[Discuss] Economics Re: Free Hardware

Nancy Ouyang nancy.ouyang at gmail.com
Fri Apr 17 00:05:33 UTC 2015


I started watching TED talks many years ago, and recently more and more
people are developing hives to "TED". I'm not sure why... maybe it's too
popular now. Sure, many of the criticisms you direct at TED are valid. But
for me, I like TED, because it's often "ideas worth sharing", often
straight from actual scientists but presented in a way that's meaningful to
folks outside it, and furthermore the TED website put a ton of effort into
transcribing and translating the transcriptions and link the transcriptions
to video times.

If I'm searching for something I watched a while ago, the transcribing is
invaluable, and if I want to share with my Chinese parents, the translation
is invaluable. Not to mention it's actually accessible to my deaf friends.
No community-funded hackerspace has the centralized resources to transcribe
and translate all their videos like that.

So there are benefits to "corporate culture" and "TED" that we shouldn't
reject outright.

"nothing in life is black-and-white" as it were, just varying shades of
grey...


~~~
narwhaledu.com, educational robots <http://gfycat.com/ExcitableLeanAkitainu>
 [[<(._.)>]] my personal blog <http://www.orangenarwhals.com>,
orangenarwhals
Researcher, Postmodern Robotics Group, MIT Electronics Research Society

On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 4:35 AM, Timofonic <timofonic at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello.
>
>
> What's so cool with The Church of Entertainment, Technology and Design?
> It's mostly a popularity contest by a marketing organization, I don't see
> it follows a true counterculture movement such as Hackers from Berkeley's
> Homebrew Computer Club and MIT, Open Hardware & Software and Free
> Knowledge. It's "just" a bunch of charismatic people that try to convince
> their ideas are worth it. Some people call it a lobby, others a sect.
>
> Sorry for the rant, but it's not a valuable source for me. It's the same
> as Elon Musk Stephen Hawking (they want to be relevant in public opinion,
> despite they are pr stunts these days) vs Ufologists (ancient aliens!
> Flying saucers! Reptilians and other bullshit), both have no idea about the
> matter.
>
> I think Open Hardware and Software organizations must learn to make their
> projects alive and prosper without losing essence, not convert their ideas
> into abstract economics that finally end dominated by oligopolies. If you
> are just a economist, you fail to see the whole picture, you must be a
> scientist too.
>
> Let's make things reality, not selling ideas before making them real.
>
> What about worldwide promoting and supporting hackerspaces that promote
> making projects and teach science to people of all ages? There are lots of
> passionated people that wants to learn, but they have learning difficulties
> and very little money to spend on it.
>
> Free Knowledge must be leaded by the people and for the people, not just
> cool people with white smiles and nice haircuts like in a corporate
> conference.
>
> Regards.
> --
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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>
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