The article is full of bold assertions with no (or inadquate) evidence:
"TED is not simply “engaging” and “entertaining” but a specific type of entertainment that is increasingly out of touch and exclusionary."
How do you measure "out of touch and exclusionary"?
"At first, I thought I was laughing alone; however, it turns out that lots of other people are equally unimpressed by the current state of TED. From the feedback I’ve received, I’m not the only one who does not take TED very seriously or worse, views the whole project as suspect."
Wow so people who follow you agree with you. Shocker.
"So many of the TED talks take on the form of those famous patent medicine tonic cure-all pitches of previous centuries, as though they must convince you not through the content of what’s being said but through the hyper-engaging style of the delivery."
Really? Which ones?
"TED attempts to present itself as fresh, cutting edge, and outside the box but often fails to deliver. It’s become the Urban Outfitters of the ideas world, finding “cool” concepts suitable for being packaged and sold to the masses, thereby extinguishing the “cool” in the process. Cutting-edge ideas not carrying the Apple-esque branding are difficult to find."
As measured by ???
"At TED, “everyone is Steve Jobs” and every idea is treated like an iPad."
I've learned over time that when people start making universal assertions like this, they're usually lacking in data but full of shit.
The article is clearly not substantiated. Personnally, I avoid treating TED as a whole, because the quality can vary from one speaker to another, from one topic to the next. It's not always consistent, it's not always cutting-edge, it's not always new. TED's promise is to deliver "ideas worth sharing", but not all of them can fit that description. This being said, they still do a pretty good job to keep the quality high.
The ironic thing was most of the people he cited as agreeing with him basically didn't, or agreed that TEDx was crap (which is a separate argument from TED).
I for one agree that articles like this need a lot more support to be influential. I wish that Hacker News would focus more on technical things, but who am I to judge? I read the post and now I'm even commenting on it. :)
"TED is not simply “engaging” and “entertaining” but a specific type of entertainment that is increasingly out of touch and exclusionary."
How do you measure "out of touch and exclusionary"?
"At first, I thought I was laughing alone; however, it turns out that lots of other people are equally unimpressed by the current state of TED. From the feedback I’ve received, I’m not the only one who does not take TED very seriously or worse, views the whole project as suspect."
Wow so people who follow you agree with you. Shocker.
"So many of the TED talks take on the form of those famous patent medicine tonic cure-all pitches of previous centuries, as though they must convince you not through the content of what’s being said but through the hyper-engaging style of the delivery."
Really? Which ones?
"TED attempts to present itself as fresh, cutting edge, and outside the box but often fails to deliver. It’s become the Urban Outfitters of the ideas world, finding “cool” concepts suitable for being packaged and sold to the masses, thereby extinguishing the “cool” in the process. Cutting-edge ideas not carrying the Apple-esque branding are difficult to find."
As measured by ???
"At TED, “everyone is Steve Jobs” and every idea is treated like an iPad."
I've learned over time that when people start making universal assertions like this, they're usually lacking in data but full of shit.