TED, or the perfect display of what public speaking is today: that is, getting some kind of Tony Robbins on stage, who wont be shy of using the same tricks they learnt at some toaster club, to inspire and wow a crowd that's actually more here to enjoy their charisma rather than their ideas. TED is the absolute evidence that the powerpointization of ideas is in its terminal stage.
True that, which is sad, because charisma can legitimately lower the difficulty of understanding complex ideas; think of your best teachers/favorite professors. I wish TED was filled with more Richard Feynman (charisma * ideas) and less Tony Robbins (charisma % ideas).
I'm not sure that Feynman is the best example here. In fact, in my experience, he's actually more of an example of the problem than the solution. While Feynman does a great job of explaining concepts if you never need to use them, I always found his lectures to be of the "captivating until you try to use them" variety.
This wasn't just my experience either -- after struggling with this as a physics undergrad for a while (after all, they're supposed to help!) I started asking around. My academic advisor, several other professors, and many students felt the same way. Feynman may get closer -- or may do more to bring common understanding to complex principles -- but his approach broke down for actually learning to /do physics/.
But I'll agree that he's a major step in the right direction; I just want to caution against the hero worship. There's no magic formula, no one person, who can make learning complex concepts easier. Some things are hard, and trying to make them seem easier can easily make them more confusing in practice.
That was a fantastic post, thank you for sharing. Ironically, while affirming the view I held above, it also makes me think I should -- maybe -- give them another chance now that I'm well along in graduate school as opposed to a struggling undergrad.
I think you should. I had a similar experience with Feynman. Who spoke with assuming a certain level of familarity but with an engaging style that let your brain skip right over what it didn't really understand. Re-reading his lectures on physics and the papers on computation, post college, was a much deeper experience than reading him in High School. Even though I enjoyed both times tremendously.
Robert Leighton: "Feynman has a peculiar property, which is that at the time he's explaining something, it appears very clear and transparent--you can see how everything fits, and you go away feeling very good about it, as if, "Well, there's a lot of loose ends there that I want to follow up on; but boy, wasn't that great!" And about two hours later, like what they say about Chinese food, it's all gone and you're hungry again. And you don't remember what happened.[0]
I have read his QED book many times and I experience the same clarity when reading as you mention. Then later I lose that and am able to re-read it with the same enthusiasm I had the first time. So that property does have its advantages. (grin)
BTW, I have this same experience with many other science books for laypeople. It is very possible that I do understand them while reading but then I am unable to remember the complex thoughts.
Perhaps I'm nitpicking but charisma gets people to listen, that's it.
It is not related to the quality of the content.
The problem with Tony Robbins is he's mister positive and only focused on personal improvement. These are enormous constraints that ignore the bigger picture.
Feynman is great at explaining physics because it's not wishy washy - it is also really not that interesting past the cute basics, sooner or later you have to put in the hard work.
TED is fundamentally flawed because things worth knowing - cannot all be politically correct and positive.
Once you constrain yourself to being Mr/Ms Positive only, you end up being a delusional asshole because you are denying a big chunk of life any attention.
There is no fixing TED as a result - it's more interested in money than truth.
As are most people, hence why we are where we are :)
My friend paid $5500 to go to a Tony Robbins seminar in Florida last fall- in addition to flights from SF, hotels, food, etc. She walked on coals and got to take some cool selfies with various people. When she came home, she was 7k poorer and I asked her what they talked about. She raved about the "experience" but didn't seem like she'd garnered any real insights other than to be positive and the same old The Secret garbage of visualizing the life you want. imo she should have used that 7k to chip away at her 60k debt in student loans.
I view Tony Robbins as a mystery - because I just can't quite figure him out.
He's rich so he doesn't have to continue. He seems genuine.
And yet, his overall message seems to largely be 'YEAH, YOU CAN DO IT! WOO!'
Just take massive action baby! Baby steps, start small, build, iterate, you can do it!
I am still not sure what the content is or if his presentation is a massive distraction.
That I can't quite tell what his overall point is worries me, and yet I can't believe that he's full of shit. So he's trying to do a good thing, he is succeeding in terms of money but maybe not so much in terms of actual results...
I don't know, Tony is a mystery remaining to be solved.
Those going to his seminars - I think they're just misguided. The steps to fix your life are not at a seminar, they're in improving your life, one step at a time. It's a life decision to strive for excellence. If you haven't come to that point and you're 30, it is probably too late.
If you have come to that point and you're 30, you don't need Tony's help.
