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The Media Idle

Are TED Talks Just Propaganda For the Technocracy? (thedriftmag.com) 151

Posted by EditorDavid from the propaganda-worth-spreading dept.
"People are still paying between $5,000 and $50,000 to attend the annual flagship TED conference. In 2021," notes The Drift magazine, noting last year's event was held in Monterey, California. "Amid wildfires and the Delta surge, its theme was 'the case for optimism.'"

The magazine makes the case that over the last decade TED talks have been "endlessly re-articulating tech's promises without any serious critical reflection." And they start with how Bill Gates told an audience in 2015 that "we can be ready for the next epidemic." Gates's popular and well-shared TED talk — viewed millions of times — didn't alter the course of history. Neither did any of the other "ideas worth spreading" (the organization's tagline) presented at the TED conference that year — including Monica Lewinsky's massively viral speech about how to stop online bullying through compassion and empathy, or a Google engineer's talk about how driverless cars would make roads smarter and safer in the near future. In fact, seven years after TED 2015, it feels like we are living in a reality that is the exact opposite of the future envisioned that year.....

At the start of the pandemic, I noticed people sharing Gates's 2015 talk. The general sentiment was one of remorse and lamentation: the tech-prophet had predicted the future for us! If only we had heeded his warning! I wasn't so sure. It seems to me that Gates's prediction and proposed solution are at least part of what landed us here. I don't mean to suggest that Gates's TED talk is somehow directly responsible for the lack of global preparedness for Covid. But it embodies a certain story about "the future" that TED talks have been telling for the past two decades — one that has contributed to our unending present crisis.

The story goes like this: there are problems in the world that make the future a scary prospect. Fortunately, though, there are solutions to each of these problems, and the solutions have been formulated by extremely smart, tech-adjacent people. For their ideas to become realities, they merely need to be articulated and spread as widely as possible. And the best way to spread ideas is through stories.... In other words, in the TED episteme, the function of a story isn't to transform via metaphor or indirection, but to actually manifest a new world. Stories about the future create the future. Or as Chris Anderson, TED's longtime curator, puts it, "We live in an era where the best way to make a dent on the world... may be simply to stand up and say something." And yet, TED's archive is a graveyard of ideas. It is a seemingly endless index of stories about the future — the future of science, the future of the environment, the future of work, the future of love and sex, the future of what it means to be human — that never materialized. By this measure alone, TED, and its attendant ways of thinking, should have been abandoned.
But the article also notes that TED's philosophy became "a magnet for narcissistic, recognition-seeking characters and their Theranos-like projects." (In 2014 Elizabeth Holmes herself spoke at a medical-themed TED conference.) And since 2009 the TEDx franchise lets licensees use the brand platform to stage independent events — which is how at a 2010 TEDx event, Randy Powell gave his infamous talk about vortex-based mathematics which he said would "create inexhaustible free energy, end all diseases, produce all food, travel anywhere in the universe, build the ultimate supercomputer and artificial intelligence, and make obsolete all existing technology."

Yet these are all just symptoms of a larger problem, the article ultimately argues. "As the most visible and influential public speaking platform of the first two decades of the twenty-first century, it has been deeply implicated in broadcasting and championing the Silicon Valley version of the future. TED is probably best understood as the propaganda arm of an ascendant technocracy.
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Are TED Talks Just Propaganda For the Technocracy? More

Are TED Talks Just Propaganda For the Technocracy?

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  • They're TED Talks, not TED Dos.

    Blah blah blah blah blah.

    • Can't be dos cause they're doo-doos. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by denzacar ( 181829 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @11:38AM (#62242839) Journal

      They're TED Talks, not TED Dos.

      The TFA talks about the problem but fails to grasp* it. It is NOT "the propaganda arm of an ascendant technocracy".
      It is much simpler.
      It is BULLSHIT.

      TED Talks have for a LOOOONG time now been just a pulpit for anyone willing to put on clothes over their underwear before stepping out in front of a crowd to talk about their personal current obsession.
      It's a Speakers' Corner with air conditioning, cameras and Wi-Fi.

