All these conferences and foundations are little more than intellectual masturbation. TED, Google Talks, IGF, etc. A bunch of people with their heads in the clouds get together and ejaculate phrases like "humanity connected" and "world changing". It makes everyone feel good, like when you're high and you start getting those feelings of connectedness with the universe. I admit, listening to those talks gives me a sense of euphoria too, but when I snap back to reality and realize the problems at hand are more concrete, like getting a stable release version of a 64-bit flash player, or I see the same organizations that talk big about open video still using embedded flash videos.It's like ancient greek philosophers getting in a circle and impressing each other with how unworldly each of their philosophies are. At the end of the day, someone has to do the grunt work. I think we'd be hard pressed to figure out the last time one of these gatherings made a tangible difference.I'd like to see fewer people preaching about how astounding the future of computing is and more people making it happen.