Pluggd’s State of the Union Address

Pluggdbloglogo_1
We’re not here to write about the State of the Union speech per se (enough oth­er blog­gers have done that), but rather to men­tion a cool new tech­nol­o­gy that’s been applied to the Bush speech. A com­pa­ny called Plug­gd, using “HearHere tech­nol­o­gy,” now gives you the abil­i­ty to search audio and video files just like you would the web. Con­fused? Let us explain. Take a look at Plug­gd’s State of the Union SMACKDOWN! and you’ll see what looks like a stan­dard, web-based audio/video ver­sion of the speech. So far, no big deal. Now, type the word “edu­ca­tion” in the search box and look at the col­or meter that sits next to the play but­ton. The orange/red col­or indi­cates the most rel­e­vant moments when the pres­i­dent deals with edu­ca­tion. Sim­ply click on “hot zones” and you’ll cut right to the chase.

Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture: Available in Text or Audio (For Free)


Lawrence Lessig, a law pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford, has made a big name for him­self by devel­op­ing a sus­tained cri­tique of how Con­gress, at the behest of cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, has pro­gres­sive­ly sti­fled cul­tur­al and sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tion by extend­ing the dura­tion and scope of copy­right laws. Out of this cri­tique, Lessig found­ed Cre­ative Com­mons, a non-prof­it which issues copy­right licens­es that allow authors and inno­va­tors to retain some con­trol over their works yet “ded­i­cate [them] to the pub­lic domain” where they will con­tribute to the flour­ish­ing of new cul­ture. And, even bet­ter, Lessig has pub­lished some of his own impor­tant works under these licens­es, includ­ing Free Cul­ture: How Big Media Uses Tech­nol­o­gy and the Law to Lock Down Cul­ture and Con­trol Cre­ativ­i­ty. What this means is that you can freely access the book in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent for­mats (click here to pick), even an audio book ver­sion. This makes it utter­ly easy to find out what Lessig’s ground­break­ing argu­ments are all about. It gets his think­ing out there, into the com­mons, and vig­or­ous­ly shapes the debate on copy­right law. It brings about a free flow of ideas, the very thing that Lessig cares most about.

Read­ers may also want to check out Lessig’s pop­u­lar blog as well as his nov­el attempt to use a pub­lic wiki to update his book, Code and Oth­er Laws of Cyber­space.

Final­ly, you may also want to check out the recent work pub­lished by Lessig’s peer at Yale, Yochai Ben­kler: The Wealth of Net­works. Though released in hard­cov­er, it is also freely avail­able in wiki and PDF for­mats.

Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Manet Go Digital: Art Museum Podcasts on iTunes

Muse­ums have always been in a tricky posi­tion. Instead of bring­ing art to the pub­lic, they have made the pub­lic come to them. And, even while they did this for per­fect­ly log­i­cal rea­sons (the works of art are price­less and del­i­cate after all), muse­ums have nonethe­less lim­it­ed their abil­i­ty to reach more peo­ple and pro­mote a wider appre­ci­a­tion of fine art. But thanks to pod­cast­ing and oth­er dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy that may soon begin to change.