      Hell, at speaker's corners you can at least yell questions at the speaker.
      I.e. Random bits of public space are better moderated and better equipped for sifting out bullshit than TED Talks.
      Because there's no implied authority of a faux-academic setting of a TED Talk's pretend lecture about faux-important "ideas".
      Which is in reality nothing but a sales pitch presentation for ANY BULLSHIT the current wearer of clothes up on the stage is peddling.

      It's a fake lecture, preloaded with fake authority, about any crap anyone who wants to sell it to the crowd is willing to talk about.
      It's bullshit.

      *Possibly cause most people find grabbing a handful of dung a bit repulsive.

  • TED Talks still exist?

    • Why would anyone still listen to those?

      • Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @10:37AM (#62242695)

        Why would anyone still listen to those?

        I think a lot of folks here don't listen to them, yet apparently know what all TED talks are like.

        A lot of them aren't interesting. A lot of them are stupid, and some are very good and interesting.

        The woman who lost both legs relating stories about her many replacement legs was fascinating.

        The obese PHD woman who couldn't figure out why she wasn't married and ended up figuring it out on stage. Too picky and a laundry list that ends up excluding almost every man on earth. That was interesting, if a little sad. The divorce lawyer lady giving a talk on why the dropoff in marriage rates are killing her profession and how the laws and society have caused it.

        A lot of this stuff isn't even technology.

        Even the great grifter Elizabeth Holmes, recently convicted of her crimes is interesting, if only as a warning to others. That's a gold mine of data showing how grifters work their craft.

        But here's one of the really interesting parts. In an article shitting all over technology that uses Bill Gates and his talk as the epitome of Technology wrongness and failure - it wrecks it's conclusion that Ted Talks are nothing more than propaganda.

        In point of fact - we were technologically ready for the pandemic. We 100 percent were not politically ready for it, and we are still politically impeding response to it.

        Technology very quickly gave us tools to stop the death rate. Politics stood in the way, and still are, now that we have reached to point of some people drinking their own piss instead of the tool that technology gave us.

        Now if someone wants to chug their own urine, far be it from me to stand in their way - just brush their teeth before they talk to the rest of us, as pissbreath will become a new thing.

        • Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @11:26AM (#62242811)

          TED is the embodiment of "throw it at the wall and see what sticks." There isn't a peer review process so the signal to noise ratio isn't great, but there are still interesting things.

          TED itself is annoyingly self-important (like the article), but that doesn't mean everyone who gives a TED talk is a crank.

          • TED itself is annoyingly self-important (like the article), but that doesn't mean everyone who gives a TED talk is a crank.

            This is very true!

        • This frustrates me about this take. A am thrilled with how quickly a vaccine for Coronavirus was developed. It's practically sci-fi to accomplish that so quickly and effectively, and it saved literally millions of lives. Yet somehow even this is spun into the old 'technology failed us!' fable. (Again - it saved millions of lives!)

          • This frustrates me about this take. A am thrilled with how quickly a vaccine for Coronavirus was developed. It's practically sci-fi to accomplish that so quickly and effectively, and it saved literally millions of lives. Yet somehow even this is spun into the old 'technology failed us!' fable. (Again - it saved millions of lives!)

            Exactly - I wonder if some people really want a return to say - 1918 - lot's less technology then, so the outcome had to be a lot better. Or maybe not.

            Narratives, for sure.

            Sad to say, logic and reason are not universal attributes of humans.

            So many people think Technology is bad today. Technology in and of itself is just technology. If put to evil or good uses, it is a quality of the people using the technology.

            The weird irrational distrust of technology is what gives rise to things like using exis

        • A lot of them aren't interesting. A lot of them are stupid, and some are very good and interesting.

          Yep, that's about the level of it - at least, for me. I got a swatch of about a hundred of them bulk downloaded one night (I forget how - It was something I could set the computer up to do, easily, while I slept), then watched them in smaller batches over the next few months. Maybe 20% of them were sufficiently interesting to go onto my "take to work for re-watching when I''m off-shift" hard drive (because mo

  • So... people in tech are naive optimists? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xevioso ( 598654 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @01:57AM (#62241969)

    Yawn. News at 11. The whole point of going into tech, unless you just need a paycheck, is to "change the world", which is shorthand for, "I see something wrong with the world, and maybe I can help fix it" rather than the alternative. What the hell is wrong with that?

