Social Media in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution

in History, Stanford, Technology | November 8th, 2011

As the French like to say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Before there was Twit­ter, Face­book and Google+ (click to fol­low us), Euro­peans liv­ing in the sev­en­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­turies had to deal with their own ver­sion of infor­ma­tion over­load. Emerg­ing postal sys­tems, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of short let­ters called bil­lets, and the birth of news­pa­pers and pam­phlets all pumped unprece­dent­ed amounts of infor­ma­tion — valu­able infor­ma­tion, gos­sip, chat­ter and the rest — through new­ly-emerg­ing social net­works, which even­tu­al­ly played a crit­i­cal role in the French Rev­o­lu­tion, much like Twit­ter and Face­book proved instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing the Arab Spring.

These his­tor­i­cal social net­works are being care­ful­ly mapped out by schol­ars at Stan­ford. Above, we have Anaïs Saint-Jude paint­ing the his­tor­i­cal pic­ture for us. Below Dan Edel­stein gives you a clos­er look at Stan­ford’s Map­ping the Repub­lic of Let­ters project.

via Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty News

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Marshall McLuhan on the Stupidest Debate in the History of Debating (1976)

in History, Music, Politics, Television | October 13th, 2011

In Sep­tem­ber 1976, Jim­my Carter and Ger­ald Ford squared off in a pres­i­den­tial debate, and the fol­low­ing day, the leg­endary com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist Mar­shall McLuhan appeared on the TODAY show, then host­ed by Tom Brokaw, to offer some almost real-time analy­sis of the debate. The first tele­vised pres­i­den­tial debate was famous­ly held in 1960, and it pit­ted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon. Six­teen years lat­er, pun­dits and cit­i­zens were still try­ing to make sense of the for­mat. Was the tele­vised debate a new and vital part of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy? Or was it a care­ful­ly con­trolled act of polit­i­cal per­for­mance? For McLuhan, there was still some ide­al­is­tic sense that tele­vised debates could enhance our democ­ra­cy, assum­ing the mes­sage was suit­ed to the medi­um. But McLuhan came away dis­il­lu­sioned, call­ing the Carter/Ford spec­ta­cle “the most stu­pid arrange­ment of any debate in the his­to­ry of debat­ing” and chalk­ing up tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties (watch them here) to the medi­um rag­ing against the mes­sage.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

Mar­shall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Think­ing

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How the King James Bible Forever Changed English: 400th Anniversary Celebrated with Fun Videos

in English Language, History, Religion | October 10th, 2011

This year marks the 400th anniver­sary of the King James Bible, a trans­la­tion that influ­enced the devel­op­ment of the Eng­lish lan­guage as much as it did the Chris­t­ian faith. Right along­side many oth­er anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions tak­ing place this year, Glen Scriven­er, a min­is­ter in the Church of Eng­land, has start­ed a blog about the lin­guis­tic impact of the text, focus­ing on 365 phras­es that have passed in com­mon par­lance. A lot of this gets art­ful­ly dis­tilled by Scriven­er’s short video, The King’s Eng­lish — 100 phras­es in 3 Min­utes (above).

Scriven­er’s work is nice­ly com­ple­ment­ed by a wit­ty ani­mat­ed video tak­en from The His­to­ry of Eng­lish in 10 Min­utes, a sequence cre­at­ed by The Open Uni­ver­si­ty ear­li­er this year.

H/T Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Puts the Dead Sea Scrolls Online

Intro­duc­tion to the New and Old Tes­ta­ments

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Steven Pinker on the History of Violence: A Happy Tale

in History, Psychology | September 29th, 2011

In July, the Edge.org held its annu­al “Mas­ter Class” in Napa, Cal­i­for­nia and brought togeth­er some influ­en­tial thinkers to talk about “The Sci­ence of Human Nature.” The high­lights includ­ed:

Prince­ton psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Kah­ne­man on the mar­vels and the flaws of intu­itive think­ing; Har­vard math­e­mat­i­cal biol­o­gist Mar­tin Nowak on the evo­lu­tion of coop­er­a­tion; Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker on the his­to­ry of vio­lence; UC-San­ta Bar­bara evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist Leda Cos­mides on the archi­tec­ture of moti­va­tion; UC-San­ta Bar­bara neu­ro­sci­en­tist Michael Gaz­zani­ga on neu­ro­science and the law; and Prince­ton reli­gious his­to­ri­an Elaine Pagels on The Book of Rev­e­la­tions.

The Edge.org has now start­ed mak­ing videos from the class avail­able online, includ­ing, this week, Steven Pinker’s talk on the his­to­ry of vio­lence. You can watch Pinker’s full 86 minute talk here (sor­ry, we could­n’t embed it on our site.) Or, if you want the quick gist of Pinker’s think­ing, then watch the short clip above. In five min­utes, Pinker tells you why vio­lence is steadi­ly trend­ing down, and why some things are actu­al­ly going right in our momentarily/monetarily trou­bled world.

