Slashdot Mirror
TED Wants To Remind Us That Ideas -- Not Politicians -- Shape the Future (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Quartz report: Amid global political upheavals, TED curator Chris Anderson argues that ideas have never mattered more. "Ideas changes how people act and [shape] their long term perspective," he said in during a April 17 press briefing. "Politicians come and go and ideas are forever." He said TED -- two segments of which will be broadcast live in movie theaters this year -- wants to re-introduce civility into political discourse. "We want to avoid the zero sum game we see on cable television every day," said Anderson, noting that TED is a non-partisan organization and has historically featured controversial and intriguing thinkers from both sides of the political divide. In place of the shrill, headline-bait tenor of political spectacles, TED wants to take viewers to a place of "reasoned discourse" where big ideas can act as a bridge between opposing views. By creating an eclectic program -- including an entire session delivered in Spanish and another on artificial intelligence -- Anderson said he wants to steer the conversation away from government and politics. "With so much focus in politics, the world is in danger of forgetting that so much of what really changes the future happens outside completely of politics. It happens inside the mind of dreamers, designers, inventors, technologists, entrepreneurs," he said.
TED's been posting some hopelessly feminist content lately, and they know it, too, because they've disabled ratings and comments on those vids. They're also abusing the DMCA to shut down criticism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The DMCA-censored vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And an update:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The staff at ted might like lofty ideals but they are to be consumed not discussed - Bearing an Australian youtuber and others have been dmca'ed and Ted lost the fair use test.
To call them communicators is a paradox when they censor too.
There has been an ongoing debate in history comparing the macroscopic idea of history and the "Great Man" idea of history.
From a macroscopic level, things like the industrial revolution (or more specifically, things like the invention of the Spinning Jenny) made societal changes inevitable. It was only a matter of time before the Monarchies feel in Europe. It could have been earlier or later by a few decades or centuries, but it was inevidible.
From the "Great Man" level... it's hard to imagine if Nepolian didn't exist that "meh, somebody else would have conquered Europe."
It's hard to accept the assertion that politicians have no impact and it is only ideas. Can anybody honestly say, "If George Washington had decided to become King of the fledgling United States, to the applause and approbation of all his contemporaries, the United States would absolutely still have become a republic?"