    Look, lots of folks in tech are naive about the idiocy and stupidity of other folks. Zuk was naive about how his platform would be used for evil. Bill Gates was naive about how stupid people on the right would politicize the pandemic... we had playbook ready on how to handle the pandemic, but that didn't take into account morons. Folks in tech could certainly do better when it comes to being realists, but that doesn't mean they should stop being optimists.

    • There is also a certain amount of "A solution in search of a problem".
    • Yup. This is a well-known phenomenon, it even has a name, the White Male Effect or WME: That specific group more than any other underrates risk and believes (almost) anything can be solved by the appropriate application of technology. And before I get modded Troll or whatever that's from actual research data, as I said it's been quite well studied.
    • Call me cynical but I know a lot of folks in technology that are not interested in fixing the world. They are interested in exploiting it. Just like some lawyers and accountants got their degrees to be better at crime lol.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      People in tech seem prone to over estimating their own cleverness. Classic example is when they "invent" something that is already commonplace, like "AI automated bodegas" aka vending machines. Another would be "on a computer" type patents.

      TED talks are often just people who think they have some genius insight and have mastered the art of spewing Pseudo Profound Bullshit (PPBS - google it).

    • we had playbook ready on how to handle the pandemic, but that didn't take into account morons.

      .
      What wasn't anticipated is that someone else already had a plan for morons and they started the propaganda machine immediately. There were large money interests at stake.

    • Yawn. News at 11. The whole point of going into tech, unless you just need a paycheck, is to "change the world", which is shorthand for, "I see something wrong with the world, and maybe I can help fix it" rather than the alternative.

      Nerds become nerds for power, same as wizards. What they do with it after that varies wildly from nerd to nerd.

    • Zuk was naive about how his platform would be used for evil.

      Are you kidding? Facebook was founded the exact same day DARPA closed the Lifebook project - which was aimed at cataloging the activities of every man, woman, and child on Earth while keeping up-to-date profiles on them for defense and propaganda/control purposes. There was nothing naive about him.

    • While it's tempting to label groups of people as morons and idiots, and easy to find examples of such in any group (they're pretty good at self-identifying) I find it more plausible that politicians are adept at using emotional arguments to overpower, or bypass altogether, rational thinking. Even for the most rational among us, it's a constant struggle to ignore irrational impulses and to handle ambiguity with aplomb. That doesn't make us idiots (per se); just human.

      The reality is that it's easier to moti

  • muck and the mire (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dorianny ( 1847922 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @02:01AM (#62241975) Journal
    There are "3900+ talks" on their website. Most of the ones I've listened to are in the "physics" which I'm most interested in and found them to be quite interesting, informative and insightful. Perhaps I have a positive attitude about TED simply because i'm not particularity interested in "Visions of the future". I don't personally believe that the current slew of *visionaries and doomsayers* has any better insight that Nostradamus or the Oracle of Delphi.

    • I don't personally believe that the current slew of *visionaries and doomsayers* has any better insight that Nostradamus or the Oracle of Delphi.

      Well, neither does the person telling you what the weather will be like a month from now, but we still love our weather people for being only half-ass right most of the time.

  • simple, really (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @02:05AM (#62241981) Homepage Journal

    TEDx is crap, the usual attempt to cash-in on a brand with low-quality side products. We've seen that a million times with other stuff (Porsche selling T-shirts or whatever) and we all know that it's for die-hard fanboys and everyone else should ignore it.

    The main TED conference always had a mix of really great and interesting talks, and a few slots reserved for political or sponsor purposes. Gates spoke a few times, and all of it was cringe-worthy "look at me, I'm rich" shit. There's a couple other talks where you ask yourself what they're doing at a TED conference until you realize the speaker is either rich, important or famous.

