How to Operate Your Brain: A User Manual by Timothy Leary (1993)

in Harvard, Philosophy, Psychology | November 16th, 2012

Speak­ing at the Human Be-In in Jan­u­ary 1967, Tim­o­thy Leary uttered the famous phrase bor­rowed from Mar­shall McLuhan, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” It was short­hand for say­ing exper­i­ment with psy­che­delics and achieve new lev­els of con­scious­ness.

Almost 30 years lat­er, Leary had­n’t lost his mis­sion­ary zeal. In 1993 (and only a few years before his death), the for­mer Har­vard psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor record­ed “a pub­lic ser­vice video” called How to Oper­ate Your Brain. Here, Leary nar­rates an almost epilep­tic seizure-induc­ing video, pro­vid­ing what some con­sid­er “a guid­ed med­i­ta­tion” of sorts. I’d pre­fer to call it an unortho­dox “user man­u­al” that tries to impart Leary’s unique sense of enlight­en­ment:

The aim of human life is to know thy­self. Think for your­self. Ques­tion author­i­ty. Think with your friends. Cre­ate, cre­ate new real­i­ties. Phi­los­o­phy is a team sport. Phi­los­o­phy is the ulti­mate, the ulti­mate aphro­disi­ac plea­sure. Learn­ing how to oper­ate your brain, learn­ing how to oper­ate your mind, learn­ing how to redesign chaos.

As you get deep­er into the med­i­ta­tion, you’ll real­ize one thing. Three decades may have passed since Leary pop­u­lar­ized the catch­phrase of the coun­ter­cul­ture. But he’s still get­ting his ideas from McLuhan. If you fol­low the video (or tran­script) to the end, you’ll dis­cov­er that ones and zeros have basi­cal­ly tak­en the place of LSD. Leary says:

Now we have dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We can cre­ate our fan­tasies. We can cre­ate our rhythms, design on screen.… Any­one in any cul­ture watch­ing this screen will get the gen­er­al pic­ture. It’s one glob­al vil­lage. It’s one glob­al human spir­it, one glob­al human race. As we link up through screens, linked by elec­trons and pho­tons, we will cre­ate for the first time a glob­al human­i­ty, not sep­a­rat­ed by words or minds or nation­al­i­ties or reli­gious bias­es.

You can find McLuhan med­i­tat­ing on the con­cept of an Elec­tron­ic Glob­al Vil­lage in anoth­er vin­tage clip.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Aldous Huxley’s LSD Death Trip

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

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Andy Samberg Announces Death of Liberal Arts, Coolness of Science Majors at Harvard Class Day

in Comedy, Graduation Speech, Harvard | May 27th, 2012

Every time Har­vard Class Day rolls around, you can expect a few good laughs from a come­di­an. In years past, Sacha Baron Cohen (a Cam­bridge grad), appear­ing as Ali G, offered some words of non­sen­si­cal wis­dom to Har­vard grads. Amy Poehler and Will Fer­rell have done the same. This year brings Andy Sam­berg, a Sat­ur­day Night Live cast mem­ber and co-star in var­i­ous com­ic films. The high­lights?

  • 4:29 mark: Announces that His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, any­thing relat­ed to Art, and any­thing that ends with “Stud­ies,” are offi­cial­ly use­less.
  • 5:12 mark: Declares that Math and Sci­ence majors are cool .… final­ly.
  • 9:13 mark: Reads poem by WB Yeats in his own, nov­el way.
  • 10:20 mark: Impres­sions begin.
  • 14:07: Awk­ward­ly comes on to all the moth­ers in the crowd.
  • 15:04: Awk­ward­ly comes on to all the fathers in the crowd.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

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Harvard and MIT Create EDX to Offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Worldwide

in Harvard, MIT, Online Courses | May 2nd, 2012

It all start­ed ear­ly last fall. Sebas­t­ian Thrun went a lit­tle rogue (oh the audac­i­ty!) and start­ed offer­ing free online cours­es under Stan­ford’s ban­ner to mass audi­ences, with each course promis­ing a “state­ment of accom­plish­ment” at the end. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of stu­dents signed up, and uni­ver­si­ties every­where took notice.

Since then we have wit­nessed uni­ver­si­ties and star­tups scram­bling fair­ly mad­ly to cre­ate their own MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es), hop­ing to gain a foothold in a new area that could even­tu­al­ly dis­rupt edu­ca­tion in a major way. In Decem­ber, MIT announced the cre­ation of MITx, promis­ing free cours­es and a “cer­tifi­cate of com­ple­tion” to stu­dents world­wide. Sebas­t­ian Thrun left Stan­ford to cre­ate Udac­i­ty, and anoth­er Stan­ford spin­off, Cours­era, gained instant trac­tion when it announced in April that it had raised $16 mil­lion in ven­ture cap­i­tal and signed part­ner­ships with Prince­ton, Penn and U Michi­gan.

