TED (Technology, Education, Design): A Skeptical Look (ASL)

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If any of my readers has not yet seen a video from the organization called TED, they most certainly should.  The few I have seen appear to be well-designed presentations of ideas that promise good things for the future.  It is upbeat, optimistic, in contrast to the depressing onslaught of news and opinion that we get from most sources.  The most important thing we can do before we can even begin to try to make the world a better place is to believe that it can be a better place.  So TED seems to be a good source of optimism.

But less forgiving eyes than mine have been scrutinizing TED, and this is being reported by my blogging friend Mano Singham.  The first question that was raised (see Alex Pareene) was: exactly who actually attends these talks?  When you watch the videos, you realize that it is an extremely supportive audience.  This is not surprising because it is a hand-picked audience of immensely wealthy people, who pay an enormous fee to attend the gatherings (around $7,500).  So the TED presentations are made in a cocoon of expensive financial and warmly emotional support.  There are no nay-sayers and demonstrators outside the doors of TED, and on the face of it, we can only complain about the enormous wealth of the attendees, and the exclusivity of TED, which must all stick in the throats of committed anti-elitists.

Does the world really need a place in which for super-rich optimists may gather, in what Alex Pareene suggests is an orgy of self-congratulation?

It really is rather obnoxious.  But let me play the devil's advocate.  Firstly, these people (as the article explains in gruesome detail, using concepts and terminology from Aldous Huxley) have no real power; they are not the super rich.  They are a very wealthy second-tier, economically.  Conferences such as those sponsored by TED sustain the hopes of these rich idealists (Alex Pareene says) that they can make a difference.

While I completely appreciate the cynicism of Alex Pareene's views, I wonder whether it is entirely a bad thing that these TED fans, called "Betas" by him, encourage each other to keep a positive attitude about the future, and how it can be saved from disaster by Technology.

Now, it seems fairly certain that if the future is to be saved, the means to do it will come from technology.  I don't see us saving the planet (or the future, whichever you choose to call it) with our bare hands.  Further, since it is equally certain that most initiatives that could have an impact on the future will entail a great deal of resources, we proletariats are certainly not in a position to bankroll it.  The true Ruling Class (or the Alphas, as Huxley would term them) are certainly not about to give their wealth to save the world (except in certain isolated instances).  So if the so-called Betas want to gather in Aspen, and listen to geniuses while they swill champagne, it is fine by me.  Once you get as old as I am, you tend to cast a tolerant eye on the innocent pleasures of people, no matter how misguided.

Unfortunately, as Mano Singham's blog highlights Alex P. as saying,

The model for your standard TED talk is a late-period Malcolm Gladwell book chapter. Common tropes include:

• Drastically oversimplified explanations of complex problems.

• Technologically utopian solutions to said complex problems.

• Unconventional (and unconvincing) explanations of the origins of said complex problems. 

• Staggeringly obvious observations presented as mind-blowing new insights.

Though I believe this scathing diatribe is a trifle hyperbolic, it is easy to see why a good percentage of TED presentations are mere re-formulations --albeit in an entertaining new form-- of well-known explanations of problems, for the sake of those in the audience who might not be as super-bright as they think they are.  Indeed, TED is all about edutainment.  Still, this is what a teacher in this new age has to do: present well-known information to those who still have not seen the Memo, in arresting new ways.  I'm reminded of a Monty Python episode in which the 'guest' on a children's TV club tells how to Rid the World of All Known Diseases.

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