    That's not a TED special. Many music festivals have that headliner band that's much worse in every way than the 2nd or 3rd on the poster, but tons more popular. To us experienced festival goers, they are the "let's leave before the traffic jam" band.

    That TED has an agenda? Yeah, if you've seen more than two TED talks in your life you've realized that. Nothing wrong with that, they're not even trying to hide it.

    • That TED has an agenda? Yeah, if you've seen more than two TED talks in your life you've realized that.

      I'm not sure I've figured out what their agenda is. Unless it's "finding interesting ideas and sharing them" or something like that.

      • Re:simple, really (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @04:52AM (#62242191)

        I'm not sure I've figured out what their agenda is. Unless it's "finding interesting ideas and sharing them" or something like that.

        No, their agenda is to pat themselves and each other on the back for finding interesting ideas and sharing them, with absolutely no part of the system involving any attempt to make sure they're useful or practicable ideas that make anything better for anybody.

        I saw a great talk by an Indian woman about how it helps poor villages to teach them how to build sanitation and water storage facilities. She was very well received. It was a great talk. It was not a fund-raising effort to raise money to help poor villages by teaching them how to build sanitation and water storage facilities. The audience was not asked to travel to India and teach villagers how to build public sanitation facilities. No village got toilets or clean water. But a bunch of people felt good about themselves, virtuous even, for merely agreeing that poor people benefit from sanitation.

        And 100% of them already knew it before they heard the talk. Not a single person was educated about the utility of sanitation, or the lack of sanitation in poor villages.

        • I'm not sure I've figured out what their agenda is. Unless it's "finding interesting ideas and sharing them" or something like that.

          No, their agenda is to pat themselves and each other on the back for finding interesting ideas and sharing them, with absolutely no part of the system involving any attempt to make sure they're useful or practicable ideas that make anything better for anybody.

          I saw a great talk by an Indian woman about how it helps poor villages to teach them how to build sanitation and water storage facilities. She was very well received. It was a great talk. It was not a fund-raising effort to raise money to help poor villages by teaching them how to build sanitation and water storage facilities. The audience was not asked to travel to India and teach villagers how to build public sanitation facilities. No village got toilets or clean water. But a bunch of people felt good about themselves, virtuous even, for merely agreeing that poor people benefit from sanitation.

          And 100% of them already knew it before they heard the talk. Not a single person was educated about the utility of sanitation, or the lack of sanitation in poor villages.

          Have you heard the expression "Don't shoot the messenger"? Simply highlighting a positive effort going on somewhere is not something to be criticizing. It is important for people to be informed so they can make educated decisions in their own lives. Even more importantly, you have absolutely no way of knowing what effects that talk may have had. Most of these talks are watched thousands/millions of times. Who knows how many people that might inspire to actually get involved and help, either directly or by m

          • In the expression, "Don't shoot the messenger," there is a message. That they are delivering on behalf of somebody else, that perhaps you would still shoot.

            Here, they're not the messenger at all, but the source of the message. Fire at will.

        • That may be obvious to you but did you know that affordable housing is great for poor people too?  yet... we keep voting it down.  A TED talk that talks about how lack of affordable housing will also sound 'pat themselves on the back' when we actually get affordable housing.  lack of sanitation only sounds like it's pat themselves because it's already been done.

        • No, their agenda is to pat themselves and each other on the back for finding interesting ideas and sharing them, with absolutely no part of the system involving any attempt to make sure they're useful or practicable ideas that make anything better for anybody.

          Yes all those lectures on pure science like physics should have generated practical ideas for people to use. Or they were interesting to hear from someone in a field that I would not hear in my everyday work. . .

          • If you were interested in the subject, you wouldn't actually want to hear a TED talk about it, because it won't teach you anything. It will just make you feel Virtuously Sciencey. If you wanted to learn about physics you'd just go to youtube and watch actual physics lectures, where some of the best teachers in the world place free lectures.

            • If you were interested in the subject, you wouldn't actually want to hear a TED talk about it, because it won't teach you anything.