In recent weeks and months, sev­er­al major art muse­ums have launched pod­cast col­lec­tions that give the pub­lic eas­i­er access to art edu­ca­tion as well as infor­ma­tion about their wide-rang­ing art col­lec­tions. For starters, The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art in New York has post­ed on iTunes (get the rss feed here) a series of pod­casts fea­tur­ing both artists talk­ing about their work and New York celebri­ties read­ing from artists’ writ­ings. (You can lis­ten, for exam­ple, to Kevin Bacon read­ing excerpts from the let­ters of Vin­cent Van Gogh.) Next, we move a lit­tle down­town to The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, oth­er­wise known as MoMA (iTunesfeed), which offers an exten­sive col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tion­al talks, includ­ing the art crit­ic Michael Fried in a lengthy con­ver­sa­tion about the work of Edouard Manet, and a series of talks about Dada and Sur­re­al­ism. Mov­ing west to the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art (see col­lec­tion on iTunes), you can down­load edu­ca­tion­al dis­cus­sions about the work of Andrew Wyeth and Thomas Eakins, among oth­ers. Final­ly, mov­ing much fur­ther west to San Fran­cis­co’s SFMOMA, you’ll find some stel­lar pod­casts (iTunes —  Feed), includ­ing the entire audio tour of the muse­um’s Anselm Kiefer exhi­bi­tion. (The pod­cast col­lec­tion assem­bled by the Hir­sh­horn Muse­um & Sculp­ture Gar­den also has its own talk about Kiefer­’s work, plus many oth­er good lec­tures.) Final­ly, anoth­er SFMOMA pod­cast worth your atten­tion is “Mex­i­co as Muse,” which gives a brief intro­duc­tion to the life and pho­tog­ra­phy of Tina Mod­ot­ti.

Many oth­er major muse­ums — The Nation­al Gallery in Lon­don, The Smith­son­ian, The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, to name a few — have recent­ly launched sim­i­lar pod­cast col­lec­tions. They’re young and some­what light on con­tent, but we sus­pect that they, too, will grow over time. We also sus­pect that many of these muse­ums will even­tu­al­ly give you the abil­i­ty to down­load their audio tours to your own iPod, sav­ing you the has­sle of rent­ing the muse­ums’ audio devices. You can find these pod­casts, as well as many oth­ers, in our Arts & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

10 Excellent University Podcasts


For more enrich­ing audio, see our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es
.

1.) Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s Inven­tion of Pres­i­den­tial Pow­ers — James MacPher­son iTunes Audio Stream

Prince­ton’s James MacPher­son, a Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author on the Amer­i­can Civ­il War, dis­cuss­es how Lin­coln invent­ed pres­i­den­tial war-time pow­ers. It’s a top­ic of par­tic­u­lar inter­est giv­en the recent debate over the
valid­i­ty of war­rant­less wire­taps.

2.) Active Lib­er­ty: A Con­ver­sa­tion with Supreme Court Jus­tice Stephen Brey­er iTunes Audio Stream
Jus­tice Stephen Brey­er makes the case that lib­er­ty, as defined by the con­sti­tu­tion, isn’t about free­dom from gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ence (neg­a­tive lib­er­ty), as so many want to pro­claim today, but about the free­dom to par­tic­i­pate in our demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem (active lib­er­ty).

3.) Democ­ra­cy Mat­ters — Cor­nell West iTunes Audio Stream
A pow­er­ful ora­tor, West looks at how democ­ra­cies dete­ri­o­rate when cit­i­zens lose their abil­i­ty to think crit­i­cal­ly and rec­og­nize the deep under­ly­ing prob­lems that exist with­in their own nations. (The talk real­ly gets start­ed about 10 min­utes in.)

4.) Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film — Hubert Drey­fus iTunes
This is not a lec­ture, but rather a full-fledged course taught by UC Berke­ley’s Hubert Drey­fus, which takes a close look at how exis­ten­tial­ism suf­fus­es impor­tant lit­er­a­ture, phi­los­o­phy and films — Dos­to­evsky’s Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, Niet­zsche’s Gay Sci­ence, and Alain Resnais’ film Hiroshi­ma Mon Amour.

5.) Grad­u­a­tion Speech — Steve Jobs iTunes audio iTunes video Google Video
A short speech by Apple’s vision­ary CEO where he talks about his phi­los­o­phy on life. The moti­vat­ing talk was giv­en at Stan­ford in June
2005.

6.) Nation Build­ing: Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan — Fran­cis Fukuya­ma iTunes Audio Stream
Fukuya­ma, who once saw the world com­ing into an eter­nal demo­c­ra­t­ic bal­ance, now talks more sober­ly about how to han­dle the dif­fi­cult task of re-build­ing nations in gen­er­al, and par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the tur­bu­lent Mid­dle East. Fukuya­ma teach­es at Johns Hop­kins and heads the SAIS Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment Pro­gram.

