something they're passionate about in a way that gets youtube views. But there's nothing wrong with that.

brown9-2• 13 years ago

The New Yorker did a great profile on TED last year and it was hard to come away from the article without feeling like they were making a similar critique: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/09/120709fa_fact_...

EGreg• 13 years ago

I was kind of with him until he started detailing his own vision of T - E - D.

What an idiosynchratic point of view

justncase80• 13 years ago

I love TED. Not all of the talks are perfect but in general they are inspiring and wonderful. Some people just like being negative, this author moves me not at all.

DigitalJack• 13 years ago

I don't watch very many Ted talks because the topics usually don't interest me. But the ones I do watch are the show and tell kind. The "I did something cool, check it out."

So I have no idea what the author is talking about.

ChristianMarks• 13 years ago

The inspirational message of TURD Talks is that if you could only crack your skull in just the right way, at the bottom of a pool after slipping at the edge, or in an almost fatal car accident, or by falling out of your shower and hitting your head on the sink before landing in the kitty litter underneath, then you too could release your inner savant.

memracom2• 13 years ago

TED talks are marketing. There is no real link between most of these talks so the fact that it is a TED talk rather than just a presentation, is basically meaningless. TED is just a brand that people licence in order to attract an audience. Over time, with no quality control on the talks other than charisma, it is not surprising that TED attracts all manner of charlatans, liars and conmen.

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.

api4• 13 years ago

This guy hit the ball into orbit, and he's not just talking about TED. He's talking about the entire "scene."

-- 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.

runewell• 13 years ago

People like TED. TED is sooooo OVER. - Hipster Professor

http://youtu.be/UOXsmNhvPEU

ignostic2• 13 years ago

Okay, so basically TED should be another dry facts-only scientific conference? Guess what, we already have plenty of those. The speakers will present facts and be judged based on the facts rather than on their presentation skills or ability to inspire. We have a lot of them and they work well - but the general public isn't interested.

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.

mcguire• 13 years ago

Why? Sales pitches and fantasy fill seats and sell tickets. They're interesting, understandable, and inspiring. They do what TED, TEDx, and all infotainment are supposed to do, right?

"Real science that is easy to understand" tends to be shallow and hard to distinguish from sales pitches, fantasy, and lies.

ignostic2• 13 years ago

"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.

frozenport• 13 years ago

They might exist but I dont have acess to them.

mikkohypponen• 13 years ago

I'm a TED Speaker. I'd like to think many of you would get a chuckle out of my talk from 2011: http://on.ted.com/Hypponen

pistle• 13 years ago

Thank goodness TED will now eat itself. They always struck me as the bad part of the west coast ethos. Self-fellating bullshit that will go nowhere. If we ever see the dystopian future of a detached gown-wearing overclass, it will come from SoCal.

freyr• 13 years ago

When I watch a TED talk, I feel good for a moment. If I watch a few more, I begin to feel a little uneasy, and eventually nauseous. It's like eating sugar.

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.

noonespecial• 13 years ago

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.

legendben• 13 years ago

Hello people, for those who bash TED, what have YOU produced for the betterment of human understanding of ourselves and the world around us? At least TED inspires people to think about things in new ways no matter how popularist it has become. Maybe instead of bashing TED, talk about how you would make it better if you were to run it AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!

deeteecee• 13 years ago

i can't say i understood what he was talking about after the "What is TED?" part but I understand that he thinks you can't take deep, complex analysis into these subjects and easily break it down into simple solutions and explain it to the world. But.. I don't see anything wrong with that. TED is just spreading more insightful ideas out there. If it's not helping the audience, then yeah, maybe there needs to be a better mechanism for organizing their talks or something, I don't know.

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.

Futurebot• 13 years ago

Excellent post which has a few points I'd like to add to:

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.

dredmorbius• 13 years ago

And your response is also excellent. Many points I'd like to return to, bookmarking.

rogerthis• 13 years ago

I'd rather watch christian tele-evangelism than most TED talks.

xixi775• 13 years ago

This looks like a perfect example of what is wrong with TED these days (mostly TEDx, but it's really the original's fault for allowing TEDx's to dilute the brand pretty much to zero) -- that is, a vacuous rant with zero substance.

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.

cafard• 13 years ago

See http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/10/06/tedx-prank-philadel...

tyang• 13 years ago

A big problem with TEDx is lack of quality control.

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.

We Need to Talk About TED

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