              That's just silly on its face. It assumes my interest in a subject is binary that I either care nothing about the topic or I learn enough to get a PhD.

              It will just make you feel Virtuously Sciencey.

              And what does this mean? I find that lectures on topics like black holes have no virtues sprinkled in them.

              If you wanted to learn about physics you'd just go to youtube and watch actual physics lectures, where some of the best teachers in the world place free lectures

              No because, again, not everything is binary; I can watch YouTube AND watch Ted Talks. You also do not get to decide what I do with my free time and how I chose to consume media. For example, I have 20 minutes on my commute. Should I watch hour long lect

              • And what does this mean?

                You'll never know, not that you were curious.

                • You'll never know, not that you were curious.

                  So when I ask you to explain what you mean, you are going to refuse. Again you seem to assume that you know and can dictate my life. You do not but you cannot handle that simple fact. You know nothing about me. You assume.

      • I like TED and TEDx - never saw a bad talk, and I saw hundreds.

        No idea if there is an agenda, as every talk was about something completely different.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        No, it's maybe not easy to sum up in a catchphrase, but there is a clear vibe of positivity, technophilia, libertarianism. A mix of making a better future with science and technology.

        That's an agenda. We might not notice it as one because most of us are very much inside that bubble, but from the perspective of, say, a bible-thumping conservative that's pure propaganda.

  • They have their benefits (Score:5, Informative)

    by imidan ( 559239 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @02:08AM (#62241985)

    So, yeah, some TED talks are people like Bill Gates talking about changing the world. Those can be interesting, but as TFS says, can also be prognostication and smug handwaving about The Future coming to save us all.

    But there are TED talks that are somewhat smaller in scope. I like to watch presentations on data visualization, because I do a lot of data analysis and I like to get ideas for how to communicate about data. So TED talks can "change my life" in the limited sense that I find new approaches to problems there. I don't think you have to write off the entire concept because some of them are grandiose without being especially influential.

    • Agreed, if you watch a talk, and it changes your insight, it's worth it. Changing the world or not, how can it be measured that this happened or not? It's sort of a high bar to place, and then claim it wasn't reached without having made clear it was there beforehand, nor how it will be measured...
  • I gone off them when I learned they banned Sarah Silverman's talk. They completely missed the point of what she was saying. Or, maybe, Chris Anderson does think that disabled children or children with terminal conditions aren't worthy of adoption, or that the lifespans of some adoptees shouldn't be taken into account.

    • Meh she ran up against both SJWs and Christians with a disingenuous shock stand up routine which added nothing to the discussion.

      Ohh there are long term consequences to adopting disabled people? You don't say. Maybe if she addressed that the people mostly doing the adopting actually have the social safety nets to handle that responsibility, the people usually her target of derision, while she only jokes about adopting a disabled child she would be addressing something which escapes a lot of people.

      • If it added nothing to the discussion, it wouldn't have been shocking.

        The fact is people don't often consider adopting disabled children in the first place, which was the point of her routine. People prefer to only think about the beautiful adoption scenario and don't consider adopting kids who may need it more, such as disabled kids. And THEN she expanded on it thinking about long term consequences.

        Are you AGAINST considering adopting disabled kids, and then thinking about the long term consequences?

        • If it added nothing to the discussion, it wouldn't have been shocking.

          Oh fuck you, did you stop fucking chickens yet, weirdo?

          Oh, don't worry, I must have added to the conversation, because people would be shocked to learn you're fucking chickens.

        • She just wanted to antagonise Palin and have an excuse to say retarded. That people like you try to assign higher purpose to it was intended and entertaining to her, Chutzpah.

          She offered no solution to the lifelong responsibility of caring for disabled children, the people who take on that responsibility (mostly religious) don't need reminding and her audience isn't going to change.

          • She just wanted to antagonise Palin and have an excuse to say retarded.

            I'm at a complete loss at how the fuck you managed to pull that from her routine.

            Just because you're offended doesn't mean you get to pull shit out of your arse.

    • She said "retarded" and there's a big difference. The joke just doesn't work without a retarded kid.

