Back in the late 90’s as a college student, I read Wired magazine religiously every month. My brothers did, too. It felt like seeing into the future.

I was surprised some years later when my younger brother told me that he stopped reading Wired. He’d realized that the cool inventions he’d been reading about almost never materialized. I’d never thought of that, but knew he was right. It was aspirational vapor, amazing to see but never real enough to be solid.

The TED talk in the 00’s was the next version of that. This article is worth a read just for the word “inspiresting.”

Back then, around a decade ago, I watched those articulate, audacious, composed people talk about how they were building robots that would eat trash and turn it into oxygen, or whatever, and I felt hopeful about the future. But the trash-eating robots never arrived. With some distance, now, from a world in which TED seemed to offer a bright path forward, it’s time to ask: what exactly is TED? And what happened to the future it envisioned?

What Was the TED Talk? - The Drift

(via Dense Discovery, a favorite newsletter)