TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

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.

www.makelovenotporn.com

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/MLNP01.png

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.

― Unleash the Chang (he did what!) (Austerity Ponies), Monday, February 20, 2012 12:41 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im sympathetic to that view but i think to some extent what youre picking up on is like people like doin actual things, producing work that because it exists is naturally going to lend itself to criticism, what separates the ted situation from what the awesome cheese inc is many of the speakers are genuinely accomplished in their fields, which does i think somewhat excuse them against charges of magical thinking etc, like i just watched Martin Seligman: Why is psychology good? and i felt like a lot of it was sort of a little too pat or shallow or something, but the thing is he has at least research and a coherent system, its kinda the opposite of a shortcut, it demands specific critical engagement not just more 'this smells new agey' or w/e like that awful new inquiry piece posted upthread

plus if you have substantial objections, i think it makes more sense to critique the TED talks on a specific, case-by-case basis than to paint them as brain candy in a generic sense. afaict, they're not all slapdash, intellectually dishonest utopian unicorn crap, and if you wanna make that case, then it behooves you to bring something concrete to the table. a broad-brush objection to the general "tone" doesn't count for much, imo.

many of the speakers are genuinely accomplished in their fields

I totally agree.

they're not all slapdash, intellectually dishonest utopian unicorn crap

I totally agree.

ponies!

(had to say)

www.makelovenotporn.com

― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Monday, 20 February 2012 05:56 (25 minutes ago) Permalink

why did you post this

makelovenotporn seems kind of silly but I have met dudes who srsly don't understand the difference between porn and the real world so I guess it has a purpose.

why did you post this

― ⚓ (gr8080), Sunday, February 19, 2012 10:23 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

was mentioned in that cindy gallop awesomenessfest profile that, uh, you posted

oh lol

a broad-brush objection to the general "tone" doesn't count for much, imo.

I agree that it's not going to convince anyone who doesn't feel the same way, but I think "tone" is an ok way to make decisions about what you choose to pay attention to. Not that it indicates some deep badness, but it indicates a mismatch between your concerns and that of the speaker. Maybe those concerns aren't material to the subject of the talk itself, but with an infinite amount of stuff to watch, who cares?

oh sure, entirely up to personal choice

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.

they're a bit like those internet articles where there's been a "scientific breakthrough" re: cancer, or some important technology that will Make Life Better For Everyone. Everyone cheers in the comments section or whatever but you know that you will never read or hear about this theory or breakthrough again.

I bet Socrates' lectures were a lot like a TED talk. Trying to get the common man people to think about exciting new ideas and the philosophy behind every day life.

And then the proto-ilxors had him killed because he looked pretentious and said iPads could replace schools.

I watched this, then I bought the book.

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

so y'know you can springboard from these to some kind of real learnin'.

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.

there is a problem with your introduction to a scientific or technological field being "this idea out of left-field is come to TRANSFORM the moribund field of [blah]". viz: you aren't left with a strong understanding of The Left-Field Idea because there isn't time, you aren't left with much of an understanding of the field itself because you've only been told about aspects that relate to The Left-Field Idea, and you are, however, left with the sense that the field itself is half-dead and in need of a drastic saviour because that is the peg the whole talk is hung upon.

which is the same problem as one gets from those 'scientific breakthrough' articles, it's not unique to TED -- but i don't think, as a format, this sort of thing encourages you to learn more about the field, because you've already been told: the field is flawed in a way that needs breaking through with the Big Idea that this guy has.

a combination of cynicism and triumphalism that leaves little space for us.

lol joe did ur dad invent Ted or something

i love that Iain Mcgilchrist talk

feel like most of the 99% is not really interested in TED-style "breakthroughs" but some sustained elbow grease on the problems that are already very well known

i.e. sometimes i think TED acolytes need a stern talking to from chekhov

totally - my favourite talks are usually the really-real ones about shifted ways of looking at and facing and solving old problems without devaluing history and cultural context. my other favourite talks are about outer space.

I feel like TED is an offender, but not a bad one, of the "hey, if we listen to some guy talk about his ideas, we will get ideas of our own" convention circuit.

Still not as bad as the "I'm going to have a start-up company/website, I just have no idea what it will be yet, let's all talk over drinks after listening to someone actually successful speak" offenders of the world.

Glib, generalized accusations of glibness = projection!

But then agin, we only have limit space to write on here versus, say, publishing an essay about it.

I've prepared a glibflation chart for my tedflation presentation

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

Something else that can make a false impression of glibness is that the speakers aren't given introductions--so you have to do your own homework to know that Martin Seligman was president of the American Psychological Association, or that Moot is the guy you want giving a talk about anonymity and the internet.

every minute wasted on context is a minute that could be better spent on david brooks style union busting

I like what Jason Fried and company have produced, but their idea salesmanship is obnoxious as hell

lol joe did ur dad invent Ted or something

― max, Monday, February 20, 2012 8:00 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i know its ridiculous ive become the defender of TED in this thread since prob on this v message bord ive cast similar shade upon its holy endeavors, i guess i feel like some of the criticism itt would be better presented as a straight diss like 'lol 1% j/o sesh w/e' than the kind of generalized intellectualisms that weve seen, cause i do think once youve taken that step it becomes kinda self parody to not engage w/the really quite rigorous work many of these people have done

TED chucklebutt