  • Do you want them to start discussing plans for building Eleysium instead?

    Do you want them to try to convince the Western population they should decimate their living standards, open their borders and let the homeless international elite rule us like they deserve? Or convince the Western population and the elites to both decimate their living standards and embrace green global communism?

    Neither the Liberal preferred green global communism nor the elite preferred green global neofeudal NWO are going to happen

    • The alternative is an economy ruled by bankers. A technocracy is way better than that. Notice that all this complaining started after SV started into the banking industry (with things like SoFi, not defi which scares no one).

    • Liberals don't want communism, which would be working people deciding how everything is done. Liberals are by definition bourgeoisie and prefer representative (easy to bribe) "Democracy," so that people think their voice counts but it doesn't really. Go check out Mao and Leninâ(TM)s thoughts on liberals. https://www.marxists.org/archi... [marxists.org]

  • No, but thanks for asking. SMH (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @02:34AM (#62242013)
    Say what you will about TED Talks, the best are certainly thought-provoking and informative. And pretending there's any question about the inherent value of provoking curiosity would be nihilistic gibberish without purpose, which is what this article seems to be.

    Frankly, the language I see being used here has a lot of little conspiracy-theory shibboleths and dog whistles. The accusatory, borderline paranoid tone in which it paints the Scientific Method and humanist philosophy as some kind of marketing conspiracy between bureaucrats and con artists should set off even the weakest of Bullshit Detectors.

    Furthermore, the idea that the world has not improved is a very childish delusion: The kind that can only have come from someone who still thinks discoveries and technologies are supposed to change the world in weeks rather than decades. Actual grownups...people who make an effort to learn and engage, and have experience in doing so... are typically awed by what they've seen their lives, and are inspired about what they hope to see, regardless of anecdotal disappointments.

    Whereas this seems to be the opinion of the article: "Who cares that electric cars are increasingly replacing internal combustion engines; that reusable orbital rocketry is now the state of the art rather than a fantasy; that we can watch black holes dance around and collide with each other by staring at the very fabric of space and time; that there are fewer in poverty now than ever before in human history; and that we have not even begun to explore the potential of the tools we already have, let alone those we will have within our lifetimes? Instead, let's just whine that the latest phone update failed to cure a global pandemic and declare this whole 'progress' thing a scam!"

    Intellectual dishonesty on this level is vile and hard to understand. Fortunately, it's also impotent.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      Bravo! +1

    • Every article on the website [thedriftmag.com] is like that. Long winded navel gazing self congratulatory gibberish. Nicely written though. Good spelling, complete sentences, the whole nine yards. Clearly a bunch of professional writers and editors. I wonder who is paying them to produce all that nonsense?

      Oh yeah, there's some Vogon poetry [thedriftmag.com] too.

      • Yeah, seemed pretty suspect. There's usually a political motive when people make that kind of effort to camouflage worthless or malicious opinions: The very thing they were accusing TED Talks of doing.

        That kind of projection makes me suspect some things, but I won't bother mentioning them any further. Once you see that a turd is a turd, the best thing is just to flush it and forget rather than speculating about its features.

  • These idiotic talks of flying machine that have not resulted in any contemporaries soaring around like pigeons. Why, by an elementary back of envelope calculation. human bodies and wood are way too heavy to be propelled by the strength of human muscles. Next some moron is going to propose making so called computers even though metal gears clearly produce too much friction for it to possibly work.

  • It's true and obvious that people put too much faith into the words of tech entrepreneurs, otherwise we wouldn't be able to explain how they still believe anything coming out of Elon Musk's mouth.

    But this article seems to me a fine example of how humanists can spit out fake analyses by chewing words into sequences of non-sequiturs, camouflaged under appeals to emotion and flowery words. They're able to say one thing and the exact opposite without ever sounding wrong.

    People heed tech leaders because, unlike

  • Gates's popular and well-shared TED talk — viewed millions of times — didn't alter the course of history. Neither did any of the other "ideas worth spreading" (the organization's tagline) presented at the TED conference that year — including Monica Lewinsky's massively viral speech about how to stop online bullying through compassion and empathy

    I would expect to measure the results of a talk on bullying based on how effective it is at stopping bullying, not on whether it alters the course of history.