7.) The Art of Read­ing a Poem — Harold Bloom iTunesAudio Stream
The famed lit­er­ary crit­ic takes his stu­dents through a poem by Wal­lace Stevens, Parts of a World, and con­stant­ly moves between inter­pre­ta­tion and digres­sion — digres­sions that are often filled with intrigu­ing per­son­al anec­dotes.
The record­ing is not high­ly edit­ed, which lets you feel like a fly on the wall in the class­room. (Bloom real­ly gets start­ed about 13 min­utes in.)

8.) The Heart of Non Vio­lence — His Holi­ness the Dalai Lama iTunes Video (Real Play­er)
The Dalai Lama, the polit­i­cal and reli­gious leader of Tibet and win­ner of the Nobel Peace Price, speaks at Stan­ford about non­vi­o­lence, what it
means, when vio­lence is jus­ti­fi­able, and whether US mil­i­tary actions in Iraq might actu­al­ly be jus­ti­fied.

9.) The Future of the Inter­net — Tim Bern­ers-Lee iTunes Audio Stream
Tim Bern­ers-Lee, founder of the world wide web and direc­tor of the World Wide Web Con­sor­tium, speaks at Prince­ton about the seman­tic web and the chal­lenges to its future devel­op­ment.

10.) The Life and Work of Philip John­son — Vin­cent Scul­ly iTunes
Vin­cent Scul­ly, one of Amer­i­ca’s finest archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­ans, takes a look at the life and career of Philip John­son, one of Amer­i­ca’s finest archi­tects.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Why 160 Scientists Are Optimistic in 2007


Not too long ago, we men­tioned the Edge.org, the web site run by John Brock­man, the lit­er­ary agent of some very impor­tant sci­en­tif­ic minds. Now it’s worth men­tion­ing it again. With the start of the new year, the web site asked 160 influ­en­tial thinkers “what are you opti­mistic about?” And, as you’d expect from some pret­ty smart peo­ple, you get some pret­ty intrigu­ing respons­es. Below, we’ve includ­ed five exam­ples, but you can and should access the full list of replies here:

Richard Dawkins — The Final Sci­en­tif­ic Enlight­en­ment
“I am opti­mistic that the physi­cists of our species will com­plete Ein­stein’s dream and dis­cov­er the final the­o­ry of every­thing before supe­ri­or crea­tures, evolved on anoth­er world, make con­tact and tell us the answer. I am opti­mistic that, although the the­o­ry of every­thing will bring fun­da­men­tal physics to a con­vinc­ing clo­sure, the enter­prise of physics itself will con­tin­ue to flour­ish, just as biol­o­gy went on grow­ing after Dar­win solved its deep prob­lem. I am opti­mistic that the two the­o­ries togeth­er will fur­nish a total­ly sat­is­fy­ing nat­u­ral­is­tic expla­na­tion for the exis­tence of the uni­verse and every­thing that’s in it includ­ing our­selves. And I am opti­mistic that this final sci­en­tif­ic enlight­en­ment will deal an over­due death­blow to reli­gion and oth­er juve­nile super­sti­tions.“

Matt Rid­ley — The Future

“The future. That’s what I’m opti­mistic about. The his­to­ri­an Macaulay said, in 1830: ‘We can­not absolute­ly prove that those are in error who tell us that soci­ety has reached a turn­ing point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much appar­ent rea­son.’ The eter­nal, endur­ing pes­simism of human beings about the future does real harm by per­suad­ing peo­ple, espe­cial­ly the young, to retreat from adven­ture and enter­prise into anomie. Sure, the world has prob­lems: AIDS, Islam­o­fas­cism, car­bon diox­ide. But I bet we can solve them as we have solved oth­ers, such as small­pox, the pop­u­la­tion explo­sion and the high price of whale oil.”