Now comes the lat­est news. MIT has teamed up with its Cam­bridge neigh­bor, Har­vard, to cre­ate a new non prof­it ven­ture, EDX. To date, Har­vard has bare­ly dab­bled in open edu­ca­tion. But it’s now throw­ing $30 mil­lion behind EDX (M.I.T. will do the same), and togeth­er they will offer free dig­i­tal cours­es world­wide, with stu­dents receiv­ing the oblig­a­tory cer­tifi­cate of mas­tery at the end. The EDX plat­form will be open source, mean­ing it will be open to oth­er uni­ver­si­ties. Whether EDX will replace MITx, or sit uncom­fort­ably beside it, we’re not entire­ly sure (though it looks like it’s the for­mer).

Class­es will begin next fall. And when they do, we’ll let you know … and, of course, we’ll add them to our mas­sive col­lec­tion of 450 Free Online Cours­es.

For more infor­ma­tion, you can watch the EDX press con­fer­ence here and read an FAQ here.

via The Har­vard Crim­son and MIT News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: A Com­plete List

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Leonard Bernstein’s Masterful Lectures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Recorded at Harvard in 1973)

in Harvard, Music | March 13th, 2012

In 1972, the com­pos­er Leonard Bern­stein returned to Har­vard, his alma mater, to serve as the Charles Eliot Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor of Poet­ry, with “Poet­ry” being defined in the broad­est sense. The posi­tion, first cre­at­ed in 1925, asks fac­ul­ty mem­bers to live on cam­pus, advise stu­dents, and most impor­tant­ly, deliv­er a series of six pub­lic lec­tures. T.S. Eliot, Aaron Cop­land, W.H. Auden, e.e. cum­mings, Robert Frost, Jorge Luis Borges — they all pre­vi­ous­ly took part in this tra­di­tion. And Bern­stein did too.

Deliv­ered in the fall of 1973 and col­lec­tive­ly titled “The Unan­swered Ques­tion,” Bern­stein’s lec­tures cov­ered a lot of ter­rain, touch­ing on poet­ry, lin­guis­tics, phi­los­o­phy and physics. But the focus inevitably comes back to music — to how music works, or to the under­ly­ing gram­mar of music. The lec­tures run over 11 hours. They’re con­sid­ered mas­ter­pieces, beau­ti­ful exam­ples of how to make com­pli­cat­ed mate­r­i­al acces­si­ble. And they’re avail­able in full on YouTube. You can watch the first lec­ture (on Musi­cal Phonol­o­gy) above, and find the remain­ing five lec­tures below. The lec­tures can also be pur­chased as DVDs or in book for­mat.

Lec­ture 2: Musi­cal Syn­tax

Lec­ture 3: Musi­cal Seman­tics

Lec­ture 4: The Delights & Dan­gers of Ambi­gu­i­ty

Lec­ture 5: The 20th Cen­tu­ry Cri­sis

Lec­ture 6: The Poet­ry of Earth

This lec­ture series has been added to our exten­sive col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Science & Cooking: Harvard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

in Harvard, Science | March 8th, 2012

Put Har­vard researchers and world-class chefs togeth­er and what do you get? An unex­pect­ed com­bi­na­tion and a course called Sci­ence and Cook­ing: From Haute Cui­sine to the Sci­ence of Soft Mat­ter. Dur­ing the past sev­er­al decades, researchers have pushed the bound­aries of soft mat­ter sci­ence, a sci­en­tif­ic field that looks at how ther­mal stress­es and ther­mal fluc­tu­a­tions change the phys­i­cal prop­er­ties of every­day mate­ri­als. Nat­u­ral­ly this all applies to food and cook­ing. Hence the premise of the course which uses cook­ing to explain fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples in applied physics and engi­neer­ing.

You can watch the intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture here and the third tasty lec­ture, The Many Faces of Choco­late, above. The full course can be watched on YouTube. And, of course, we’ve added it to our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Har­vard School of Engi­neer­ing and Applied Sci­ences

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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Harvard Thinks Big 2012: 8 All-Star Professors. 8 Big Ideas.

in Harvard, TED Talks | February 23rd, 2012

Ear­li­er this month, Har­vard stu­dents made their way to the Sanders The­atre for the 2012 edi­tion of Har­vard Thinks Big. It’s a TED-style event which gets pitched like this: “8 all-star pro­fes­sors. 8 big ideas. All ten min­utes each.” You get the gist.

This year’s ver­sion had as much sub­stance, though per­haps not quite the same siz­zle, as the 2011 ver­sion, which fea­tured talks by Steven Pinker, Lawrence Lessig, Daniel Gilbert and Elaine Scar­ry. Above, we have one talk from the lat­est Har­vard Thinks Big. It fea­tures Daniel Lieber­man, the renowned biol­o­gist (per­haps you know his work on bare­foot run­ning?) talk­ing about how evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy explains why obe­si­ty is on the rise in the Unit­ed States.