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Six Ideas That Set the West Apart from the Rest (And Why It’s All Over Now Baby Blue)

in Current Affairs, Economics, History | September 28th, 2011

We’re tack­ling anoth­er big ques­tion today with the help of Har­vard eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­an Niall Fer­gu­son. And the ques­tion goes like this: Why has the West cre­at­ed so much pros­per­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty over the past sev­er­al cen­turies, when the rest of the world did not? For Fer­gu­son, the “great diver­gence” can be explained by six big ideas, or what he calls killer apps for the ben­e­fit of his technophile TED audi­ence:

1. Com­pe­ti­tion
2. The Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion
3. Prop­er­ty Rights
4. Mod­ern Med­i­cine
5. The Con­sumer Soci­ety
6. Work Eth­ic

These apps, it turns out, are open source. Any­one can down­load and use them. And that’s pre­cise­ly what Asia has done. The great diver­gence is over (baby blue)…

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Google Puts The Dead Sea Scrolls Online (in Super High Resolution)

in Google, History, Religion | September 26th, 2011

Thanks to Google and the Israel Muse­um in Jerusalem, you can now fire up your brows­er and start tak­ing a good, close look at The Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient bib­li­cal texts found between 1947 and 1956, right on the shores of the Dead Sea. The Scrolls were orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten between the third and first cen­turies BCE, and they con­sti­tute the old­est known pieces of the Hebrew Bible. Since 1965, they have been on dis­play in Jerusalem. But no mat­ter where you live, you can view five dig­i­tized Dead Sea Scrolls, each pho­tographed at a res­o­lu­tion of 1,200 megapix­els. That’s rough­ly 200 times greater than your aver­age cam­era.

To learn more about The Dead Sea Scrolls, watch this free lec­ture from The Great Cours­es: “Reveal­ing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the World”  pre­sent­ed by Gary A. Rends­burg, Rut­gers. (Get more free lec­tures by The Great Cours­es here.)

And, to put all of this con­text, please vis­it this free course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty: Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment (Hebrew Bible) by Chris­tine Hayes. You will find it list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

via Offi­cial Google Blog

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google App Enhances Muse­um Vis­its; Launched at the Get­ty

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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Frank W. Buckles, The Last U.S. Veteran of World War I

in Film, History, Life | September 22nd, 2011

Frank Woodruff Buck­les was born on Feb­ru­ary 1st, 1901. At the age of 16, he enlist­ed in the U.S. Army by con­vinc­ing recruit­ing offi­cers that he was, in fact, 21. In this short film, Buck­les recalls this time so long ago and the last year of the Great War. There are two par­tic­u­lar­ly mov­ing pas­sages in this doc­u­men­tary: when he talks about the dif­fi­cul­ties vet­er­ans expe­ri­enced after return­ing home, and when Buck­les voic­es his opin­ions on war in gen­er­al, and par­tic­u­lar­ly war today (“How did we get involved in this thing, Iraq? It was crazy, we have no damn busi­ness in there.”)

Frank died on Feb­ru­ary 27th, 2011, at the age of 110. The last sur­viv­ing U.S. vet­er­an of World War I, he was prop­er­ly laid to rest at Arling­ton Nation­al Ceme­tery (find video of the cer­e­mo­ny here). There are two trib­utes to Mr Buck­les that offer more insight into his life: a short video by the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs and an obit­u­ary in the Wash­ing­ton Post.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Duck and Cover: The 1950s Film That Taught Millions of Schoolchildren How to Survive a Nuclear Bomb

in Film, History | September 16th, 2011

After the Sovi­et Union test­ed its first atom­ic bomb in August, 1949, Amer­i­can anx­i­ety lev­els ran high­er. The fear of nuclear war was in the air. And a young gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans soon got its intro­duc­tion to Duck and Cov­er, the lit­tle tech­nique that would save lives if the U.S. ever endured a Hiroshi­ma-style bomb­ing. Or so it was believed.

In 1951, the US gov­ern­ment, work­ing with Archer Pro­duc­tions and stu­dents from Queens, NY, pro­duced a short instruc­tion­al film giv­en the no-frills title Duck and Cov­er. Shown to mil­lions of chil­dren nation­wide over many years, the film became a cen­ter­piece of the gov­ern­men­t’s emer­gency pre­pared­ness pro­gram. Since then, the film has been entered into the Nation­al Film Reg­istry (2004) and has inspired var­i­ous par­o­dies, includ­ing this recent goof from the “Aus­tralian Board of Civ­il Defence.” Hope you get some­thing from this nos­tal­gia-induc­ing piece of film.…

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

63 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

Kurt Von­negut Gives a Ser­mon on the Fool­ish­ness of Nuclear Arms: It’s Time­ly Again (Cathe­dral of St. John the Divine, 1982)

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

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