The MIT Lecture Browser & A Beautiful Mind

MIT has released a new search engine that draws on speech recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy and lets users search MIT audio & video lec­tures by key­word. For exam­ple, if you type “NASA” into the search box, the search results will include all of the instances where a speak­er utters the word NASA in a record­ed lec­ture. (You can get more back­ground infor­ma­tion on the new search engine here.)

Now, what’s nice about using this exam­ple is that a “NASA” search will bring you to an intrigu­ing pre­sen­ta­tion by Sylvia Nasar. (Click here and type “NASA” or “Sylvia.”) She’s the author of the bestelling book, A Beau­ti­ful Mind, which offers a bio­graph­i­cal account of the Nobel Prize-win­ning math­e­mati­cian John Nash and his strug­gles with para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia. The book was turned into an Acad­e­my Award-win­ning film, and here you can find Nasar deliv­er­ing a lec­ture at MIT called “A Beau­ti­ful Mind: Genius, Mad­ness, Reawak­en­ing.” She’s a very able speak­er and tells a good sto­ry. Have a look. (You can also access Nasar’s talk here.)

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