Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Thursday, May 17, 2012

TED Squawk

I'm glad that the relentlessly awful TED Talk scam is being criticized for once (for example, here and here) rather than being endlessly blandly robotically praised by well-heeled techno-fetishistic liberals together with the usual suspects among the elite techno-utopian corporate-militarist set. I regret that TED is not being criticized for pretending that sales pitches are a substitute for teaching, for pretending that marketing gizmos is a substitute for political activism, and for pretending that neoliberalism is a substitute for liberalism. Here's hoping the more sensible progressives among the techno-fetishists have woken up long enough to notice what's really wrong with the liber-techian world of TED.

2 comments:

jollyspaniard said...

It was different five years ago, especially if you went through the older talks. I still browse through it on ocassion there's a good talk but it's definitely become a Venture Capitalists circle jerk and all the early TED enthusiasts I know feel that way as well.

jollyspaniard said...

Anderson released the controversial talk that was a "rehash" of something being said daily in the mainstream media. It's actually quite good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI&feature=player_embedded