
Why I'm Fed Up with TED - cawel
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2008/tc20080229_565550.htm
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mechanical_fish
Look, I'm all in favor of opening up opportunities to more people, but let's
get real: TED excludes people because the concept doesn't scale, not because
it's run by elitists.

An open admissions policy would turn TED into something the size of Burning
Man. Everyone would pile into the Rose Bowl, you'd get to "meet" the
celebrities through binoculars, it would rapidly become even more of a
scripted mass-market public event than it is now, and it would scare away many
of the real celebrities, who would promptly go and invent TED II as a
completely private, members-only meeting which we would never hear much about.
You know, like Davos.

Instead of complaining about how TED isn't completely open, one should be
giving thanks that it isn't completely closed.

I'm reminded of Richard Feynman's stories about how impossible it was to give
a physics seminar after he won the Nobel Prize. If he scheduled a seminar
under his own name, half the city would show up, it would get moved to a huge
auditorium, and he would have to abandon his plan to discuss the tricky
details of quantum electrodynamics with his peers and give a popular talk
instead, because he couldn't bear to bore 95% of his audience to death.
Feynman experimented with giving talks under a pseudonym, but found that this
just made people angry when they found out, later -- there had been a
_Nobelist_ in town, and they didn't know, and they hadn't been invited!

~~~
ldambra
Sure, but the money criteria is not relevant when you want to select people
for their quality. The people that history remembers over centuries are more
than often people that were not very wealthy during their lives because they
were too much ahead of their times and as such : misunderstood.

But I agree the journalist's rant is poor because it doesn't ask the good
questions. An invite-only conference is not a problematic concept. Having
money as a criteria is, because it conveys the idea that intesteresting people
and "thinkers of tommorow" are necessarily wealthy. History makes this
assumption very questionable.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Who said that TED was selecting people primarily for "quality"? (If they say
so, which I'm not sure they do, it's purely sales pitch.)

It's obvious to me that TED is, by design or by accident, an invite-only
conference for people who tend to be rich. The fact that it's famous is just a
side effect of that: if you invite _one_ celebrity to a meeting, you'll get
some press coverage; if you invite several hundred celebrities you'll get a
_slew_ of press coverage.

The fact that TED is full of smart people giving smart talks is also a side
effect of the guest list: smart people are drawn to present at TED for the
same reason that Willie Sutton was drawn to rob banks: that's where the money
is. Convincing, say, Bill Gates that your work is interesting is a pretty
darned good way to advance your work, especially if the press is there, and
even if he doesn't pay you a massive fee for the speech -- which, for all I
know, TED does.

(I don't mean to imply that rich people are nothing but walking piles of money
-- although, if they were, many of us would still gladly talk to them. Many
people are rich for a reason! Bill Gates is nobody's fool. Rumor has it that
Larry and Sergey are kind of smart. And other people make use of their wealth
to become very expert in one thing or another: money buys a lot of education
and research. Al Gore didn't rise through the ranks of the climate scientists,
but he's talked to one hell of a lot of them.)

If you want to talk to poor, misunderstood, trained "thinkers of tomorrow"
with interesting ideas, go to any local university and you'll find several
hundred. I should know. Shouldn't we hold conferences for these poor,
misunderstood thinkers? We do! There's _thousands_ of academic conferences
every year. There are three going on right now in your town. You just don't
know about them, because the cameras are pointing at TED.

I don't think it's a crime for rich people to hold a private invite-only
meeting. (Whether or not they should be allowed to make binding, enforceable
political decisions about my life in such a meeting is a completely different
question.) I'm glad that, at this particular rich-person's meeting, they
decide to invite scientists and technologists and great artists, instead of
concentrating entirely on polo ponies and booze. And I'm glad that they film a
lot of the meeting and release those films for free.

~~~
ldambra
We're obviously not talking about the same thing. Are the speakers invited for
free or they must pay as well ? I was talking about the guys who make the
speeches, not the general audience. I think I just realized that the talkers
are really invited and do not pay anything. It makes more sense indeed :)

~~~
aston
The speakers don't pay for their ticket, so it's similar to a $6k paycheck,
assuming you actually wanted to go to TED.

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iamwil
Presumably, someone at TED brought up this very point, and the solution was to
put the lectures online. Doing that put inspiring lectures in front of more
people than possible by expanding the conference.

You might talk about the perk of being at Google is eating free food by great
chefs, even though the actual reason you work there is because you want to
work on great things with great people. In the same way, of course you're are
going to twitter about bono and al gore being there, even though the real
reason you're there is to see what people on the forefront of technology,
entertainment, and design are doing, and do something about it in whatever way
you can.

It's not that people don't want to talk about why they're actually there, but
it's far easier to talk to someone else about perks rather than core reason.
That sends the wrong message to those like the writer that feels outcast.

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neilk
I'm fed up with the titles and theme music at the beginning of TED videos.
They're almost violently smug. The orchestral crescendo tries to give you a
heart attack, like it was the return of Jesus Christ, and then it cuts to some
wonk giving a PowerPoint presentation.

