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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
(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.
>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.
> [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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
> "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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
> 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!
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] andr|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] JonnieCache|12 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] josu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vanderZwan|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_...
[+] [-] xixi77|12 years ago|reply
The OP itself is as good example of a "self-promoting psychobabble-spouting android" as it gets.
[+] [-] simonsarris|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kgermino|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nether|12 years ago|reply
The Onion originated online actually. The print edition was mostly an experiment.
[+] [-] freyr|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tfgg|12 years ago|reply
> 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|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|12 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] api|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unsui|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] po|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ama729|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] streptomycin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xixi77|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] my3681|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Crito|12 years ago|reply
I do not believe this is clear when you consider the phenomenon of pseudoscience being presented under the TED brand as "TEDx".
[+] [-] memracom|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] api|12 years ago|reply
That's setting the bar pretty low.
[+] [-] stdbrouw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makomk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmrfrmrf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sliverstorm|12 years ago|reply
(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)
[+] [-] stiff|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ignostic|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
"Real science that is easy to understand" tends to be shallow and hard to distinguish from sales pitches, fantasy, and lies.
[+] [-] frozenport|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaiwen1|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makomk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcv|12 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] gilgoomesh|12 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)#TEDx
[+] [-] davidgerard|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nailer|12 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbtl0Q81igc
[+] [-] panacea|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wavefunction|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melling|12 years ago|reply
"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?
[+] [-] binocarlos|12 years ago|reply
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'.
[+] [-] wavefunction|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] brown9-2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|12 years ago|reply
-- 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.
[+] [-] cjoh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethbannon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knowuh|12 years ago|reply
As for " middlebrow megachurch infotainment." – just trolling for eyeballs.