TED.com: No Comment on Hacking?

I have been a long time fan of TED.com. I found it to be a great source of ideas and inspiration. However, in recent times this has become less and less true. Nevertheless, I am still on the mailing list and still watch any video with an interesting title.

The other day, this one caught my eye: "Why good hackers make good citizens". Myself being a hacker, I watched it and was terribly disappointed, even insulted that the presenter used the term "hacking" for what was clearly not... Well, I won't spoil for those who want to watch the 9 minutes.

Anyway, as a member of TED.com, I sometimes comment on the presentations. This one weighed heavily on me, so I posted the following comment:

I'm sorry but with all respect for the good stuff mentioned in this talk, the use of the word "hacking" is in my opinion really not right.

I looks to me like just a buzzword to get people to watch it! Furthermore, the idea of "civic hacking" is practically a pleonasm. Everyone who hacks believes that they are doing it for the global good. I'm not talking about stealing, fraud, etc. since that is simply what it is.

Actually, I am very sad to see that such a "nothing of interest" presentation gets top TED billing when there is so much fascinating hacking going on. If you want to hear about great hacking, check the Chaos Communication Congress (search "30C3 video" for the most recent). That's a place where the worlds greatest and most intense "civic" hackers get together to try to change the world....
 
Or just read Elektor... or Make magazine!
 
Maybe I was not clear enough: I found this talk insulting.


I posted it, and saw that it was in fact on the site. Then, about a minute later I received this email from TED.com

TED comment threads are a welcoming place for critical comment and debate, but we ask that you write all comments in a way that is thoughtful and constructive. The goal of our message boards is to host productive conversation and debate. Comments that are insulting or belittling, especially those that are aggressive towards a speaker personally, do not make for constructive conversation -- they tend to stifle debate, not promote it.

With this in mind, we'd ask you to re-write your comment as though the speaker were sitting across from you at a dinner table. Our speakers do read and respond to comments. How could you engage the speaker in constructive and respectful debate?
 
The full text of the comment is below; please let us know if you have any questions. For more information on our approach to comments on TED.com, check out our community How-To Guide: http://www.ted.com/pages/conversations_howto
 
Thank you!
The TED Conversations Team

To which I replied:

"??? I would have no trouble talking like this to the speaker - I feel that she insulted me with her presentation and that indeed Ted.com participated in that insult. The stuff mentioned in her talk is as close to advertizing as you can get... I don not see what is wrong with my comments, but I do feel that TED.com is going downhill faster and faster and that it is no longer thesource of inspiration as it once was...

If you care to continue this debate I have no problelms - but i do have a problem with moderated comments being removed without justification....

There has been no reply to that...

Since then, I looked at the "TED conversations How-to guide" and saw that there is a section about "How to Avoid Comment or Conversation Removal". There, one sees the following possible reasons for comment removal:

• Not appropriate for this audience: TED.com is not the right platform for pseudo-science, zealotry, personal requests, proselytizing or self-promotion.
  - That doesn't seem to apply to my remarks, but who knows? It may be a catch all, which means, "if we don't like it it's outahea..."
• Inappropriate language: This is a not the right place for chat-room banter, text-speak or combative posturing.
  - this is certainly not the case.
• Response to an inappropriate comment: Please use the Flag button instead.
  - Nope.
• Repeat topic: Please use the Search tool to check for existing Conversations on your topic before submitting a new Conversation.
  - No
• Terms of Use violation: We will remove any comment or conversation that violates the TED.com Terms of Use.
  - doubtful, but who knows...

So in the end, with no response from the TED conversations team, even though they invited me to exchange with them, I was left with letting it go or escalating.

After consideration, I decided that this was worthy of a shot on Hacker News because it somehow degrades hacking and at the same time confirms my feeling that TED.com is on the slippery slope to becoming just another self-serving institution that has lost its purpose...

I leave it to you and your perspective on hacking and commenting...

UPDATE: the next day I received this email redacted to preserve the peace of the author:

Hi Bob,

Thanks for writing. When users submit critiques of talks, we ask that they take care to be thoughtful and substantive rather than insulting or belittling. You make some excellent points in your comment, but we ask that you make them politely and constructively. 

