TED as “the new Harvard”

Anya Kamenetz over at FastCompany recently put together a piece, How TED Connects the Idea-Hungry Elite, arguing that the TED phenomenon has become nothing less than “the first new top-prestige education brand in more than 100 years”. The article is provocative and optimistic, pointing to the comparative failures of traditional institutions such as Harvard and MIT to disseminate ideas to the global community – something that TED, with its combination of A-list presenters, online dissemination and open licensing policies, is setting a new standard for.

Most interesting about the piece however is perhaps its internal contradictions, as they are typical of the TED community and something that we are grappling with at TEDx Phnom Penh. Ankya enthusiastically describes TED-talk watchers as members of a “curious, engaged, enlightened, and tech-savvy tribe”. Critics argue that if the “curiosity” of most TEDsters only extends to an 18-minute youtube clip, “enlightened” sounds a little grandiose, and that thinking of “TED as a global classroom” while “tech-savvyness”,  English proficiency and broadband are still an entrance requirement is at best a bit cloistered, at worst hopelessly smug.

Kamenetz responded with a followup that synthesises a lot of the comments and arguments that sprung up around the web, highlighting TED’s constructive power as a challenge to traditional elite institutions to open up and the fact that reactions within the TED organization itself have been “far from smug or grandiose; more like awed and humbled by the power of what they’ve unleashed in the community of folks–a vast majority of whom are neither famous, nor rich, nor Westerners–who are proud to call themselves TEDsters”

There is no doubt that the network TED has unleashed has an astounding and universalizable platform for inspiration, education and change. Our mission here at TEDxPP is, with your help, to make it do exactly that in Phnom Penh, bringing together and engaging this country’s thought-leaders – those who will create the future of Cambodia.