TED seems skipable
Written by
on
in
Polis.
Wanted something to stretch my mind a little this evening, so I figured I'd listen to some of the lectures from the TED conference. Started off with "The Universe on a String", "Open Source Economics" and "Bringing World Class Health Care"... and was rather non-plussed. From the depth and tone of the talks I gather TED is pretty much generalists and people who aren't particularly widely read; can't say the talks really taught me anything new at all. No mind stretches this evening I suppose.
Comments
Comments are closed.
Pingbacks
Pingbacks are closed.
Mike C. Fletcher, the VRPlumber, is a philosopher of design turned computer programmer based in Toronto, Canada. He works primarily in the Python programming language, and maintains a large number of Open Source software packages. You can reach him at: mcfletch@vrplumber.com.
yaman on 09/09/2008 3:55 p.m. #
Try slashdot. That will stretch your mind!
Maxo on 09/29/2008 12:42 p.m. #
Wow! I've never seen anyone bash the quality of Ted talks. They aren't all the Beez Kneez, but most of them are quite thought provoking.
Mike Fletcher on 09/29/2008 5:41 p.m. #
My impression was that if you've been following what's going on in the world (wrt science, Open Source, and economics/dev-world health care), it's all old news.
Perfectly fine introductory stuff, but not introducing new concepts or ideas AFAICS. It's not a place (from the talk) where people are gathering to deeply invest others with their knowledge, it's more of a survey of what's going on.
Haven't been, of course, so may be totally wrong, but the talks didn't convince me that I needed to be there.
Maxo on 09/29/2008 7:30 p.m. #
That may be so. I don't follow those things that closely. Certainly closer than the average person, but I'm no junkie. Many of those talks are many years old, so if one is on top of science than much of it may be old hat. But there is also philosophy, music, and others, which is timeless.