We need to talk about TED | Benjamin Bratton | Comment is free

TEDx Speaker Gives Priceless Talk About How TED Talks Are Worthless
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/tedx-speaker-gives-priceless-talk-about-how-ted-talks-are-worthless

With all due respect to Lizzie Velasquez, the vast majority of TED and TEDx talks are complete bullshit, and it’s high time someone called them out on it.

Benjamin Bratton, Associate Professor of...

TED talks are lying to you: The creative class has never been more screwed. Books about creativity have never been more popular. What gives?

It is the story of brilliant people, often in the arts or humanities, who are studied by other brilliant people, often in the sciences, finance, or marketing. The readership is made up of us — members of the professional-managerial class — each of whom harbors a powerful suspicion that he or she is pretty brilliant as well. What your correspondent realized, relaxing there in his tub one day, was that the real subject of this literature was the professional-managerial audience itself, whose members hear clear, sweet reason when they listen to NPR and think they’re in the presence of something profound when they watch some billionaire give a TED talk. And what this complacent literature purrs into their ears is that creativity is their property, their competitive advantage, their class virtue. Creativity is what they bring to the national economic effort, these books reassure them — and it’s also the benevolent doctrine under which they rightly rule the world.

Full article : ▻http://www.salon.com/2013/10/13/ted_talks_are_lying_to_you

#creative_class #TED