Jared Dia­mond — Good Choic­es Some­times Pre­vail
“I am cau­tious­ly opti­mistic about the state of the world, because: 1. Big busi­ness­es some­times con­clude that what is good for the long-term future of human­i­ty is also good for their bot­tom line (cf. Wal-Mart’s recent deci­sion to shift their seafood pur­chas­es entire­ly to cer­ti­fied sus­tain­able fish­eries with­in the next three to five years). 2. Vot­ers in democ­ra­cy some­times make good choic­es and avoid bad choic­es (cf. some recent elec­tions in a major First World coun­try).”

Leonard Susskind — Going Beyond Our Dar­win­ian Roots
I am opti­mistic about the adapt­abil­i­ty of the human brain to answer ques­tions that evo­lu­tion could not have designed it for. A brain that can rewire itself to visu­al­ize 4 dimen­sions, or the Heisen­berg uncer­tain­ty prin­ci­ple, is clear­ly going way beyond the things that nat­ur­al selec­tion could have wired it for. It makes me opti­mistic that we may be able to go beyond our Dar­win­ian roots in oth­er ways.

Stew­art Brand - Cities — Glob­al Pop­u­la­tion Shrink­age And Eco­nom­ic Growth
”…Cities have always been wealth cre­ators. Cities have always been pop­u­la­tion sinks. This year, 2007, is the crossover point from a world pre­dom­i­nant­ly rur­al to a world pre­dom­i­nant­ly urban.

The rate of urban­iza­tion is cur­rent­ly about 1.3 mil­lion new city dwellers a week, 70 mil­lion a year, still appar­ent­ly accel­er­at­ing. The world was 3% urban in 1800, 14% urban in 1900, 50% urban this year, and prob­a­bly head­ed in the next few decades to around 80% urban, which has been the sta­bi­liza­tion point for devel­oped coun­tries since the mid-20th-cen­tu­ry.

Almost all the rush to the cities is occur­ring in the devel­op­ing world (though the coun­try­side con­tin­ues to emp­ty out in devel­oped nations). The devel­op­ing world is where the great­est pover­ty is, and where the high­est birthrates have dri­ven world pop­u­la­tion past 6.5 bil­lion.

Hence my opti­mism. Cities cure pover­ty. Cities also dri­ve birthrates down almost the instant peo­ple move to town. Women lib­er­at­ed by the move to a city drop their birthrate right on through the replace­ment rate of 2.1 children/woman. No one expect­ed this, but that’s how it worked out. As a result, there will be anoth­er bil­lion or two peo­ple in the world total by mid­cen­tu­ry, but then the total will head down— per­haps rapid­ly enough to be a prob­lem, as it already is in Rus­sia and Japan.

Pover­ty in the megac­i­ties (over 10 mil­lion) and hyper­ci­ties (over 20 mil­lion) of the devel­op­ing world will be high­ly vis­i­ble as the dis­as­ter it is. (It was worse out in the bush, only not as vis­i­ble there. That’s why peo­ple leave.) But the poor who were trapped in rur­al pover­ty cre­ate their own oppor­tu­ni­ty once they’re in town by cre­at­ing their own cities— the “squat­ter cities” where one bil­lion peo­ple now live. They reca­pit­u­late the cre­ation of cities past by gen­er­at­ing a seething infor­mal econ­o­my in which every­one works. The dense slums, if they don’t get bull­dozed, even­tu­al­ly become part of the city prop­er and part of the for­mal econ­o­my. It takes decades.…”

Again, the com­plete list of 160 respons­es can be found here.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Ancient Greek Who Speaks to All History and Military Buffs