    If you have a single idea that changes history in a decade, then you're actually doing really good. Those ideas don't come often, and TED doesn't claim to have them.

  • Bad title for this post (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ET3D ( 1169851 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @04:40AM (#62242165)

    The article is somewhat interesting. "Propaganda For the Technocracy" is click-bait at best.

    On the subject itself, TED is a public speaking platform. It's a soapbox. It's a place for people to say what they think is wrong and what they think should be done about it. It's popular enough that it attracts the people who want to have that kind of say.

    It's not a scientific conference, it's not peer reviewed, it's just a bunch of reasonably intelligent, reasonably articulate people who want to make their mark, either because they naively think what they say will transform the world, they have a vested interest in pushing what they do, or they just enjoy talking in front of a crowd. It's no different than the multitude of books which will tell you very similar things.

    People should take it as that, interesting ideas that need to be given some critical thought, that might work or might not. I think it's better to have them heard then not have them heard.

    • I wouldn't say it's public since in order to be allowed to give a TED Talk, you need to come from influent universities, and have a PhD or equivalent degree; or be a successful entrepreneur.

      The best way to see it is as a platform for already peer-acknowledged researchers to present their ideas to the general public in terms they may be able to understand. But in order to "bring down" the ideas to the public, they have to make communication choices, which are usually to keep the positive side of their ideas,

  • TED Talks are just a very public symptom of the underlying philosophy of tech solutionism. Much of the criticism is that they're applying tech solutions to what are essentially social & political phenomena. I say phenomena because it's not always clear what 'problem' they're supposed to be solving. The other thing is that much of the time, we already have adequate solutions to already existing problems but there's a lack of interest or will in implementing them adequately, e.g. epidemiological readiness

  • TED shared critical perspectives too (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mrwireless ( 1056688 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @05:48AM (#62242265)

    While I agree with the jist that a lot of TED talks are techno-utopian or spring Silicon Valley's technological-determinist culture, it must be said that many technology critics have shared their stories at TED too.

    Just some random examples:

    - Zeynep Tufekci on data ethics:
    https://www.ted.com/talks/zeyn... [ted.com]

    - Cathy o Neill on Weapons of Math Destruction
    https://www.ted.com/talks/cath... [ted.com]

    - Kevin Slavin very early on exposed how flash trading was transforming cities:
    https://www.ted.com/talks/kevi... [ted.com]

    Heck, there is an entire playlist called "The dark side of Big Data":
    https://www.ted.com/playlists/... [ted.com]

    But indeed, for every one of these critical perspectives there are 5 talks like "Your company's data could help end world hunger".

    In my opinion, an idea TED needs to spread is that critical perspectives are actually more optimistic than naïve techno-utopian stories. In my view there are two types of optimism:
    - "Shalow optimism": believing that a simple, often technological solution eminating from a single field can solve a complex societal problem. E.g. "Poverty? We'll build an app/AI/etc!"
    - "Deep optimism": understanding that complex problems often require boring complex solutions which involve nuanced understanding and imperfect compromise, but still trying to attain that despite the complexity. E.g. fighting climate change will take combined efforts to create new regulation, new norms, new (geo-)politics and yes, new tech, and it will all have to interlock. It's.. complex.

    TED's format, with short punchy videos, is designed for shallow optimism. Instead of propaganda, which implies intent, I'd call it catnip. We WANT, we NEED to believe that simple solutions are just around the corner. TED hooks into that.

    In the end TED is a symptom of a bigger problem, the wide spread of the sugar-coated shallow-optimism of the Californian Ideology which started in the 90's and took over the western world. Neo-liberalist right wing ideas about deregulation and decentralisation sugar coated in left-wing hippie tech idealism about community and sharing.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • In the end TED is a symptom of a bigger problem, the wide spread of the sugar-coated shallow-optimism of the Californian Ideology which started in the 90's and took over the western world.

      It's way better than the European concept of elitism.