When you include things like, "this nothing of interest presentation" and "I found this talk insulting," it adds a hostile tone that can be counter-productive to serious discussion of the content. Please consider taking another shot at sharing these important thoughts with the TED community.

Thank you for understanding, and I look forward to your future contributions!

Best,

To which, I replied:

Dear ,

Thank you for writing and explaining what you believe to be wrong with my remarks.

 

In the meantime, a few friends have watched the talk and their remarks are far more critical than mine...  

 

I understand why you may not like my remarks, but I will not rewrite them just to fit into the TEDish way. 

 

I used to love and admire TED, but in recent years the TED talk has slipped into what I and many find to be a style without content: lots of enthusiasm for banality... This talk was a fine example of that: a few buzzwords 'hacking' in particular, mention the current administration, mention B. Franklin, then a story about some students who were sent to Hawaii and made a website. What ideas are "worth sharing"? Could this be compared to so many of the great TED shows? like McCready (not in TEDish style), or Greg Stone, or Sir. Robinson, or S. Mitra or the volunteer Fireman ... 

 

I also go to as many TEDx events as I can and have seen this same trend towards banality, more and more passionate show, less and less passionate content... or even worse, no content just advice about how the world should be according to the speaker... Myself and many others are disappointed with what we perceive to be a decay in quality in something that was really great not very long ago.

 

Maybe TED is just wearing out? Or the team is getting old and set in their ways?

 

Anyway, I find that the way comments are removed post publication is a bit odd. Why not just moderate before publication then it is clear.  Either you encourage participation and you risk getting remarks which may rile up some or you moderate and keep things in line with what you believe to be best.

 

I have learned from this experience that I no longer want to participate in the TED conversations, and at the same time I understand why the threads are as they are.

 

In any case, thank you for taking the time to write back.

Sincerely,

TEDx Brussels 2011 - A Day in the Deep Future

Here are a look at the shows that I liked at the Brussels TEDx  event that I attended with Jean B. on 22 November 2011. It was an inspiring day of great ideas!  More info and videos are available at www.texbrussels.eu!


Arduino - Learn by Doing!
If you don't know what it is, then you don't know that the world is changing for the better. David Cuartielles, one of the founders of Arduino, gave a quick look into what it means to the planet. Although this was one of the most important things that was presented in this TEDx, it was given a tiny time slot - insulting in my view - and we could only get a peak at the project. Luckily, I was already aware of what it is and means, but for anyone who wasn't, this presentation was too short. During the breaks Jean and I talked with David, who was passionately interesting!

Singularity - Aggregation of systems
The "Singularity" was mentioned a million times at this TED. Ken Hasse (see also Being Meta)gave a fascinating, but once again too short, presentation of how aggregation, i.e. groups acting together as organisms, are evolving thanks to intercommunication. One of the positive elements that this is producing is "Open Science" which is  a really good thing that we can all do! Are corporations organisms? Do they have Id (yes), Ego (yes), Superego (not yet?)? Maybe not yet, but soon?  Talking with Ken at a break, I mentioned that some Internet forums exhibit Superego, without moderation, in particular Helifreak. A very provocative talk!

Radical Transparency - Drowning in information
The artist and scientist, Hassan Elai, gave a short version of his fantastic TED - Global show.  Look at that and think! One thing he added: As policy lags behind culture and technology, it become a hindrance. As technology accelerates, this hindrance can have excessively negative impact. Another speaker who had to cut his talk to fit the organizers' crazy schedule...


Identity - Nym Wars
Kaliya Hamlin gave a relatively interesting talk about the question of multiple, context dependent identities on Internet. The big question is: Why not? Just because governments would prefer to be able to track their citizens (and other country's citizens) in whatever they express? Interesting, but only so.

Eyeborg!
Rob Spence lost his eye and replaced it with an embedded movie camera. Need I say that he is a documentary film maker! His show about eye enhancements was great! Later, we met him at a break and he was an interesting and pleasant guy. This kind of stuff is what makes TED special!

End of Stability - in times of change...
Paddy Ashdown gave a great funny talk about how he sees the world changing. It would be impossible for me to summarize, but one of the ideas was: In the recent past, power was controlled by states which are governed by laws. Today, power is moving to dynamically evolving aggregates supported by interconnectivity on the Web, but there are no laws. This could/will/must lead to serious instability.  Watch the video, please!