So who's he really helping but the blow-hards who want to be 'inspirational' like him?
He's rich so he doesn't have to continue. He seems genuine.
I don't think the fact that he is rich and continues to work lets him off the hook. He may have simply deluded himself in the course of his touring. I think the thing we should challenge him on is whether or not he's thinking critically about what he's doing with his life. Indeed, this is what we should all be challenging ourselves on.
Self-deception is an extremely easy trap to fall into. The fact that it could happen to anybody is the reason we shouldn't let people off the hook for it. In my view, the way to truly respect somebody as a human being is to be willing to challenge them when you believe they're committing self-deception.
> I view Tony Robbins as a mystery - because I just can't quite figure him out.
The same is true for typical internet marketer stuff "I teach you the secret to start your own business".
Once you're on the hook, it becomes about them and not about you or your goals anymore. Now you wonder if they truly possess that secret to a better life they claim to have.
You try their stuff, read more, buy more and always wonder if it's their process that's flawed or merely your imperfect execution.
A friend of mine did the same seminar, the thing that you get is positive belief in yourself to conquer anything. This may wane, but if you are down on yourself, Tony Robbins will turn you around.
This is exactly my thoughts on what's wrong with TED.
It's not in the pursuit of the truth. Therefore, it's in the pursuit of status.
You can see this among those who wave around TED talks they have seen as some kind of currency. "Oh have you seen the TED talk about Y? It's so amazing!"
But also, by their nature, the talks cant dive deep. People are there to be amused and kind of learn, but real education is difficult. TED isn't difficult.
Their manner of speaking reminds me of American Dad making fun of Ira Glass. Why is pausing??! Doesn't he know what he's going to say next??? AAAAHH. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUvQdoOEDGw
is that he's peddling dangerously wrong beliefs to gullible rubes.
A coworker came back from one his events telling me all sorts of fruity crap. Like how the germ theory for disease is bunk. So apparently I gave myself cancer with negative thoughts (blame the victim).
That flipped my bozo bit for Tony Robbins.
I love gifted, charismatic, motivational speakers. Sometimes called leaders or actors or politicians. But they shouldn't profit from causing others harm.
It is pompous entertainment. But then again, I can't help but think of what else a modern conference can be but that.
There's a programming conference in my city, a thousand bucks a ticket.
All the videos are going to be put online afterwards. Why would I spend a thousand dollars for the privilege of sitting through them with no ability to fast forward?
'Networking' and all that bullshit right? As if we can't organize people to come hang out at a pub with everyone paying their tab at the end of the night?
>It is pompous entertainment. But then again, I can't help but think of what else a modern conference can be but that.
Huh. now, I've only been to technical conferences, for open source operating systems, but the only 'charismatic speakers' you get stay on the sales floor where they belong. I suspect that there is an inverse relationship between the specialized knowledge of the conference attendees and the 'charisma' required of the speakers.
so, i have a speaking engagement at a local TEDx event next weekend. I think my topic is both interesting and educational, and the way its presented will (hopefully) get people thinking about the subject in a new way. what do i do? cancel?
I think the point is there's a very low signal:noise ratio when it comes to TEDx talks. Do your topic and knock it out of the park. It should raise the aggregate quality of available talks.
If nothing else, it's practice and exposure for you. If your talk's truly worthwhile, you've raised the value proposition for others. If it fits the mold, well, there's that then.
I am a troll at heart, but over the last few months i've become friends with the event organizers. As much as trolling would be fun, I feel it would be a betrayal of their trust.
Why cancel? Even if it's true that people come for charisma rather than ideas, it's still an honour that people want to hear you speak.
Personally, I consider TED a form of high quality entertainment, and while I don't think it's changing the world, I do have a lot of respect for the people giving talks.
If I could talk like the people at TED, and was invited to speak about a topic dear to me, there's no way I'd turn down the offer.
I don't think this is a new phenomenon, or that there's any reason to suspect it's getting worse. As long as charisma works people will use it, even if they have nothing useful to say.
Some of their speakers are just talking out of their ass. There was a woman on TED Radio Hour a few weeks back who was going on and on about how it's so bad that we bury the bodies when people die, and we should instead dress our dead in some mushroom spore infused garbs she's trying to sell. Having a brain of my own, I was like "Lady, do you realize that each of these bodies has produced an enormous mountain of waste in their lifetime? Several tons of shit alone, not to mention garbage, CO2, etc etc". Add to that the fact that those "pollution eating mushrooms" can't really do anything ordinary soil can't do. They can't convert heavy metals to unicorn tears, sorry folks. The stuff dead bodies will release when they decompose matters not one iota. And yet someone in TED approved her participation, and people paid $8K to see this inane drivel. WTF?
