Confessions of a recovering lifehacker

JackIsidore · 1 day

Not because the things you believe in are too hard. Because you've presented those things without the context that ought to modify how we think of them.

At one point, it was the height of cleverness to think that you could deal with pest problems by importing a predator from a different continent. In retrospect, we see that doing so is usually a bad idea because it ignores so many important contextual considerations that the result is almost inevitably destructive and unmanageable.

That's my issue with futurism. Not that it aims high, but that it does so wearing blinders.

JackIsidore · 1 day

Because the bottom line is rarely ever restricted to what the most vocal nerds are yelling into cyberspace.

JackIsidore · 1 day

Pedantry is acceptable so long as it prevents my slovenliness from spreading half-truths.

JackIsidore · 1 day

I'm not saying that people shouldn't be working on the things discussed at TED Talks. Just that there's not much value in presenting them as though it were clear that the future will consist of those things.

JackIsidore · 2 days

It's not an either/or situation. We could also adjust our aim in the light of what's really plausible, and achieve goals that really do make the world a better place. We have fewer opportunities to do so when we waste out time designing castles in the sky.

JackIsidore · 2 days

I'd like to see kleo post an open thread where we can talk about what everyone things would qualify as appropriate for TrueReddit. Not that any coherent guidelines could be drawn from it, or that anyone would follow them anyway, but it would be interesting just to see the sheer diversity (or, counterintuitively, unity) over what everyone thinks this reddit is actually about.

JackIsidore · 2 days

Some of their solutions aren't even all that simple on a granular level, but they're appealing for reasons other than their effectiveness. A big buzz word these days, for example, is gamification. Its promoters make all sorts of big promises about it – not stopping short at, "It'll save the world" – but it's pretty obvious that the central appeal of gamification is that fact that it excuses us from doing unappealing work by making a game of charity and reform.

JackIsidore · 2 days

Or you could read up on the subjects. Very few TED Talks are so cutting edge that there aren't already a dozen articles and a handful of books on the subject. The appeal of the TED Talk is its flashiness and its convenience.

JackIsidore · 2 days

The problem isn't that there's not enough smart people on the internet. The problem is that the structure of interactions on the internet encourages smart people to make predictions and exhortations that are untethered by reality.

It isn't just that the internet provides a distribution platform for people who might not otherwise have access to the press or publishing houses. The nature of commerce on the internet is mostly built around a speculations market in ideas. Take the Facebook IPO, for example. It went live on Friday and has been dropping ever since. Facebook is one of the most profitable companies in the world, but mostly on the promise that they'll find a way to recoup the expenditures of its investors. GE dropped them earlier this month because they couldn't find any evidence that Facebook adds actually worked.

And to a great extent, that's how interactions on the internet work, regardless of whether or not there's money involved. You aggregate attention by making big promises, whether or not you're capable of delivering on those promises. The truth of the matter is that very few of the voices on the internet, be they start-ups or simply idea-mongers, really have anything to delivery apart from more promises.

Long story short: the internet is really good at producing bubbles, both financial and intellectual. TED is, in large part, indicative of that tendency. You could even call it the high-end idea wing of the bubble machine. Which is, to a certain extent, fine, but it's also setting the stage for a lot of cynical and jaded young people down the line.

JackIsidore · 2 days

I wouldn't say they're terribly realistic, even apart from their time scales. A great deal of the futurism I've seen coming out of TED and similar ventures works by focusing on a single possibility arising out of social or technological changes, to the almost total exclusion of the factors that necessarily bear on the futurists' predictions, and ultimately preclude the utopian outcomes they have in mind.

That, really, is the problem with "futurism," so called. It's really just a variety of utopianism, and people have a tendency to invest in utopianism, only to have their legs swept out from under them when the aggregate of such investments create a bubble ripe for popping.

JackIsidore · 2 days

I can't remember the last time I looked in the comments of a /r/TrueReddit post and didn't see a top-level comment suggesting that the post didn't belong.

JackIsidore · 2 days

I think they're over-hyped and often more indicative of the latest buzz than of thoughtful analysis or viable planning. But that's only really a problem to the extent that we stake anything on them. Apart from the people investing in TED Talks, I'd say the only people really staking anything on them are young idealists setting themselves up to be disappointed.

blackstar9000 · 2 days

Being drawn into can also mean, "by their leaders."

reddit gold Since September 2011	Three-Year Club
reddit mold	Inciteful Comment 2010-12-09
Verified Email	Well-rounded 2010-04-19

blackstar9000

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login