Interesting + Inspiring = Inspiresting

Robots are interesting. Using them to eat trash in Nairobi is inspiring. Put the two together, and you have a TED talk. 
I like to call this fusion “the inspiresting.” Stylistically, the inspiresting is earnest and contrived. It is smart but not quite intellectual, personal but not sincere, jokey but not funny.

- Oscar Schwartz

TED has been deeply implicated in broadcasting and championing the Silicon Valley version of the future. TED is probably best understood as the propaganda arm of an ascendant technocracy.

- Oscar Schwartz

TED talks are self-help taken to a mass-production level, since the both offer:

• the belief that "you can change the world/yourself if you want." And only "if you want to."
• just like illegal drugs, they offer a feel-good dose of optimism, inspiration, and encouragement without doing anything useful really (or doing anything at all).

المشكلة ليست في أنّ [وسائل الإعلام والتواصل media] توفّر لنا مواضيعًا ترفيهية وممتعة، بل في أنّ جميع المواضيع صارت تُقَدَّم بصفتها مواضيعًا ترفيهية.

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I really feel sorry for today's famous people. Their whole reputation and social life is under the mercy of the crowds (not even their fans). They are more like politicians than kings, since their whole fame is "democratic" and they will fall if the crowd dislikes them or simply grows weary of them.

They are truly miserable because they are hostages for whoever has a twitter or instagram account.

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Without myth... Every culture loses its healthy creative natural power.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The soul of a civilization is its religion, and it dies with its faith.

- Will Durant

I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

- Thomas Carlyle