TED Community » Donald Thompson

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• A comment on Conversation: What would the next Homo Sapiens look like? What kinds of characteristics would they have?

  Apr 6 2011: You need to take some intensive courses in biological evolution, and then write that science fiction novel you've been contemplating.

• A comment on Conversation: How can we empower kids to reshape the education system? *A TEDActive Education Project Question*

  Apr 6 2011: The entire premise of this question goes a long way in explaining just how abysmal general education has become over these last 40 years or so. We have handed the teaching of our children over to intellectually incompetent, entitlement-minded ,hand-wringing cultural liberals whose values and mentality have gone a long way to constructing the very system they now find fault with ,because they know it has failed miserably. I ask everyone to examine the"solutions" they are always advancing."Empowering" the students to"reshape" education. That statement alone wins this week's 'living in an alternate universe' award.
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  A reply on Conversation: Has the internet and user-generated media killed the critic? If so, what are the repercussions for modern culture?

  Apr 5 2011: Or by the conspicuous flaunting of powdered wigs and nosegays.

• A comment on Conversation: Has the internet and user-generated media killed the critic? If so, what are the repercussions for modern culture?

  Apr 5 2011: The critic of yesteryear was a product of the internet of the day,namely, newspapers and various periodicals. There existed a huge lag time between the heralded event and the general public's awareness. Authority of various sorts could be inserted in this lag time, much like a new part on an linear assembly line. The old -style art critic had much in common with the present day academician. Information and expertise was viewed as centralized, exclusive, and driven by a sense of propriety.

• A reply on Conversation: How can design thinking help government?

  Apr 5 2011: "Successful establishments" are known to you because they work. There are no doubt scores of human projects that have perished regardless of their allergic or non-allergic response to industrialization. Besides,speaking of perishing ,I thought most of the anti-industrial sentiments at the core of 60's liberalism had been thrown overboard as soon as this wonderful thing called the internet appeared on the scene some time ago. I guess it lingers on.Probably good that it does.A critical eye can see what an accepting one does not.

• A reply on Conversation: What is the next big essential service governments in the future will provide for their citizens?

  Mar 17 2011: I agree. As long as the unrealistic idealism doesn't take the mutated form,incipient or otherwise, of goose -stepping fresh-faced totalitarians ,as it did in Churchhill's day.
  I wonder,was it youthful philosophical indiscretions that led to to the gulags and concentration camps, or was it a bunch of smart old guys that did all the heavy lifting?
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  A reply on Conversation: What is the next big essential service governments in the future will provide for their citizens?

  Mar 17 2011: Okay Bill you won the Lenin/Stalin award for living in an alternate universe- al least for the next few days.It may come as a shocking surprise to you but this country was not founded upon the redistribution of income, nor upon any nebulous "claim" to your fellow citizen's hard- earned money. It was founded upon freedom. And I understand that Freedom is a concept that social engineers reserve for themselves exclusively, and their fellow collectivist; passe intellectuals who have cast the post-industrial world in this straight-jacket of a zero- sum game of their own and Karl Marx's making.What the hell does "you don't have a right to deprive another person of making a claim upon the allocation of resources" mean? What? are they still teaching that anachronistic drivel at Berkeley these days?In this country wealth has never originated in government coffers and then consequently doled out according to whatever socialist manifesto at any given time decrees are the winners and losers. Furthermore,market forces determine the value of a dollar, not the flotsam and jetsam of whatever happens to be swimming about in Robin Hood's leotards on a given day. Moreover, it is absolutely beyond disingenuous to somehow, through some bizaare quirk of class-warfare thinking, to assume, for one second, that society at large, in the meager person of Bill or Revett or Don is somehow responsible,collectively , for someone else's success,and therefore is allowed a claim,ipso facto, upon their private property.(Why do I want to shout "get a job")Perhaps you ought to float this useless fantasy of digital money for the TED audience. Frame it as a question that might go something like this:" Should success be punished by confiscating meaningless capital to redistribute as meaningless money presided over by washed-up baby boomer 60s leftists"

• A reply on Conversation: What is the next big essential service governments in the future will provide for their citizens?

  Mar 16 2011: Bravo Revett. Some of the spoiled brat mentalities on Ted are breathtaking in their juvenile approach to life. One gets the idea that these pie -in -the -sky types have never paid any taxes or had any of their hard-earned wealth confiscated so some leftist utopian can trow it down a rat's hole. When they eventually grow up and start handing over more of their incomes their attitude will change in a heartbeat.

• A comment on Conversation: How can design thinking help government?

  Mar 11 2011: Soon technological innovation and insurmontable complexity just may outstrip the old ways of solving the problems of governance so that our only recourse will be the supercomputers of the future taking over major design decisions.

• A reply on Conversation: What do you think should be the strategy to make every human a citizen scientist?

  Mar 11 2011: Mr. Seberka are you serious? Have you ever given any real -world attention to your statements and their underlying assumptions? "Just let kids do what they want"free of any restrictions or "coercive" rules. The more I examine your statements the more suspicious I am becoming. I'll just leave it at that.