I took the opportunity to visit a local group simulcast of Thursday's TED presentations -- apparently much the same program Steven Levy viewed -- and took from it many of the same impressions. The "Inside TED" segment was actually fairly revealing and I thought useful. Chris Anderson gave some inside baseball insights, and voiced TED's goals of spreading knowledge (something I've written and mused on at length). The "chopped liver" comment, by the way, came from Stewart Brand.<p>But the presentations -- the ones I managed to catch -- dragged. Boston prosecutor Adam Foss had a compelling story. Lidia Yuknavitch's talk wandered ... a lot ... though perhaps that was part of its point. Cerfs was ... interesting.<p>And then because I live in the future, I left to video-chat for an hour and a half with someone an ocean away.<p>That done, I decided it was more worth my time to tap into another set of experts -- curated books, at the library, where I could tap into 4 million years of collected wisdom (though granted, only about 8,000 of that is preserved in literary tradition).<p>One of the most obvious characteristics of the TED livestream was an inability to bump up playback speed through slow bits, or to skip to a more interesting talk. TED also has a relevance problem -- really hitting on challenging problems. Part of which is an inherent conflict with exposure: some ideas really need to be developed and discussed within a safe space.<p>The livestream/remote program was an interesting experiment, but I'd rather have had the option to catch several days at one location, and perhaps _somebody_ in a role as a moderator / facilitator. There was at least one local TEDster, but no clear organisation on top of physical support (video, seating). That, though, was good.