tl;dr - Reviewer didn't like the book.
The Naked and the TED
31–37 of 37 posts
Re: The Naked and the TED
#32TED and HN provides me better "entertainment" and some knowledge than TV. For learning there is stuff like Coursera, Udacity etc. But I still wished there was something between entertainment and academics. I hope some entrepreneur jumps into this area and creates an awesome solution. It may not make him a billionare. But his/her impact on humanity would be truly great.
Re: The Naked and the TED
#33Sour sour sour grapes. The thing about TED is, wild-eyed though it may be, it's not a political agenda. It's (trying to be) beyond that, about technology and science and understanding, and while the result is often pretty technocratic it is actually often reflecting the benefits of self-organisation through tech. Stuff like Wikipedia, for example, is perfect TED-fodder because it shows demonstrable ways of doing thin…
tangential question: what's the difference between "I believe there are no gods" and "I do not believe in gods"? Aren't you, in both cases, saying that the world, as you believe it exists, contains no X where X is a god? I think atheism is still a belief, even if you stick a "not" in front of "believe". (then it just seems like it isn't a belief, as an artifact of English syntax).
I think the second version "I do not believe in gods" is more like agnosticism than atheism. The law of the excluded middle does not necessarily apply to the statement "there is a god". You might consider it unknown or undecidable.
Re: The Naked and the TED
#34TED and HN provides me better "entertainment" and some knowledge than TV. For learning there is stuff like Coursera, Udacity etc. But I still wished there was something between entertainment and academics. I hope some entrepreneur jumps into this area and creates an awesome solution. It may not make him a billionare. But his/her impact on humanity would be truly great.
+1
Expand my mind with documentaries on history, science etc - not just full length hour long ones, even 2-20 minutes is good. As long as it's engaging.
I like the idea that TED release talks and books so slowly that you can consume every one (not true for talks, but they're trying with books.)
Pity TEDBooks is apparently crap (given the info from the featured article)
Re: The Naked and the TED
#35>Given TED’s disproportionate influence on a certain level of the global debate, it follows that the public at large also becomes more approving of technological solutions to problems that are not technological but political. Problems of climate change become problems of making production more efficient or finding ways to colonize other planets—not of reaching political agreement on how to limit production or consume…
Even when there exist technological solutions to big problems , there's usually a need for strong political component to make them work. Two examples are the birth control pill and the industrial revolution. After the birth control pill finally enabled women to develop careers, it took and is taking a long political struggle for them to have equitable jobs. And even as the industrial productivity increased productivity greatly, people were forced to leave their homes and work long hours for barely subsistence pay , until the worker movement succeeded in helping them.
In a world where technology is relatively abundant, the hard problems are still political(at the country, industry or company level).
Re: The Naked and the TED
#36Sour sour sour grapes. The thing about TED is, wild-eyed though it may be, it's not a political agenda. It's (trying to be) beyond that, about technology and science and understanding, and while the result is often pretty technocratic it is actually often reflecting the benefits of self-organisation through tech. Stuff like Wikipedia, for example, is perfect TED-fodder because it shows demonstrable ways of doing thin…
Wikipedia ,which is basically composed of many small non-connected parts. But a project like python where the parts are more dependent on one another do need a leader and some hierarchy.
And self organization is at the basis of market capitalism. So TED do seem like the same old political agenda packaged with a bit of techno-optimism.
Re: The Naked and the TED
#37Sour sour sour grapes. The thing about TED is, wild-eyed though it may be, it's not a political agenda. It's (trying to be) beyond that, about technology and science and understanding, and while the result is often pretty technocratic it is actually often reflecting the benefits of self-organisation through tech. Stuff like Wikipedia, for example, is perfect TED-fodder because it shows demonstrable ways of doing thin…
>The thing about TED is, wild-eyed though it may be, it's not a political agenda.
Actually it very very much reeks of political agenda from miles away.
There are few things more political (in that they have very specific political consequences) than denouncing politics and trying to present yourself or your activities as apolitical.
Presenting technology as beyond or above politics is even worse.
>If you are used to seeing life through a political lens (as we might hazard the New Republic does) then TED looks like an agenda by a different name.
Politics is the ideas behind our actions: what we want our actions to achieve and how we want to shape the future.
So you cannot escape politics, it's not merely "seeing things through a political lens". Things are inherently political.
It would be like saying we should not see things through a "reality lens". Reality is inescapable.