Nothing wrong with that, in theory. In practice they're the "demo tape" concept from performing arts but lacking the follow thru that comes with performing arts demo tapes. If you watch a voiceover announcer or actor's demo tape and want more, there is a whole infrastructure revolving around hiring them and contracts and paying scale or whatever. With a TED talk if you hear an interesting talk, you might get, at most, some self promotion or promote an org's website? "If you'd like to hear more, follow me on twitter" isn't worth including.
The other problem varies extremely widely from presenter to presenter, but an example is "here's three graphs, now listen to me spend 18 minutes making the obvious analysis you just did in 15 or so seconds each, as I steal 17:15 of your lifespan". Its the old documentary regret disease; would I have been better served, quicker, by replacing the video monologue (or documentary) with a simple wikipedia URL or a quarter page abstract of a paper?
I still watch them anyway. If 90% of most "stuff" is junk, maybe TED is excellent because its only 80% junk and the good stuff is really good. Best thing out there, can still be mostly junk.
The other problem varies extremely widely from presenter to presenter, but an example is "here's three graphs, now listen to me spend 18 minutes making the obvious analysis you just did in 15 or so seconds each, as I steal 17:15 of your lifespan". Its the old documentary regret disease; would I have been better served, quicker, by replacing the video monologue (or documentary) with a simple wikipedia URL or a quarter page abstract of a paper?
I still watch them anyway. If 90% of most "stuff" is junk, maybe TED is excellent because its only 80% junk and the good stuff is really good. Best thing out there, can still be mostly junk.