  • Some TED talks are awesome and some suck balls.

  • The question the article should be asking is not why TED Talk ideas fail to materialize, but rather why society refuses - or takes so long - to adopt new ideas.

    This is a longstanding problem, not something new with TED Talks. Why did it take 25 years for society to recognize the value of the Internet? Why did it take society three years to recognize the value of the smart phone?

    And the problem goes beyond the realm of technology. Why did it take five years for people in the U.S. that the Iraq War was a mis

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      Why did it take 25 years for society to recognize the value of the Internet?"

      Because the vast majority of the population didn't even own computers (and they were fucking expensive), and there was no content. And even now, the "value" of the Internet is constantly changing with new ideas. Like a fine wine, it needed to age.

      Why did it take society three years to recognize the value of the smart phone?

      Because people were perfectly content with their flip phones (and smart phones were fucking expensive).

      Why did it take five years for people in the U.S. that the Iraq War was a mistake?

      How long does it take anyone to change their opinion and admit they were wrong? Many believed what we were sold, WMDs. It was a lie that wasn't apparent to ma

  • That's what great ideas usually devolve into. There is an increasing number of morons, fools, and clueless people who believe that they should be in charge regardless of the fact that they've never had a good idea themselves and when they are in charge they eff it up but find a way to deflect responsibility.

  • No. (Score:2)

    by PJ6 ( 1151747 )
    We are indeed at the culmination of a varied, decades-old PR campaign against democracy and our public institutions, at least here in the US. Of course it'll have its tendrils in everything, especially where there's money. Some talks will be a part of that. Nothing wrong with the format itself.

    All (or most?) of us here are technophiles, and that's who it's aimed at. You've watched Star Trek, right? Ugh, not the new ones. And enjoyed it? We all share this dream of a better future, part of that being throug

  • TED == "secular mega-church service" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Miamicanes ( 730264 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @11:31AM (#62242817)

    The most insightful description I've seen for TED talks was one that described them as being like secular megachurch services.

    * Entertainment & intellectual stimulation by charismatic, gifted speaker delivering message that resonates with the audience? Check.

    * Public gathering of like-minded individuals who mutually reinforce their sense of superiority over the unwashed masses? Check.

    In this context, TED's appeal to its audience makes total sense.

  • Technology companies offer solutions to our problems, and TED talks propose adopting such technologies in specified ways. Nothing forces us to adopt either the technologies or the adoption proposals. Those are a matter of politics, and experience. Bill Gates offered sound advice about pandemics and developing vaccines. If we don't adopt technology and implementation plans that work, or use the occasional bad idea (Theranos! Theranos! Theranos!) as an excuse for never trying one of the good ideas, it's our o

  • TED Talks, just one more way for those in the elite in our society to tell us how to live our lives. Until they come down to my level and walk a mile in my shoes, they have no right to tell me how to live my life. They can go f**k off for all I care.

  • TED is porn for the gee-whizzers.

  • In an era when populism is screwing *everything* up, we should appreciate technocrats.

    Doesn't mean we should appreciate TED, which is a mixed bag in terms of whether the ideas are actually solid, and often pretend that big ideas rather than competent "doing the work" is the most important thing. But technocracy is not a slur.

  • Buying a huge specialty wrench set isn't going to turn you into a mechanic, unless you actually learn how to select and use them, all it's going to do is clutter your house up.

    For the same reason it's unrealistic to think sitting through a TED talk will transform an ordinary audience member into some kind leader/innovator. But it can sure feel that way, because we're herd animals that tend to attribute profound significance to group experiences.

    But that doesn't make them *bad*. At worst they're transientl

  • We all know that news pivoted to entertaining instead of informing because it was more profitable. TED talks are not really much different. It's not about what's effective or what's "good", it's simply about what's popular. This is the modern world of media and social media has taken it further. Somewhere along the way we started believing that mere engagement was all that was required to indicate that we were doing something right. If you get more likes, more views, more ad revenue then you're doing a good

  • The article doesn't emphasis enough the fact that TED and TEDx are not the same organization.

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