Friday, May 1, 2015

TED Talks Are Kinda Creepy

Does The Price of Shame fit into the category of Technology, Entertainment or Design?

I got creeped out at TED talks and stopped watching them a couple of years ago, but only recently after seeing an advertisement for a recent TED conference did I start thinking about why they bother me. Believe it or not, this actually ties in with the fact that I grew up in a religious cult (guess which one) and around this same time I've been remembering some of what my brain had been going to a lot of trouble to erase. TED talks are getting to a point where a strange kind of religious spin is applied to their ideas. Not only direct ideas, but also in the styles of cadence and rhythm religious ceremonies have. Benjamin Bratton called TED "middlebrow megachurch infotainment"[1]. Take a look at this 2015 Vancouver TED conference promotion[2]:
Truth
In our fast-changing world, a reliable grasp on the truth is hard to come by. Take the following widely held beliefs. True or false?
— The news is bad.
— Nature is good.
— Technology is no fun any more.
— Growing inequality is inevitable.
— Privacy matters more than transparency.
— Our kids will be worse off than we are.
— We've lost the battle against Big Brother.
— Physics is becoming incomprehensible.
— We've left it too late to prevent a climate crisis.
— The political right has run out of decent ideas.
— Robots will destroy more jobs than they create.
— The genomics revolution arrived too late to help me.

The religion I grew up with always threw around the word truth with a capital T, as if it were some sort of verbal life preserver. Like you got more points the more religious psychobabble you can spout to your neighbour. But what I consider worse than just putting moral thinking in to what is supposed to be scientific and academic based presentations, they are very blatantly picking and choosing very specific ideas to "challenge", that is, they are essentially creating their own ideology. I can easily say that TED is pushing the agenda related to challenging (that is, replacing) the above beliefs, and answering what they present as "the big questions".

I ask all kinds of questions. But "the big questions" are still there from the beginning of recorded civilization, precisely because they are unanswerable, not for lack of people trying to answer. The fact that so many different people from so many different places and backgrounds have their own answers to all the big questions and don't agree with one another should be good evidence that none of them are right, otherwise the correct one would become apparent. The fact that there is a never ending discourse shows the argument has not settled into agreement, as arguments like the shape of the earth or properties of its movement have eventually become irrefutable.

ANYWAYS, another good question, "why do TED talks cost so much?" was asked and answered on the ted.com web site archive[3].  Tickets to TED conferences cost $8,500, (x1200 seats at the recent convention if you want to do some fun math[4]). Donor membership is $17,000 per year. Patron membership is $150,000 for 5 years. There were 3 upvoted answers attached to this question, none of which actually address the question of why they cost so much. We are talking about a non-profit organization (The Sapling Foundation) that owns TED earning over $45 million dollars in 2013[5].

Another way to ask the question is "What is the money that TED conferences earn used for?" Ninety-seven percent of The Sapling Foundation's expenses are administration expenses [6]. Because Sapling is non-profit, the profits are reinvested back in to the company, and they are also unconditionally tax exempt.

So here is a theory of how a non-profit might work:
1. Start a non-profit, get all your friends that have disposable income to donate to your charity.
2. Contributions are tax deductible by donators, and the non-profit ensures they are tax exempt.
3. Do whatever your donor friends want to do with the money.
4. Throw a party for yourself, make sure to write it off.

I thought I would look around a bit more and maybe I could find some tidbits online about how their money was being spent. I found another answer from Quora:

Building on Kamrin's great answer, TED is owned by a nonprofit, the Sapling Foundation. The conference itself makes money, but we pretty much spend it as soon as we get it -- on video editing and hosting for TED Talks, which is expensive, and on supporting all the other worldwide initiatives Kamrin mentions above. And TED pays fair salaries & benefits to staffers, and pays our interns, which is important to me :) 

You spend all your money on video editing? It is no secret TED pays its' high profile speaker, the Billy Gates' and the Billy Clintons' big fees for showing up and giving a talk. I wonder how much they charge?

What bothers me almost as much as the religious overtones is that other feeling of familiarity accompanying TED talks - no, it isn't (just) that all TED talks sound the same, have similar formats, on-cue applause, and the same narrow range of "inspiring" topics - it's that it's the same canned mush that has become staple format all over the TV, internet, books and magazines. Some optimal cookie-cutting device has been created by the endless marketing cycles of capitalism, and have told producers of content that this will make them the most money. While presenting themselves as science, they do not provide the same avenues normally afforded to the audience - critical questions to get to the meat of the matter, and call people out when they aren't being entirely factual. I could dedicate an entire blog to just criticizing a new TED talk every post, and  point out line by line all of the opinions stated as facts, unsubstantiated claims and poorly drawn conclusions that go nowhere. They never suggest any real change, just an tweaking the status quo in some insignificant way because of a pet theory they have. TED talks aren't a journey, they're a predictable walk around the block.

I also don't understand the continuous lack of engagement at the end of the talk. Okay, you have the audience inspired, what kinds of things could they be doing to make the world better? Are you conducting a study where the audience could log in and participate by doing a survey? Could they assist with data analysis or help track down resources to help research and development, or provide other networking connections or collaboration? I'm sure their primary concern is money, but people who may be sincerely interested in furthering a cause might not have extra cash to dole out, but may want to donate time or other resources.

There are lots of videos that are plenty inspiring, if that is what the mass appeal really is. What people could really be trying to get out of videos are a type of friend that has the exact same interests as themselves. It's like attending a dinner party where Malcom Gladwell entertains you with a "facinating" anecdote about mustard. People want the idea of rubbing elbows with famous intellects or genuinely charming and talented individuals, via the internet stream.

Before I conclude, let's think back before TED to the last big group of smart people that wanted to change the world. That would be Mensa...remember them? What have you heard Mensa has been up to lately? Not much of anything, they just seem to like hanging out with other people like them. The TED speakers Mensa-esque clique have just infused their nerd club with some Andy Warhol, because they are smart enough to know that is the thing to do to make money and impress people.

In the end what I have to ask is, can an entity be doing things beneficial to society, while also making immense amounts of money? Or is the profitability coming at some higher cost? I don't know, because IT'S A BIG QUESTION. I am inclined to distrust large corporate entities because making money tends to trump everything else.

References

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