Defend the NET or it may disappear...
In my opinion, this was the most important presentation given in Brussels this year! The subject is very close to my heart. We use Internet to make our lives better. It provides communication, information, shopping, tools for doing things, access to travel, everything... But there are evil people, organizations, even countries using it for bad things and these may destory it for everyone! Mikko H. Hypponen gave a great and profound view on this which complements his TED Global talk. Later, I spoke with him about potential activities and he was very forthcoming. He mentioned that his life has been threatened and that a colleague had is son kidnapped because of actions taken to defend Internet... I found his work profoundly interesting and important. Did you know that each laser printer has an identity that is signed into every printout, thus enabling one to know the origin of any printed document? Scary stuff...

The Brainpower of the Bottom 4 Billion
Leila Janah is doing good for a lot of people. She spoke about her project to bring work, via Internet, to the poorest people on the planet and radically improve their lives. There was nothing high-tech or super scientific in it. Just an idea and energy and success stories. Her organization provides a framework to outsource work from the 1st world to the last world and everyone profits. If you feel that doing good counts, then watch her talk, and maybe do something with it? This was moving to the point of tears.

Education Connects Youth with Opportunity
No one is born a killer - no child dreams of becoming a killer, so what happens? How can this change? Literacy is not enough, education is needed, real hopes and dreams education. Check out Kushal Chakrabarti and his talk. It was very complementary to what Leila Janah had to say.


Music for the Soul
Charles Hazzlewood is a conductor who created the Paraorchestra of Great Britain. They played for us and it was more than moving! Standing Ovation and many tears. This was the highpoint of TEDxBrussels 2011. Sadly, I didn't get the chance to talk with this man after his show.


Dance you PhD
A close runner up to the Paraorchestra, this danced presentation by the gonzo scientist John Bohannon  of what science could/should be was mind expanding, even Mind Blowing! With humor, sensitivity, grace we saw how lasers can super-cool substances to make a super-fluid. And that was not all! Then we saw a dance about titanium hip replacement technology. This was great stuff! Incredibly great stuff. Later, talking with him and the 2011 winner of the Dance your PhD contest, and the dancers and the choreographer, I was inspired by their earnestness,  energy, and the beauty of their creations!


To Predict
This came via video link from Oxford University. David Deutsch, of quantum computer fame, spoke to us about what can and cannot be predicted and why this is so. For unknown reasons his video is not posted at the time I am writing so if you want to see him talk check out this TED show. He tried to answer the question: What can be known in advance? This is the defining characteristic of science: Scientific theories are predictive. And as such, they are self-correcting: wrong theories fail to predict correctly and get fixed or dumped. But human desire is not predictable: in the 60's we wanted nuclear power, now we don't. As technology advances at a faster and faster pace, the prediction horizon gets closer and closer. Example: in the middle ages you had a king today and were pretty sure that there would be a king in 50 years due to the slow pace of change. This is not so today. Another aspect of this is that the impact of mistakes is bigger now than ever before. Another one is that the "nature of explanation will not change". These combine to give us hope. How to protect against big mistakes? General knowledge is the key. Specialists advance a particular area, but when solutions are needed they often come from far off - the generalist is the one who can bring that. His idea of what counts for the "deep future": "The universality of explanatory knowledge and the desire to create and apply it." Very profound indeed. Check out his book: The Beginning of Infinity.

XPrize
Eileen Bartholomew spoke with great impact on the importance of transforming "crazy ideas", i.e. those that no one believes, into "revolutionary ideas", i.e. ones that change the word. The Xprize foundation encourages this by providing incentives for those who realize "crazy ideas", like making your own spaceship and going into outer space! She is looking for crazy ideas that need realizing so if you have one, write to her!  Later, I spoke with her and suggested cleaning up the great Pacific ocean garbage island. She agreed that it was a great idea but said that no one seemed to be interested in putting up the money for such an award. How sad to think that making a commercial spaceflight company gets more finance that cleaning our seas, source of all life...

