Lovely, really. This video says speaks volumes about what TED talks have become. 

But let’s focus in a little with this:

 Ultimately, the TED phenomenon only makes sense when you realise that it’s all about the audience. TED Talks are designed to make people feel good about themselves; to flatter them and make them feel clever and knowledgeable; to give them the impression that they’re part of an elite group making the world a better place. People join for much the same reason they join societies like Mensa: it gives them a chance to label themselves part of an intellectual elite. That intelligence is optional, and you need to be rich and well-connected to get into the conferences and the exclusive fringe parties and events that accompany them, simply adds to the irresistible allure. TED’s slogan shouldn’t be ‘Ideas worth spreading’, it should be: ‘Ego worth paying for’. 
-Martin Robbins

and this:

After his acceptance speech TED curator Chris Anderson turned the auditoriums in Long Beach and La Quinta into a synergistic Baptist revival-style celebration of support. Pledge cards were distributed immediately to everyone in the rooms at both locations — they bear more than a passing resemblance to the envelopes and plates passed around right after the sermons in my old Presbyterian church. Audience members from large and small companies got up to pledge monetary and administrative support, and the mood was electric. Chris Anderson was the fiery yet graceful pastor, his fervor directed not at Jesus but at Mitra’s minimalistic school. This was the new type of religion I’ve often envisioned: the exuberant dedication of emotional and physical resources to a proven force of good, not to an irrational faith-based deity. This was a church without a god. Well maybe Bono is its god but that is a story for a different day.
-Trent Wolbe