TED: productive, or “placebo”?

January 08, 2014

Speaker uses TED Talk to deride TED Talks as "not inspirational" but rather "cynical"

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Inevitably, a guy gave a TED Talk on TED Talks. And found them wanting. At TEDx San Diego last month, visual arts professor Benjamin Bratton derides TED Talks as simplistic, tidy “placebo” communications, designed to give their complacent audience “a vicarious insight, a fleeting moment of wonder, an inkling that maybe it's all going to work out after all … spiritual buzz.” In the face of massive, complex problems technological, economic, political and social problems, TED insists: “Keep calm and carry on ‘innovating’ … To me that's not inspirational, it's cynical.”

Watch the Talk and weigh in: Do you agree?