Sarah points out the unabashedly exclusionary tendencies of the TED conference over on the BusinessWeek site, and I think I've had that conversation with many people many times before, including former (and present) TED attendees. It is what it is, and it doesn't bother me; In fact, I kind of am shocked that not only does it not bother me, I'm not really interested in attending. I guess being able to just watch the videos and grok the ideas is good enough for me. This is especially true since a significant percentage of people who "attend" TED are watching the videos from another room at the venue, or from Aspen, and seeing a demo of a Microsoft app on a video screen in Aspen with a bunch of millionaires sounds to me like the kind of thing I'd pay not to do. YouTube FTW!
But. Back to the reason I was gonna post. Sarah says:
There's just something about TED that's exceedingly smug, and it's particularly troubling given the conference's proximity to, and enthusiastic support from, normally egalitarian Silicon Valley. California's tech haven is a meritocracy where what matters most is smarts and hard work, not pedigree, ethnicity, where you went to school, or what club you get into—or so it is most of the year.
Ho-lee-shit is that false. It's just not true. Is Google's incredibly egalitarian ethic the reason that an overwhelming number of the people who work there went to Stanford? Is the Valley's blind eye to ethnicity the inspiration for "
Thank God you're white!"? I respect Sarah, but I think perhaps the reason she's let down by TED and I'm not is because she believed that idealistic view of Silicon Valley and I never have.
Here's a simple test: When I say "Monterey" or "Aspen", who do you picture? And I say this as an incredibly privileged person, someone who has access to more resources, and more people, than 99% of anyone who's ever lived. I'm a good networker -- if I want access to a creative person or expert or even a celebrity, I can usually figure out how to make a connection. I'm also someone who's lived in one of the poorest parts of the entire world, not as a visitor admiring the noble savages, but as a relative visiting family. Today, I also get to live the life of the carbon bigfoot, attending events of all sorts all over the country and the world. I am at an extreme end of the continuum of privilege, and yet even I am not in the tier of people who are made to feel welcome in communities like Monterey or Aspen. Choosing those locations alone is a signal.
And, as Sarah said in her story, I say this as someone who respects and even admires many of the people associated with TED. I also say this as someone who is an unabashed advocate of creating private events with exclusive invitation lists -- I think there's nothing wrong with saying "these are my friends/associates, and I want to hang out with them."
What I believe more than that, though, is that
monoculture will be the death of innovation in the technology world if it is allowed to remain the default social and cultural behavior. TED purports to represent technology, entertainment and design. It does not trouble me that their view of who should create, support, and have access to these three areas is so short-sighted -- I'll still get access to the cutting-edge of all of these areas, and gain an advantage by reaching ideas they won't. But it should trouble the people who organize the event that they've limited their scope and eliminated some large degree of serendipity.
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