This hits the nail on the head on so many levels. (And maybe that's enough; maybe the college-educated need their megachurches as well).
Like megachurches, TED offers highly-produced "public speaking as entertainment", but the purported content of the talks isn't entertainment, but $SERIOUS_ISSUE being told to you by $PERSON_WHO_KNOWS_BEST.
This grates because TED events are inherently artificial; everyone knows that they're there to be entertained, despite the trappings of importance. Contrast with political speech, which is (usually) ugly, but has the solidity that comes from serving real (if often equally ugly) purposes.
Once might say, hang on -- what's so bad about public speaking at TED and megachurches? What's the difference between TED/megachurches and, say, standup comedy, or storytelling, or politics?
The difference is both 1) honesty, and 2) the role of the audience.
Honesty: Speech at TED or a megachurch comes with almost suffocating trappings of weight and import. In contrast, storytelling and standup and all sorts of ordinary entertainment are much more honest and down-to-earth: they don't claim to present anything more than a good yarn, some ear-tickling.
Audience: In both TED and megachurches, their audience does not expect to think critically, or to in any way hold the speaker to account. They do not expect to ply the speaker with questions later. In contrast, the audience keeps standup comics honest and can turn on them viciously; and politics invites constant comment and criticism from all quarters, of a kind that mostly keeps politicians from indulging in extravagant and exalted speech that could distance them from the everyman.
Could we make it more honest? That's tough without making TED itself have more of a functional purpose than just entertainment. The world does need exploration and discovery and curated content, but TED's format is clearly "preaching as entertainment", not discussion, and not journalism. It's like a Church devoted to episodes of "The Price Is Right".
But apart from TED developing its own 'platform' for change in the world and becoming a more functional organization, to go along with the views it invites ... as a thought experiment, I can imagine for instance having 2 experts on the same subject, each presenting it through their own lens. This would complicate preaching tremendously and keep it much more honest, but it would probably be far more instructive and nourishing to the audience.
TED speakers do take questions from the people in the audience and there is a comments section on the TED website, videos usually get lots of discussion.
Some nice things about TED/TEDx:
* They have made intellectual talks "cool".
* Video equivalent of a Scientific American article.
* Encourages people to give short entertaining talks instead of 40 min powerpoint "presentations".
* With TEDx anyone has the opportunity to get onto the TED website.
People on HN complain about the crazy cost of attending a TED conference, but this is just a networking/conspicuous-consumption event for rich people -- is that any different than $10k charity dinners?
I think, boiled down, that it's purely the exalted tone at TED talks that really grates on me (and it seems a good number of others). Intellectual talks may not have always been cool, but they rarely used to sound like preaching.
> middlebrow megachurch infotainment
This hits the nail on the head on so many levels. (And maybe that's enough; maybe the college-educated need their megachurches as well).
Like megachurches, TED offers highly-produced "public speaking as entertainment", but the purported content of the talks isn't entertainment, but $SERIOUS_ISSUE being told to you by $PERSON_WHO_KNOWS_BEST.
This grates because TED events are inherently artificial; everyone knows that they're there to be entertained, despite the trappings of importance. Contrast with political speech, which is (usually) ugly, but has the solidity that comes from serving real (if often equally ugly) purposes.
Once might say, hang on -- what's so bad about public speaking at TED and megachurches? What's the difference between TED/megachurches and, say, standup comedy, or storytelling, or politics?
The difference is both 1) honesty, and 2) the role of the audience.
Honesty: Speech at TED or a megachurch comes with almost suffocating trappings of weight and import. In contrast, storytelling and standup and all sorts of ordinary entertainment are much more honest and down-to-earth: they don't claim to present anything more than a good yarn, some ear-tickling.
Audience: In both TED and megachurches, their audience does not expect to think critically, or to in any way hold the speaker to account. They do not expect to ply the speaker with questions later. In contrast, the audience keeps standup comics honest and can turn on them viciously; and politics invites constant comment and criticism from all quarters, of a kind that mostly keeps politicians from indulging in extravagant and exalted speech that could distance them from the everyman.
Could we make it more honest? That's tough without making TED itself have more of a functional purpose than just entertainment. The world does need exploration and discovery and curated content, but TED's format is clearly "preaching as entertainment", not discussion, and not journalism. It's like a Church devoted to episodes of "The Price Is Right".
But apart from TED developing its own 'platform' for change in the world and becoming a more functional organization, to go along with the views it invites ... as a thought experiment, I can imagine for instance having 2 experts on the same subject, each presenting it through their own lens. This would complicate preaching tremendously and keep it much more honest, but it would probably be far more instructive and nourishing to the audience.