I was going to respectfully disagree, assuming this speaker was instead referring to larger things about changing the culture of death. But then I actually skimmed the video, and she really is just saying that we shouldn't bury because our bodies house natural toxins. It's pretty silly. I would say that the organizers recognize her getting the stage was a mistake... :)
What's your evidence that a person's decomposing body is particularly more toxic to the environment than, say, their bodily effluents?
Going for natural decomposition doesn't seem much worse to me than cremation and ash-scattering, and it seems way better than pickling them and burying them in a coffin.
TED is now a full-blown lifestyle company like GoPro or Whole Foods, except instead of one or two celebrity endorsements, they gain a new implicit endorsement every time they book a new speaker. franchising TEDx was a brilliant move; first, for the casual consumer, TED content (by people like Bill Gates) is confounded with TEDx content from some local idiot. from a valuation point of view this increases your average ad rates. line/brand extension, this is marketing 101. TED jumped the shark a long time ago when they started having poetry readings and shit.
> What I ask myself when confronted with any TED talk is this: why do they all sound the same?
...
> TED’s is the language and tone of the pitch. It’s a style that comes from corporate conference rooms, where product ideas are pitched to potential investors. It’s the fundraiser’s speech. You cannot sound needy—you should sound like there is a world out there waiting to buy your work, that you are here only out of a belief in the importance of spreading your idea.
...
> For various reasons, I find myself forced to sit through a TED-talk now and then. I squirm in my seat—feeling humiliated for myself and the speaker. This is a distinctly un-adult feeling.
TED trivia: Chris Anderson, the founder, got his break in business by starting an 8-bit computer magazine called Amstrad Action. The magazine grew to become a computer publishing empire, Future plc, giving Anderson the funds and freedom to try TED.
(Amstrad Action was a great magazine. I was its freelance tech ed in its last years - gave me my start in journalism.)
There's a whole caste of people you will never interact with, they're the TED attendees.
I'd venture a guess that as soon as TED became a little popular, it's value actually went down because a bunch of blow-hards would spend the 8500$ to try and give a sales pitch to the elite caste. When that happens, the elite move on.
As an example - in Toronto there's a thing called 'Granite Club', which's just a big gym with tennis courts etc. The initiation fee is 53,000$ per couple.
That's just to make sure people who actually work for a living can't afford it.
There's two things non-technology people don't seem to know about TED when they mention it to me.
First that TEDx events have little to do with TED. Second the prices for proper events are in the elitist levels of society. It's no surprise when you start to notice the audience members are more famous than the speakers.
I'm not sure it really is as pandering as you make it out to be. In some places I wasn't sure what the author thought of TED at all. For example, this sentence is particularly pointed: "Where an audience that gave a standing ovation to Ed Snowden a couple of years ago happily wears tracking devices on their badges that allows fellow attendees to know where in the facility they are within a few meters."
Amusing on the surface, but of course that feature is for the benefit of the audience (and quite useful--the breaks are a bit of a zoo with 1000 people milling about), and they explained from the stage how to turn it off when desired, so he is reaching a little bit with that one.
The implication wasn't meant to be that the organizers nefariously distributed these badges insisting that if participants had nothing to hide they had nothing to fear. It was that the participants will clap for whoever is onstage without thinking deeply about what they are saying or believing in what they are advocating. They'll cheer on Edward Snowden but they won't consider the implications of the technology they're using.
It also omits and response to the most obvious thing about TED: thanks to TEDx, it's brand has become associated with fake science, wishful thinking advocates, and other fraudsters.
I would like to see TED scale down and return to its simpler roots (pre 2007), possibly even go dark and spend a few years finding itself. The brilliance of the older TED formula was that it was chaotic and amusingly unpolished: The audio was bad. The lighting was crap. The emcee was awkward. But that TED limelight could bring out unexpected genius moments from humble unknowns, and elicit real humility from the odd celebrity who might give a talk. "Put interesting people together," the rule was, "let a few of them talk, and see what happens."
Today TED is all polish and perfectionism and production value. The Academy Awards stage design and videography is planned months in advance. Speakers are carefully vetted, recalibrated, tweaked, and tuned among an upper tier committee. Corporate sponsors are courted by a large international sales team, and these accounts pay enormous sums for the chance to create branded "experiences" for the ticket holders. Speakers (those whose egos allow it) are coached relentlessly about storytelling, sincerity, posture...
