Pre-TED, I used to be able to sit through a boring lecture or presentation — diligently taking notes while being sufficiently nourished by whatever small sliver of new insights or information the speaker could provide. I had patience, fortitude, and a long attention span for the bad presentation. TED has extinguished this valuable skill.

Joshua Kim makes a good point on his blog that TED has skewed our view of lectures.  I’ve seen this when talking with people about the various local technical lecture series.  There is a different quality that you get from being a participant in a lecture then just an observer, but there appears to be a lot of inertia against going out to a lecture because of what exists on TED.