[ExI] Critics view of TED lectures

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Tue Dec 31 10:54:32 UTC 2013


We need to talk about TED

Science, philosophy and technology run on the model of American Idol –
as embodied by TED talks – is a recipe for civilisational disaster

<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/30/we-need-to-talk-about-ted>

Quotes:
Have you ever wondered why so little of the future promised in TED
talks actually happens? 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?
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The key rhetorical device for TED talks is a combination of epiphany
and personal testimony (an "epiphimony" if you like ) through which
the speaker shares a personal journey of insight and realisation, its
triumphs and tribulations.

What is it that the TED audience hopes to get from this? A vicarious
insight, a fleeting moment of wonder, an inkling that maybe it's all
going to work out after all? A spiritual buzz?

I'm sorry but this fails to meet the challenges that we are supposedly
here to confront. These are complicated and difficult and are not
given to tidy just-so solutions. They don't care about anyone's
experience of optimism. Given the stakes, making our best and
brightest waste their time – and the audience's time – dancing like
infomercial hosts is too high a price. It is cynical.

Also, it just doesn't work.
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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.

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.
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Problems are not "puzzles" to be solved. That metaphor assumes that
all the necessary pieces are already on the table, they just need to
be rearranged and reprogrammed. It's not true.

"Innovation" defined as moving the pieces around and adding more
processing power is not some Big Idea that will disrupt a broken
status quo: that precisely is the broken status quo.
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BillK




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