Where Do Good Ideas Come From?

in History, Media | September 23rd, 2010

Where do good ideas come from? Places that put us togeth­er. Places that allow good hunch­es to col­lide with oth­er good hunch­es, some­times cre­at­ing big break­throughs and inno­va­tions. Dur­ing the Enlight­en­ment, this all hap­pened in Parisian salons and cof­fee hous­es. Nowa­days, it’s hap­pen­ing on the web, in places that defy your ordi­nary def­i­n­i­tion of “place.” In four ani­mat­ed min­utes, Steven John­son out­lines the argu­ment that he makes more ful­ly in his soon-to-be-pub­lished book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Nat­ur­al His­to­ry of Inno­va­tion. The video is the lat­est from the RSAn­i­mate series.

PS: Last week, I wrote a guest post on 5 cap­ti­vat­ing RSA videos that mull over the flaws run­ning through mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism. You can find it on Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ira Glass on Why Cre­ative Excel­lence Takes Time

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David Bowie Standup

in Comedy, Music | September 22nd, 2010

For a brief moment yes­ter­day, the inter­net was abuzz. David Bowie? Now doing standup com­e­dy? Bowie him­self seemed to con­firm it on Twit­ter. But then the truth came out. It was all a hoax, the work of come­di­an Ed Schrad­er. Lis­ten below:

Relat­ed: Don’t miss lit­tle this video of a 3 year old hav­ing a “Want David Bowie” melt­down. Watch video here, and stay with it until the 1:30 mark…

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The Paris Review Interviews Now Online

in Books, Literature, Writing | September 22nd, 2010

The Paris Review, the great lit­er­ary jour­nal co-found­ed by George Plimp­ton, unveiled last week a new web site and a big archive of inter­views with famous lit­er­ary fig­ures. Span­ning five decades, the inter­views often talk about the “how” of lit­er­a­ture (to bor­row a phrase from Salman Rushdie) – that is, how writ­ers go about writ­ing. Rum­mag­ing through the archive, you will encounter con­ver­sa­tions with TS Eliot, William Faulkn­er, Ralph Elli­son, Ernest Hem­ing­way, Simone de Beau­voir, Saul Bel­low, Jorge Luis Borges, Nor­man Mail­er, Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov, John Stein­beck, Joan Did­ion, Kurt Von­negut, Eudo­ra Wel­ty, Ray­mond Carv­er, Rus­sell Banks, Don DeLil­lo, Toni Mor­ri­son, Paul Auster, etc. And, amaz­ing­ly, this list only scratch­es the sur­face of what’s avail­able.

Note: These inter­views are sep­a­rate­ly avail­able in book for­mat: The Paris Review Inter­views, Vol­umes 1–4.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Ok Go & the Open Video Conference

in Music | September 21st, 2010

This week, OK Go released a new video sup­port­ing its lat­est sin­gle “White Knuck­les.” It’s the first since they released two viral videos (here and here) accom­pa­ny­ing “This Too Shall Pass.” Give the video a watch (above) and take into account these stats.

  • The video gen­er­at­ed more than 1 mil­lion views on Mon­day alone (its first day on the web),
  • It appar­ent­ly took 124 takes to make the video, and the video you see is actu­al­ly the 72nd take,
  • 4 lbs of dog treats were used each day dur­ing the mak­ing of the video,
  • There were 3–4 cof­fee runs per day for the humans involved, and
  • The video will gen­er­ate dona­tions for the ASPCA.

Now this very relat­ed plug: Ok Go’s lead singer, Dami­an Kulash, will be a head­line speak­er at the Open Video Con­fer­ence tak­ing place in New York City on Octo­ber 1st & 2nd. He’s just one of 100 speak­ers tak­ing part in the con­fer­ence, and tick­ets start at $35. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it the Open Video Con­fer­ence web site.

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The Smallest Stop-Motion Animation Ever

in Art, Film, Science | September 21st, 2010

From the mak­ers of Wal­lace and Gromit comes the small­est stop-motion ani­ma­tion ever. The lil­liput­ian main char­ac­ter, apt­ly named Dot, stands a mere 0.35-inch-tall. Accord­ing to Pop­u­lar Sci­ence, the ani­ma­tors “used a 3D print­er to make 50 dif­fer­ent ver­sions of Dot, because she is too small to manip­u­late or bend like they would oth­er stop-motion ani­ma­tion char­ac­ters.” Then each print-up was hand-paint­ed by artists look­ing through a micro­scope. Once the set and char­ac­ters were ready to go, the direc­tors attached a CellScope (a cell­phone cam­era with a 50x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion micro­scope) to a Nokia N8 and let the cam­eras roll. You can watch the final cut above.

via Pop­u­lar Sci­ence

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Waiting for Superman (to Fix America’s Broken School System)

in Education, Film | September 20th, 2010

Davis Guggen­heim, the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning direc­tor of An Incon­ve­nient Truth, has issued a new clar­i­on call for our times: Wait­ing for Super­man, a new film that takes a hard look at Amer­i­ca’s fail­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem, the chil­dren it’s leav­ing behind, and the reform­ers try­ing to turn things around. Above, you can watch the offi­cial trail­er for the movie being released in select US the­aters. And, right now, if you pledge to pur­chase a tick­et, you can also direct a dona­tion to a class­room of your choice.

Some­where down the line (and ide­al­ly soon­er than lat­er), I hope that Guggen­heim and Para­mount Pic­tures will decide to make this film freely avail­able to the pub­lic. It always struck me that the film­mak­ers lim­it­ed the impact of An Incon­ve­nient Truth by keep­ing it behind a pay wall. Hope­ful­ly, this time, they will recoup their mon­ey and give the film the free­dom to spread an impor­tant mes­sage. There’s gen­er­al­ly not a moral imper­a­tive to make films free. But, in this case, it seems a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.

Note for edu­ca­tion blog­gers: The Huff­in­g­ton Post will be screen­ing the film nation­al­ly, and they invite you to attend. Get details here.

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Dispatches from Afghanistan

in Current Affairs, Life | September 20th, 2010

If the war in Afghanistan, now in its ninth year, has felt dis­tant, then this video report by Glob­al Post will give it some real col­or, if only for a short while. The ini­tial video spells out what you will see: the after­math – and human costs – of a fire­fight between U.S. and Tal­iban forces in the north­east­ern Kunar Province. Glob­al Post’s blog, Dis­patch­es: Afghanistan, is a live blog that tracks the coun­terin­sur­gency cam­paign and pro­vides vet­er­an report­ing from the field. You can fol­low it here.

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The Unseen Sea: San Francisco Natural Beauty in HD

in Art, Life | September 19th, 2010


The San Fran­cis­co Bay Area hard­ly needs any dress­ing up. Its nat­ur­al beau­ty speaks for itself. But this short HD film by Simon Chris­ten, a pro­fes­sion­al ani­ma­tor and aspir­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er, cer­tain­ly gives artis­tic expres­sion to the allur­ing land­scape of this coastal region. Clouds take on the appear­ance of waves, and lights look like lava, as the col­lec­tion of time laps­es roll by. The film (which you can catch in a strik­ing large for­mat here) comes to us via @AndrewHazlett. Nick Cave pro­vides the accom­pa­ny­ing music — “Mary’s Song” from the sound­track of Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James.

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