TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

what if every professor only talked about AWESOME THINGS but you didn't have to remember anything cause NO TESTS

it's like some freshman's stoner fantasy

you;'re sort of conflating academic and trade conferences there, which is exactly what TED does

xp

nah it's not trying to replace school and it won't, it doesn't have the brand, but it functions as a 'this is what I wish school had been' for lots of people

conflating a conference w/college is like some lazy internet guys criticism fantasy

i mean theres def a criticism to be made of ted, just not apparently by the people in this thread, especially not lukas smh

eh there's nothing magic about a 'college lecture' that makes it different from a 'conference talk', in some contexts they can be exactly the same speech

like im sure hans rosling is unaware of some research that you have in yr possession and was intending lil off handed one liners to actually represent the complexity of african economics etc

yeah totally i was talking abt magic things im sure theres no difference in intention, w/e its all stupid cause no homework

ok, word's don't matter, got it, i'll watch TED talks with renewed interest

*words lol

well you have to understand what the words mean i think is the point

i mean did u hear he said 'Mauritius you can go on holiday' therefor his industry leading work is invalid *buffs nails*

well either what hans said in that brief passage didn't mean anything, or it was mendacious bullshit, can you clarify

thank you for those two choices lukas im sure they are the only possible meanings

u should give a ted talk

don't steal my tedflation idea

i should have revealed the top action films in a TED talk. would have owned imo.

feel like the ted people wouldve wanted the matrix to place higher

huh? what's the beef with TED? so a bunch of people want to put up a bunch of youtube videos of talks, some of which are entertaining or inspiring... and?

theres a triumphalist culture that rubs people the wrong way from what i can tell

Let's get a group rate on a nice resort and do TEDLX

well the prob w/ ted is that it's not really meant for people who want to really learn concrete things or even build new frames of reference and it's not really presented as 'this lecture is here to get you interested in african economics, here's some ways to learn more.' it's learning as a form of forgettable entertainment, it's like watching tv w/ the idea that you're doing something important.

it's also sorta like reading a list of movie twist-endings for movies you haven't seen. this will not be the downfall of traditional higher ed (other things are) but there is something crass and weird about the idea that the only things worth learning are mind blowing.

eh the experience is not that far from like reading the new yorker or w/e

tbf to the adichie talk i like, i don't think she thinks it's mind blowing. but also i like reading the new yorker.

and watching tv

i would probably like ted talks if i watched more of them

i agree that theres a frivolous aspect to ted, mostly in their marketing abt amazing minds gathering together and for a j/o sesh, but ive def remembered a bunch of the stuff ive watched, i havent used that knowledge to bend the course of history to my will, but i think it can be legit educational, if not anymore so than youd expect from a 10min video, i mean i have never once requested a masters degree after finishing a ted talk, and i think that level of education has value as does watching an ep of nova or w/e

I've liked them more as audio podcasts than watching them, but maybe that just has to do with listening to them while walking, or maybe it's not having to look at someone's clothes and appearance.

there are interesting ideas in TED talks but the tone is so off-putting to me

Like, it's nice to walk through some woods with headphones on, listening to Felix Dennis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64-bHvDcgQQ

it's not the triumphalism so much as it is the velocity, as if we can just zip through important ideas quickly without being critical of them. like we have enough of that in our culture and i think it's damaging.

i would probably not like TED talks if i watched more of them, i think the aspect of them that's 'Inspiring People talk about the Inspiring Things they have done' would get to me somewhat. (i hate biographies, too)

many of the talks are not that great, but some are

feel like someone on another thread (iatee?) was talking about the more tech-oriented tedtalks being suspect on an anti-union pro-management tip? maybe i made this up? i of course have seen no tech ted talks or technical talks of any kind, so i wouldn't know.

well many of the people are successful and wonderful so it stands to reason

yeah the only way you're going to be able to argue against the self-interests of people watching your talk is if you have more than half an hour and you don't have to be inspiring

The cousin of this is Pecha Kucha, which gives a tight structure that allows experts to give a focused talk on something they're passionate about. The night I attended one of these, Jon Langford did one, Ken Nordine (age 90) did one, a guy who built a 3-storey Eiffel Tower replica in a department store did one.

not sure why internet video requires a counter-argument when no other medium does?

Yeah thats what I'm now thinking too bnw - why are these guys getting the caning not given to say, a Carl Sagan tv special?

(I'm not saying TEDs should be at all srs learnin, but I've enjoyed the ones ive watched. I do agree they can skim far too much sometimes tho)

maybe if they wore turtlenecks and posed in front of pictures of the universe

summaries can be cool, have fun and enjoy. i just can't get down with the tone so i'll bash on whatever mis-steps i can find.

http://www.poptech.org has good talks too that aren't quite so TED-y

even though my honest opinion is more mixed than i'll let on, the more ted-boosters i meet the more i feel it's important to be a ted-hater. like in my experience they tend to be smug, optimistic about the future in a dismissive "pfft, cynicism? what don't you read the economist?" kind of way, have major boners for technology and often also capitalism. i think the curation of ted-talks pushes a really partic kind of complacency in face of the self-correcting market mechanism + high expectations of the fruits of technology. a lot of ted talks i watched when i was most into it were like stewart brand, bjorn lomborg; these refreshingly positive, counterintuitive approaches to problems that have been generally presented as insurmountable. i realize people respond to this esp in contrast with a lot of bleak shit out there, but theres an obvious imbalance thats kind of harmful imo

best ted talk is aubrey degray fountain of youth

oh yeah, that one is good

agree w trayce and lagoon: i can't see what's wrong with a bunch of short lectures presented for some combination of edification, inspiration and entertainment. sometimes it's nice simply to see/hear experts and innovators talk about their work, to engage with thinking and information from a curious rather than a studious or rigorously critical perspective. yeah, there's a general tone of cheerful, vaguely new age optimism to the TED project as a whole, but i don't think that's necessarily such a bad thing, even it sometimes feels a bit forced. if TED talks were your only source of intellectual nourishment, your brain would starve, but it's not like there aren't countless other options available.

love this one on theo jansen and his "creatures":

http://www.ted.com/talks/theo_jansen_creates_new_creatures.html

i think that going into TED with cynicism/criticism is healthy and advisable, especially for talks for the past couple of years, as TED has gotten more and more popular - and the comments, unlike a lot of websites in general, are often pretty good at relating that cynicism/criticism and in some cases actually aide the talk.

in general, I like TED talks because i think the more informal education out there the better, but feel like many of them (but not all) have too much of a veneer over the subject matter that perks it up and dumbs it down more than necessary - this is esp true of some of the tech ones... rah rah technology + money-making! with no socio-cultural insight. ergh...

oh yes i remember that one on jansen too - so cool :)

lag00n mentioned the nyer upthread and I would say a pretty good reference point is m gladwell. he's not the worst person in the world, he's even written some interesting stuff. would anyone here want him to be the editor of the nyer? the gladwell/freakeconomics/david brooks pop intellectualism approach to the world can be okay for an article but it's bad as a philosophy because we don't live in a world with 'big problems' that can be solved w/ big counterintuitive solutions that nobody thought about, we live in a really complicated place w/ really complicated problems. most of the ted speakers prob know this, but that's not the ted narrative.

if TED talks were your only source of intellectual nourishment, your brain would starve, but it's not like there aren't countless other options available.

i think plenty of brains starve on a lot less