Open Source, a radio pro­gram host­ed by Christo­pher Lydon, recent­ly pulled off some­thing rather unusu­al. The broad­cast (iTunesmp3) made it abun­dant­ly clear why an Ancient Greek text, Thucy­dides’ His­to­ry of the Pelo­pon­nesian War, remains fas­ci­nat­ing and high­ly rel­e­vant to mod­ern day read­ers. Writ­ten 2400+ years ago, Thucy­dides has some­thing impor­tant to offer his­to­ry and mil­i­tary buffs alike, and also those who want to delve into the com­pli­cat­ed human psy­che. For his­to­ri­ans, Thucy­dides’ work gives us the first mod­ern his­to­ry — the first his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive that looked to ren­der the past in an ana­lyt­i­cal, empir­i­cal and objec­tive way (a depar­ture from the more lit­er­ary, myth-based his­to­ries that came before it). For mil­i­tary thinkers, includ­ing stu­dents at West Point, the work holds such appeal because it recounts the epic, 27-year war (431–404 BC) between the two great­est Greek pow­ers — on the one side, Athens, a demo­c­ra­t­ic but increas­ing­ly impe­ri­al­ist pow­er, and, on the oth­er side, Spar­ta, a harsh oli­garchic pow­er that held no par­tic­u­lar impe­r­i­al aspi­ra­tions. Thucy­dides, an Athen­ian gen­er­al, gives you the blow-by-blow account of a land­mark his­tor­i­cal war. But he also gives you more. What par­tic­u­lar­ly engages read­ers, both past and present, are Thucy­dides’ philo­soph­i­cal insights into human nature — into how our pas­sions and fears, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing times of war, can counter-pro­duc­tive­ly under­mine our civil­i­ty and human­i­ty. This applies to lead­ers and cit­i­zens of Athens, who over­reached and even­tu­al­ly lost their war. Yet it also poten­tial­ly applies to mod­ern Amer­i­ca because it is Thucy­dides’ assump­tion that human nature remains fun­da­men­tal­ly the same across time and place. And, in that sense, there is a cau­tion­ary tale for all of us in this sem­i­nal Greek work.

Open Culture Podcast Directories Viewable in Feed Readers

The only down­side to using a feed read­er (Blog­lines, Google Read­er, MyYa­hoo, etc.) to access Open Cul­ture is that you won’t be able to see our pod­cast direc­to­ries which reside in our left nav bar. To assist you, we have past­ed links below that will give you direct access to the pod­cast col­lec­tions. Book­mark & enjoy.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Ali G at Harvard; or How Sacha Baron Cohen Got Blessed by America’s Cultural Establishment

Oodles of print have been writ­ten about Sacha Baron Cohen’s film, “Borat: Cul­tur­al Learn­ings of Amer­i­ca for Make Ben­e­fit Glo­ri­ous Nation of Kaza­khstan.” And there’s per­haps not a great deal more to say about it, oth­er than it’s remark­able how well the film has been received by Amer­i­ca’s cul­tur­al estab­lish­ment. Edgy, shock com­e­dy that uses racial and gen­der stereo­types to sub­vert racial and gen­der stereo­types usu­al­ly does­n’t go down so well with high­brow crit­ics. But, in this case it did. The Wash­ing­ton Post called the film “a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of slap­stick and satire, a Pla­ton­ic ide­al of high- and low­brow that man­ages to appeal to our basest com­mon denom­i­na­tors while bril­liant­ly skew­er­ing racism, anti-Semi­tism, … [and] sex­ism.” (Pla­ton­ic ide­al? Borat?) Of the film, The New York Times said “The bril­liance of ‘Borat’ is that its com­e­dy is as piti­less as its social satire, and as brainy.” Then, we heard Ter­ry Gross, of NPR’s Fresh Air, gush over the com­ic in her amus­ing inter­view with Baron Cohen. And last­ly, the British com­ic has been nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar by Hol­ly­wood’s film elite.

If any fur­ther proof was need­ed that Baron Cohen has been embraced by the cul­tur­al van­guard, then let this video serve as final wit­ness. In 2004, Har­vard invit­ed Baron Cohen to speak at “Class Day,” the big tra­di­tion­al event that takes place the day before com­mence­ment. And here you get him speak­ing to stu­dents and par­ents not as Baron Cohen, but as Ali G., all in a light-heart­ed way. (For more on this vis­it, see the arti­cle in the Har­vard Gazette.)

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

« Go BackMore in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.