Open Source Biology
Andrew Hessel spoke about the idea of how an open source community in molecular biology could lead to individual specific therapeutics, i.e. drugs made just to fix what is wrong with a particular individual - your own private genome derived cures! This was a fascinating and uplifting talk!

Drug Companies are 2-Sigma
Computational bioligst, Jack Tuszynski talked about statistics in various things and in particular health care: Pharma companies get it wrong 1 in 3 times! Compare this to the aviation industry the gets it wrong 1 in 300,000 times! The success rate of drug development is 1 in 100,000! His talk showed why this is and how it can change. It was complementary to what Andrew Hessel said about making custom drugs for nearly no cost ($100) in small companies using cheap tools! This was great, and later talking with him we had a view on why it wasn't happening, i.e. pharma companies don't want to loose their monopoly on money from drugs! Talking with him was really fun and uplifting!

Zero-G Dance
With the same people as Dancing the PhD, a moving dance in simulated zero gravity! Another Standing ovation, and one of my favorite presentations! Really great! I wish they would put the video up! We spoke to the dancers and choreographers who were genuinely interested in talking with us and hearing our thoughts on their show! They are known as the Black Movement Company.

Tiger and Rock - look for the rock!
Although his show came at the end of nearly 12 hours of stuff, Peter Hinssen had a lot to say about a lot of things. In fact, his talk was one of the best! He talked down the "exponential" aspect of change preferring to look at it as an S-curve, i.e. flattening out at the end. The point where the curve "flips" (2nd derivative becomes negative) is what interests him. He brought this out in the area of health care, saying it was about to "flip". Many people take better care of their car then of themselves. This is not right. Health-care is about to flip and become personal:

1. Health will be quantified, i.e. a number just like on the Wii-health game,
2. Proactive, not reactive,
3. A service,
4. **ALL** Medical knowledge will be available to all.
5. check out patients like me where you can read about what happens to people like "you", a health sharing site!
6. The picture of the tiger and the rock. Westerners see the tiger, Easterners see the rock. Don't focus on the tiger, focus on the context that is what is most important!

Peter Hinssen is a guy who has deeply thought about a lot of things!  Check out is illustrated video about the Future of IT!

5 Minutes Look-Ahead
Last but not least, Alain De Taeye told us how useful it would be if cars could tell each other about the road conditions they observed. We could then look into our  future, i.e. what we were going to run into down the road! This is coming to the next generation of GPS navigation systems!

TEDx Brussels 2010 12 06: But who is going to save the world?

Quantum Microbiology/Biochemistry

• Frank Tipler
• Jeffrey Satinover not exactly microbiology...
• Stuart Hameroff

These guys gave various pieces of information which lead us to believe that quantum mechanics has a great influence on the behavior of cells, and could play all kinds of important roles in the development of the hard to cure diseases. Most of it was either too abstract or too far from my understanding or both, which means that I sort of got it, but only sort of...

Autonomous Cars

• Sebastian Thrun

This guy is an AI professor who's team won the Darpa Challenge once upon a time, i.e. to build a 100% autonomous vehicle and race it, and win. He later went on to lead the Google Autonomous car project. He also created Google's Streetview...

He spoke about his philosophy for problem solving:

1. Listen,
2. Decide,
3. Do.

He also mentioned the term "pyramid of pain", referring to the idea of taking care of what hurts you most, first. Today, he is thinking about how to make car travel more efficient, e.g. better use of road space, more use of each vehicle, etc.

An interesting talk and an interesting guy, worth reading about.

Nerds: Who they are and why we need them

• David Andergg

• This child-psychologist talked about his concern in the rising anti-intellectualism in the USA, i.e. the idea that it's not cool to be smart, or to be a "nerd". He mentioned various TV series and anecdotes about his patients to underpin his argument, which was very interesting and compelling. He attributes fear of nerds by older generations as a manifestation of their own fear of not being adequate in the modern constantly evolving hi-tech world. Their fear of understanding less than their children would seem to drive them to hold the kids back...
• Oh, don't forget a Nerd's not a Geek!
• This talk was very profound.

One Laptop Per Child: there are 2 Million out there today.

