This impressively
vicious book review by Evgeny Morozov turns eventually into an
attack on TED, accurately attributing its failures to the lack of
politics:
Whatever problems lurk on the horizon are imagined primarily as
problems of technology, which, given enough money, brain power, and
nutritional supplements, someone in Silicon Valley should be in a
position to solve. This is consistent with TED’s adoption of a
decidedly non-political attitude, as became apparent in a recent
kerfuffle over a short talk on inequality given by a venture
capitalist—who else?—which TED refused to release for fear that it
might offend too many rich people.Since any meaningful discussion of politics is off limits at TED, the solutions advocated by TED’s techno-humanitarians cannot go beyond the toolkit available to the scientist, the coder, and the engineer. This leaves Silicon Valley entrepreneurs positioned as TED’s preferred redeemers. In TED world, tech entrepreneurs are in the business of solving the world’s most pressing problems.