~~~
vsingh
So what if they're smug? _We're_ smug - wasn't it only a little while ago that
reddit was excoriating us for being a bunch of smug, elitist bastards? And we
replied, "Yeah! That's the point!"

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neilk
"We"? I don't recall saying anything.

People who comment on a site aren't members of some gang. Although it seems
that all social news sites are eventually overwhelmed by people who think so.

~~~
vsingh
Notwithstanding your objection to my use of poetic license, let me refocus: I
argue your revulsion of TED's smugness is similar to other people's revulsion
of our culture here. I once said:

"It surprises me that people can indict others with the adjective 'holier-
than-thou' and not feel ashamed of themselves. The word screams, 'I'm going to
bring you down to my level!'"

Smug, holier-than-thou, arrogant, self-righteous: one can easily inflict these
words on pg for unashamedly littering his essays with references to Leonardo
da Vinci and Jane Austen and Copernicus and Kelly Johnson. At times I've felt
put off by the way he does this, but I'm rational enough to know this emotion
- the emotion that coerces us to prevent our fellow apes from rising above
their proper place - is wrong, at least in this case.

So what if TED is smug? They deserve to be - many of their videos are really,
truly interesting. As an example, I recently enjoyed the one on African Aid:
<http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/159>. I'll warn you in advance
that he's a very captivating speaker - it's hard to stop watching after you've
begun.

~~~
neilk
Thanks for the link, it was an interesting talk.

I think you're reading more into what I wrote than I intended. I enjoy a lot
of their content and I've seen a lot of their videos. That's why I am so
annoyed with the opening. I click it and go, oh crap, not this thing again.
Fast forward!

~~~
vsingh
Heh. Fair. I guess I did overreact a bit to your comment. :)

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noonespecial
I like the TED video where they invited the guy from the completely dirt-poor
African village to talk about building a windmill out of scrap bicycle
parts... What must he have been thinking while talking to all of those super-
rich who could buy his whole village like it was a candy bar from a vending
machine as he recounted scrounging enough rusty bicycle parts to pump water
and keep villagers from dying of cholera?

I'm sure they were thinking this made them all "global" and "in touch" or
something. I think they were treating the poor guy like a curious little pet.

Here it is: <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/153>

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wheels
I personally just dig that they've got some great talks that are up with
Creative Commons licenses. I appreciate the conference even if only for the
fact that I think they've got some important ideas that are being preserved in
an open format.

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jcwentz
What makes TED obnoxious is that they market it so heavily (all those videos)
but exclude most people. It's fine to have private conferences, and fine to
promote conferences, but it is nasty to do both.

~~~
neilc
I agree that the ads at the beginning of the TED videos are annoying, but
overall I don't think TED is particularly heavily marketed. And I think it is
hard to complain when they are distributing free videos of pretty much all the
conference talks.

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ojbyrne
Sarah Lacey wrote the puff-piece we've all seen on digg, and was quite
amenable to leaving founder no. 3 out of the picture. So from my heart, I just
want to say... she can go f*ck herself.

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danw
Wasn't it this kind of reaction to FooCamp what lead to BarCamp being created?
Don't complain about it, fix it. Sure the celebrity component of TED can't be
replicated but there are still lots of smart people who can help figure out
how to make the world better.

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edw519
Here's an idea: Watch TED on the internet like the rest of us and give the
$6000 to the worthy cause of your choice. Then you would be DOING the message
while the others are TALKING about it.

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kirubakaran
Hey do you have links for the especially good ones saved somewhere?

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edw519
I've always just gone here

<http://www.ted.com/index.php>

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cawel
I was happy to read that one. And see that I was not the only one who's
noticed the contradiction in TED: promoting innovation and educational
projects (for example in Africa) but limiting its audience to a very few
carefully-picked (rich (6k/seat)) VIP's.

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jlhamilton
The BIL conference (<http://bilconference.com>) is being held in Monterey
after TED as a free alternative. They had to cap attendance at 150 though.
Some of the scheduled talks look interesting.

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Prrometheus
If only there was a room with infinite seating...

Oh wait. There is. It's called "the internet", and TED is there.

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ldambra
Was any Paul around here invited ?

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rms
Can't anyone who pays the $6000/year membership fee get in?

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a-priori
No, it's invite-only, and they only invite 1000 people.

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rms
I think it was changed for the upcoming conference, but I may be
misinterpreting it. It seems like there was a one week period when they let
anyone become a member in January 2008, for the 2009 conference. After that,
registration was closed and presumably celebs can still get in. But if you had
$6000 during that one week period, you could get in. This is in contrast to
the previous conferences where you needed an invite to get a floor pass.

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motoko
Elitism? In my America? No...

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mynameishere
Limited seating arrangements? In my America? No...

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thomasswift
if i recall the ze frank speech was pretty good, no link sorry.