These efforts may have increased the average-overall quality of the talks, and made the talks more palatable to a wide audience. But that came at an expense of a certain kind of magic.
There has been a great deal of exactly that feedback from attendees (including me) and Chris Anderson is definitely hearing it -- he addressed it at length from the stage twice this year. However, he seems to think that is a necessary side effect of producing talks that will be viewed millions of times (I think he said ted.com has hit a billion views now). I'm not sure I agree, but in any case I enjoyed it more back in the day when you never knew if the next talk would be an epiphany or a train wreck!
I was watching TED talks about two years ago. My (then) 7 year-old paused in the midst of wandering by and watched for about 30 seconds then asked, "Is that like cartoons for big people?".
TED just seems so neat, thought leaders talking about things no one else did.
Except the depth is necessarily shallow. So I listened to a TED talk about how social media needs to change and it exacerbates problems. Except he's light on analysis and ideas.
Which is fine I guess, but to me, hearing about how the problem exists without the follow up of ideas on how to fix, just seems incomplete.
And yes, I know, I'm giving him a hard time, etc. But the problem is very real, and needs a very real fix. More videos about how the problem came about just isnt gonna fix it.
Some problems need to be acknowledged long before you close in on a solution. Sometimes stating a problem in clearer terms will bring new thoughts on a solution. That can have value in and of itself.
Ok, whats with all the hate? I like TED - the talks are awesome. I don't care if I never get invited. Some of the talks opened my mind to some of the coolest things that people are working on.
Peak TED is actually this video on how to use one paper towel when washing your hands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FMBSblpcrc. You mean if you shake your hands and fling water all over the bathroom then you don't need as much paper to absorb the remaining water? How revolutionary.
Scoff all you want, but in the years since I watched that I have dried my hands with one paper towel every time. One anecdote, sure, and I don't watch TED anymore. But this is hardly the worst TED talk. At least it provided some practical advice rather than vaguely asserting some breakthrough.
It is hands down the most influential Ted talk I've ever watched. It is very trivial, but I think it about it several times a day wherever I wash my hands in a public bathroom.
Many of the talks from TED never make it online. They only post one a day, and have a huge back-log of great talks to post.
Nick's original talk just didn't make the cut. I genuinely believe that was an editorial decision, not a political one. To that point, he gave an improved version of the talk a few years later which TED gladly posted online here: http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocra...
However, there was an audience member talk at TED itself on how to tie your shoes that I believe was very influential. :) Not sure if there's an online video of it.
I took the opportunity to visit a local group simulcast of Thursday's TED presentations -- apparently much the same program Steven Levy viewed -- and took from it many of the same impressions. The "Inside TED" segment was actually fairly revealing and I thought useful. Chris Anderson gave some inside baseball insights, and voiced TED's goals of spreading knowledge (something I've written and mused on at length). The "chopped liver" comment, by the way, came from Stewart Brand.
But the presentations -- the ones I managed to catch -- dragged. Boston prosecutor Adam Foss had a compelling story. Lidia Yuknavitch's talk wandered ... a lot ... though perhaps that was part of its point. Cerfs was ... interesting.
And then because I live in the future, I left to video-chat for an hour and a half with someone an ocean away.
That done, I decided it was more worth my time to tap into another set of experts -- curated books, at the library, where I could tap into 4 million years of collected wisdom (though granted, only about 8,000 of that is preserved in literary tradition).
One of the most obvious characteristics of the TED livestream was an inability to bump up playback speed through slow bits, or to skip to a more interesting talk. TED also has a relevance problem -- really hitting on challenging problems. Part of which is an inherent conflict with exposure: some ideas really need to be developed and discussed within a safe space.
The livestream/remote program was an interesting experiment, but I'd rather have had the option to catch several days at one location, and perhaps _somebody_ in a role as a moderator / facilitator. There was at least one local TEDster, but no clear organisation on top of physical support (video, seating). That, though, was good.
Was thinking only yesterday we must be at peak "peak". Has become a pretty commonplace descriptor these days for anything experiencing maximum popularity in its life cycle, which I think applies to its current status as a buzz-term.
As a victim of its own success, the quality of presentations has to go down. TED reminds me of Inside the Actors Studio. Stick around long enough and eventually you're talking to Tim Allen about his "process."