TED Talkers

A short piece at The Millions links to three longer articles "hating on TED" and the "public intellectuals" and wannabes who crowd it:

http://www.themillions.com/2012/03/ted-is-dead.html

As these glamorati yap and network their way from conference to conference, getting off on their personal branding, I don’t see the world becoming a noticeably better place from all the hot air being expelled. Years ago, Thomas Merton wrote of the danger of becoming associated with, and therefore the representative and inevitable defender of, any particular set of ideas; he felt that it could only limit him as a thinker. Before the concept of personal branding was branded, he was wholeheartedly against it. And that is one reason why Merton is a profound, unpinnable thinker (just as Freud is not a Freudian, and Marx is not a Marxist), while Richard Saul Wurman, Chris Anderson, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Brooks, for all their occasional virtues, are not. Rather, they are mainly pseudo-intellectual opportunists for whom the conference world (along with the obligatory appearances on Charlie Rose, etc.) is just another way of growing their bottom line. If they and their ilk have anything genuine to offer amidst all the publicity-mongering, I'll try to figure that out. As far as their making the scene goes, however, even though they may be consumed by it, why should I care? Never let yourself be used by people who are primarily trying to get excited about themselves - not even by clicking on their links, harmless though that may seem. For politicians, actors, and conference talkers, including the talented ones, attention, like the ability to hob-nob with others at their wattage level, is primarily a masturbatory aid. Remember Faye Dunaway in Network, climaxing as she goes on about ratings shares? Like that.