Oth­er speak­ers at the event includ­ed Doug Melton, Eleanor Duck­worth, Nicholas Chris­takis, Kaia Stern, Don­hee Ham, Stephen Green­blatt, and Jill Lep­ore. The lec­tures can be watched via YouTube (fol­low the pre­vi­ous links) or via iTunes. Regret­tably the talks by Green­blatt, Ham and Lep­ore haven’t made it to the web, at least not yet. When they do, we’ll men­tion it on our Twit­ter stream, where we post lots of oth­er cul­tur­al good­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

Har­vard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Envi­ron­ment Profs

Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lec­tures from Occu­py Har­vard Teach-In Pro­vide Answers

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Harvard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Environment Profs

in Current Affairs, Harvard, Science, Video - Science | January 10th, 2012

On Decem­ber 8th, six “all-star envi­ron­men­tal pro­fes­sors” came togeth­er at an event called “Har­vard Thinks Green” and pre­sent­ed short, TED-style talks about the envi­ron­ment and strate­gies for revers­ing cli­mate change. The event start­ed with James McCarthy (Pro­fes­sor of Bio­log­i­cal Oceanog­ra­phy) ask­ing the ques­tion (see above), “Is it too late to avoid seri­ous impacts of cli­mate change?” A good ques­tion to ask giv­en that 2010 wit­nessed the biggest annu­al jump in glob­al car­bon emissions—5.9%. This set the stage for Richard Lazarus (Pro­fes­sor of Law) to dis­cuss ways that our polit­i­cal sys­tem could become more respon­sive to the cri­sis. (Did you know that Barack Oba­ma only men­tioned cli­mate change once in pub­lic last year? Just once?) And then Rebec­ca Hen­der­son (Co-Direc­tor of the Busi­ness and Envi­ron­ment Ini­tia­tive) tries to make the dif­fi­cult case that mon­ey-mak­ing and sav­ing the world can go hand-in-hand — that cap­i­tal­ism can become envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able. You can watch the remain­ing talks online here, or on iTunes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Thinks Big 2010

Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lec­tures from Occu­py Har­vard Teach-In Pro­vide Answers

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

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Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lectures from Occupy Harvard Teach-In Provide Answers

in Current Affairs, Economics, Harvard | December 12th, 2011

Last Wednes­day, the Occu­py move­ment gained a lit­tle more intel­lec­tu­al momen­tum when eight fac­ul­ty mem­bers from Har­vard, Boston Col­lege, and N.Y.U. gath­ered in Cam­bridge to present a day­long Teach-In. In one talk, Archon Fung (Ford Foun­da­tion Pro­fes­sor of Democ­ra­cy and Cit­i­zen­ship and Co-Direc­tor of Trans­paren­cy Pol­i­cy Project at Har­vard) took a vague the­sis of the Occu­py move­ment — “Shit is Fucked Up and Bull­shit” — and gave it some aca­d­e­m­ic depth in a data-filled talk called “Why Has Inequal­i­ty Grown in Amer­i­ca? And What Should We Do About It?” The oth­er talks are avail­able on YouTube (see links below) or via audio stream:

Het­ero­dox Eco­nom­ics: Alter­na­tives to Manki­w’s Ide­ol­o­gy - Stephen Mar­glin, Wal­ter Bark­er Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Wall Street’s Role in the Euro­pean Finan­cial Cri­sis - Richard Park­er, Lec­tur­er in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Senior Fel­low at the Shoren­stein Cen­ter, Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

The Occu­py Move­ment and Stu­dent Debt Refusal — Andrew Ross, Pro­fes­sor of Social and Cul­tur­al Analy­sis, New York Uni­ver­si­ty

Eco­nom­ics for the 99% — Juli­et Schor, Pro­fes­sor of Soci­ol­o­gy, Boston Col­lege

Booms and Busts: The Legal Dynam­ics of Mod­ern Mon­ey — Chris­tine Desan, Pro­fes­sor of Law, Har­vard Law School, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Fear and Pow­er — Brad Epps, Pro­fes­sor of Romance Lan­guages & Lit­er­a­tures and Depart­ment Chair for Stud­ies in Women, Gen­der, and Sex­u­al­i­ty, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Vig­i­lance, Inquiry, Alien­ation & Hope at Har­vard and in the USA - John Wom­ack, Robert Woods Bliss Pro­fes­sor of Latin Amer­i­can His­to­ry and Eco­nom­ics, Fac­ul­ty of Arts and Sci­ences, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky at Occu­py Boston

Har­vard Thinks Big, a TED-Esque Event

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