• Nicholas Negroponte
• Mary Lou Jepsen
• Walter Bender

Negroponte:

• "Am I doing something to change the world today"?
• "Am I doing something that normal market forces will utlimately do anyhow? If so, then stop"!
• Have children change the world.
• Collaborative, autonomous learning => the child is the agent of change.
• Teachers in Uruguay really excited about the OLPC's which were deployed to 100% of the kids in 18 months.
• In Peru, the rural kids were first given the OLPC; they used it to educate their parents, and the entire village.
• 25% of the children in the world are in India.

Jepsen

• Display is the bottleneck
• Factories (Fabs) are where it happens (Taiwan)
• Understanding the Fab processes to be able to communicate with the people there to get the new ideas implemented
• She's a real problem solver
• LCD is the only game in town for the next 10 years, at least
• The OLPC screen consumes 1 Watt; the machine stays charged for a week!

Bender

• Linux, Sugar labs,
• "In the kitchen, what do you put on the lowest, most accessible shelf"?
• Free Software Culture!
• Sugar (the OLPC OS) = Python,
• A tool to make tools
• Surround them with Mountains, create a very low floor and no ceiling, then step back
• This presentation was particularly inspirational!

Every thing knows every thing

• David Orban : European Singularity Institute

• The idea of change described by an exponential function. At first the rate of change is low, and hardly anyone feels it. Then it becomes steep and those who weren't aware fall behind and turn their backs on it.
• Relates to the fear of nerds talk.
• The Internet of things: a network of things communicating amongst themselves, not involving humans...
• Evolving from ownership to access (cf. zipcar)
• William Gibson: "The future is already here, but not evenly distributed".
• "It's never too late to pick up a new profession."
• The exponential is expressed as the advanced collaboration phase, when every thing knows every other thing.

Drupal: Out of control management

• Dries Buytaert

• Movember = Mustache November for charity.
• 1.5% of the world's websites are built with Drupal
• Premise is that you have to give up controlling if you want to let people create.
• Create a culture of uncontrolled sharing
• Give up control.
• The free software workers spend their days in frustrating jobs. If you want them to work for you in the night, then you'd better be sure that you don't frustrate them or they will be gone...
• Lead like a superhero:
  Jump in,
  Decisive Action,
  Jump out,
  Inspire!

Interface Brain-Machine

• Tan Le

• Emotiv is a brain to computer interface.
• We saw the demo.
• It seemed to work - really interesting!

Resources of the bottom billion

• Paul Collier of Oxford university

• High commodity prices will push the discovery of resources into the developing world: Africa, Afghanistan, etc.
• Weak govts there lead to plundering of the natural resources, i.e. either only a few benefit or the future generations are robbed in favor of the present.
• How to avoid plundering, i.e. how to prevent he 21st century from looking like the 19th?

1. Public Geological Discovery information - no secrets about what's there.
2. Tax the extraction
3. Distribute the revenues over time, i.e. save 1/2 of the revenues for the future.
4. Use the savings in local investment: create local capacity
   Invest in investing.

• National Resource Charter

Building Starships

• Marc Millis

• Pioneers are people not organizations
• Innovators only improve on existing things
• Pioneers are underdogs until they succeed
• Check out the Tau Zero foundation
• And the book:"Frontiers of Propulsion Science"
• And the site Centauri Dreams
• They are looking where other people aren't.

Living (3 lives)

• Marc Luyckx Ghisi

• Innovate, forget the old shit
• Read Peter Drucker's "Post Capitalist Society"
  REALLY read it!

35,000 jobs in Bangladesh

• Bibi Russell is an ex-super model that created an industry in her native land and created 35 thousand jobs in weaving...

What will save the world?

• Rik Torfs

• 5 points to summarize the TEDx :

1. The Individual vs. the Group: Brilliant individuals are not individualists because that would be stupid.
2. We have to live attentively:
   "a turning point in history" is like the turning point in a swimming pool, it occurs regularly every 25meters...
   Be aware of small changes,
   TEDX was like telling good jokes amongst brilliant people.
3. The future is easy to talk about because we can't be wrong,
   The past is hard to interpret.
4. Self confidence vs. vanity and/or shyness
   Vanity kills creativity
5. The Quality of the noble Art of Conversation:
   An emotional flavor in scientific topics and vice versa.

What will save the world?
- Profound lightness, not superficial seriousness...