TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

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

I just have to say I never got this "west coast new age positivity" vibe some ppl are hating on, from TED stuff Ive seen. Perhaps Ive not seen enough or there is some culture surrounding the society that I have missed. On the stand-alone lectures Ive seen, I've enjoyed most of them (not all - some people are great scientists but shocking speakers).

And who says there's nothing to learn? This guy, for example, was a very entertaining watch and I totally learned some new things about propulsion research:

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

iatee otm

it's interesting that the videos posted here are all from a few years ago. i think that's the point of the Against TED essay - that TED has changed and isn't as smart/clever/interesting anymore.

it's called tedflation, I'm preparing a presentation on it

or has become more Cult of TED or something
xp!

i agree to a point but

1) not fair to lob the david brooks shit grenade
2) think there is also a danger in barring topics from the casual viewer
3) also some elitism in thinking the viewer begins and ends their understanding of the topic with one web site

/david brooks was the last thing I added to that paragraph, gave it a little extra something

it's interesting that the videos posted here are all from a few years ago. i think that's the point of the Against TED essay - that TED has changed and isn't as smart/clever/interesting anymore.

Ah ok, this is an interesting point.

also some elitism in thinking the viewer begins and ends their understanding of the topic with one web site

And, also this. And in addition, elitism in assuming all scientific/new ideas stuff MUST be rigourous and long winded and thorough. Can we not have populist stuff too, for the average joe who *would not absorb this stuff at all otherwise*?

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.

― Fonz Hour (Eazy), Sunday, February 19, 2012 12:51 PM (1 hour ago)

i gave a pecha kucha presentation on my threeframes tumblr. each slide was a different gif and i finished with one from clash of the titans and proclaimed "RELEASE THE KRAKEN" at the very end (it was opening weekend of the new COT)

'the world is really complicated' is not elitism, it's just true xp

flopson/iatee otm

im sure theres tons of good ted talks out there but i tend to associate ted w/ that glib silicon valley 'technocratic' positivism, the same kind of people that give us "charter schools" and "union-busting" as the future of education reform. maybe im wrong though. the crowd i associate w/ ted is less the economist or nyer crowd than the wired magazine crowd.

is ted a thing in 2012, I thought it was like 2010 shit

Any teachers care to comment on Khan Academy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk

I actually think the khan academy type online learning is gonna be pretty important #noteacher

note that all the lectures there are like 'graphing a line in slope intercept form' and not 'how slopes intercepts can change your life and will change everything we know about modern medicine'

I actually think the khan academy type online learning is gonna be pretty important #noteacher

note that all the lectures there are like 'graphing a line in slope intercept form' and not 'how slopes intercepts can change your life and will change everything we know about modern medicine'

― iatee, Sunday, February 19, 2012 7:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.mathalicious.com/2012/02/04/khan-academy-its-different-this-time/

Instead, the real issue with Khan Academy is its underlying pedagogy (or lack thereof). Quite simply, it doesn’t work. Not only do we know this anecdotally — how many adults still say “I don’t do math?” — but we also know it experimentally. In fact, we’ve known it for decades!

In general, I find TED to be entertaining and no worse than popular science media & other infotainment, and often inspirational and informative. But this illustrates what I hate about TED. It isn't just bright people sharing innovative ideas. Sometimes it's bright amateurs spreading ignorance in critical areas outside of their expertise.

I think that SK came up with a clever idea that could possibly be leveraged by innovative and experienced educators. Here's what the billionaire (who has no experience as an educator) who's pumping millions of dollars into education (with strings attached) thinks of Khan Academy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuMTSU9DcqQ&feature=relmfu

Khan Academy boosters think this will transform education. They use a lot of language around how it will change the teachers role. They don't have any experience, but they have a lot of money and they run successful businesses, so why won't these failing educators just get out of their way?

yeah, but that's the difference between attempted online education and vaguely "educational" lectures as a form of online entertainment. neither is intrinsically superior to the other, apples and oranges.

xp

i tend to associate ted w/ that glib silicon valley 'technocratic' positivism, the same kind of people that give us "charter schools" and "union-busting" as the future of education reform. maybe im wrong though. the crowd i associate w/ ted is less the economist or nyer crowd than the wired magazine crowd.

― max, Sunday, February 19, 2012 5:32 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

TED = charter schools and union busting?!? come on, that's just the cheapest, lowest form of guilt by association. the crowds we "associate with" things don't have much to do with the actual significance/value/impact of those things when evaluated on their own merits.

actually I was educated at a right to work TEDcharter school

...and in addition, elitism in assuming all scientific/new ideas stuff MUST be rigourous and long winded and thorough. Can we not have populist stuff too, for the average joe who *would not absorb this stuff at all otherwise*?

― Lindsay NAGL (Trayce), Sunday, February 19, 2012 5:12 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

OTM, and we don't even have to appeal to some otherwise helpless "average joe" in order to make this point. No one can know about everything that's going on the world today, and therefore anyone might benefit from brief introductions to some of what's out there. Okay, fine, so TED overesells the transformative power of left-field "big ideas", but that hardly seems like the worst intellectual crime being foisted on the world atm. these things are introductions, abstracts, basically back cover blurbs. invitations to do more research, if you're really interested. and fodder for water cooler/facebook conversation if you're lazy. either way, a service to humanity.

nah I don't think khan etc stuff are gonna replace high school teachers but they're pretty nifty supplements for a hs student having trouble w/ homework

xp

college otoh

In a venn diagram of who moved my cheese, waiting for superman, awesomensess fest, and what the bleep do we know, there is some serious TED overlap.

theres definitely zero overlap between the awesomeness fest and the ted conference as far as like actual people involved, prob the rest of them all too, if you want to argue some similar cultural orientation yeah sure but just in a v general sense, feel like some in this thread in wanting to indite ted on charges of being glib are themselves being somewhat glib

i mean theres no need to try and associated the ted conference w/the worst people in the world in order to make a criticism, theyre also not nazis, doesnt mean theres nothing wrong w/them

it's a pretentious way to present free lectures, but i can't believe people are getting their dander up over them.

theres definitely zero overlap between the awesomeness fest and the ted conference as far as like actual people involved

http://www.awesomenessfest.com/meet-the-tribe/
http://i.imm.io/gUNA.png

it's a pretentious way to present free lectures, but i can't believe people are getting their dander up over them.

― da croupier

tis the season for the flakes that don't melt

phfft w/e one person

Yeah, when I refer to awesomeness fest, I do mean it in a very general way, and of course I was being glib. I have enjoyed several TED talks online and I value them. But there are threads of magical thinking and shortcuts around serious critical analysis that run through self-help, professional development, technophilia, education reform, economic policy; etc that are on the same continuum, and I see some of these same threads running through some of the TED talks I've viewed, and I'm not surprised.

FYI this was the second Google search result for "awesomeness fest ted"

http://www.awesomenessfest.com/dr-srikumar-rao/

PS I don't think Dr. Srikumar Rao is the worst of the worst.

TBH those threads run through the entirety of human society on all levels and sometimes those kinds of shortcuts actually lead to revolutions in technology and improvements in peoples lives. You just want to ~contain~ it, not eliminate it.