Way to drive a stake through the heart of TED talks: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -about-ted

Well, my takeaway is that if the proles would just ratchet up their thinking by one level of complexity they'd realize that professors and technocrats stand ready to trans-valuate their values and REALLY run things for the Greater Good without Faux News fooling the poor dears. The New Economic Architecture, well, sounds familiar...except Marx used a slightly different terminology.

Okay, that was perhaps unnecessarily snark-like, but this is something that Heinlein touched on at various times; the more technological progress, the less the masses understand how it works, and the more the few who do exert control over events. TED talks at least provide a glimpse to the masses of what's happening.

I'll tell you what I think is a "recipe for civilizational disaster": A culture where material comforts are God, "celebrities" declaim on scientific matters and are listened to, and most of the population is on drugs.

TED, as a recipe for disaster, pales...