The Open v. Closed Culture Smackdown

in Media, Web/Tech | January 30th, 2010

Nina Paley and Jaron Lanier are fac­ing off in a friend­ly, pub­lic radio smack­down, debat­ing the pros and cons of open/free cul­ture. (Lis­ten to the audio below). As a quick refresh­er, Nina Paley got a good amount of press last year when she cre­at­ed Sita Sings the Blues, a prize-win­ning ani­mat­ed film, and then released it to the pub­lic under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. Jaron Lanier, mean­while, is often called the “father of vir­tu­al­i­ty,” and his new book, You Are Not a Gad­get, takes a fair­ly hard­line stance against Web 2.0 and the free/open cul­ture move­ment it engen­dered. And now the debate record­ed by WNYC in NYC:

NOTE: You can find Sita Sings the Blues (and 125 oth­er films) in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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Why Open Video?

in Media, Technology | December 11th, 2009

What is open video? And how does it pro­mote free speech, par­tic­i­pa­tion, diver­si­ty and a more engaged media sphere? Get the answers from Amy Good­man (Democ­ra­cy Now), Xeni Jardin (Boing Boing), Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues), Yochai Ben­kler & Jonathan Zit­train (Har­vard Berk­man Cen­ter), among oth­ers. This is a mis­sion to get behind. Excel­lent work by Peter Kauf­man and Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion. Note: You can down­load this video in OGG and MP4 for­mats.

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A Smart Guide to Free Magazines

in Media | November 8th, 2009

A good find via Life­hack­er. Mag­g­wire is a rel­a­tive­ly new site that will do two things for you. It will direct you to free mag­a­zine con­tent online (a good thing). And (per­haps even bet­ter) it will learn what you like to read, and then start feed­ing you con­tent based on your pref­er­ences. If Mag­g­wire can deliv­er on this promise, it will help you nav­i­gate the very large vol­ume of con­tent that you encounter every day. To get start­ed with Mag­g­wire, check out this video.

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Richard Dawkins v. Bill O’Reilly: Round 2

in Media, Science | October 26th, 2009

Back when Richard Dawkins (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty) pub­lished The God Delu­sion in 2007, he made a fair­ly unex­pect­ed appear­ance on Bill O’Reil­ly’s show. Quite the con­trast in char­ac­ters. Now that he has pub­lished his lat­est book, The Great­est Show on Earth, it was time for Dawkins to meet up with the bump­tious one again. Here it goes. Watch above.

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Ira Glass on the Art of Story Telling

in Art, Media, Radio | October 23rd, 2009

Since 1995, Ira Glass has host­ed and pro­duced This Amer­i­can Life (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), the award-win­ning radio show that presents mas­ter­ful­ly-craft­ed sto­ries to almost 2 mil­lion lis­ten­ers each week. What’s the secret sauce that goes into mak­ing a great sto­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly one primed for radio or TV? Glass spells it out in four parts. Part 1 (above) gets into the build­ing blocks of a good sto­ry. Part 2 talks about the impor­tance of find­ing the right sto­ry. Part 3 reas­sures you that cre­ative excel­lence takes time to devel­op. It also comes with hard work. And Part 4 flags com­mon errors to avoid. Give Glass 17 min­utes, and you will be a bet­ter sto­ry­teller for it…

Look­ing for more Open Cul­ture? Fol­low us on Face­book and Twit­ter!

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Arts & Letters Daily

in Media | October 12th, 2009

A very quick fyi: If you haven’t already, you should spend some time at Arts & Let­ters Dai­ly. It is essen­tial­ly a meta site that gath­ers links to the “most intel­li­gent, provoca­tive, and illu­mi­nat­ing news sto­ries, crit­i­cal reviews, polit­i­cal essays, and com­men­taries pub­lished online.” Updat­ed six days a week, the site is divid­ed into three main areas. “Arti­cles of Note,” “New Books,” and “Essays and Opin­ion.” The only thing that Arts & Let­ters Dai­ly is miss­ing? A link to Open Cul­ture on the left hand side…

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PBS and NPR Launch the Forum Network, Offering Free Online Lectures

in Education, Media, Television | October 6th, 2009

News from the Wired Cam­pus Blog:

PBS and NPR are now post­ing taped inter­views and videos of lec­tures by aca­d­e­mics, adding to the grow­ing num­ber of free lec­tures online.

Their site, called Forum Net­work, says it makes thou­sands of lec­tures avail­able, includ­ing the Har­vard pro­fes­sor Michael Sandel’s take on cal­cu­lat­ing hap­pi­ness in a lec­ture called “How to Mea­sure Plea­sure,” and a dis­cus­sion by a North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, Nicholas Daniloff, about the dif­fi­cul­ties of report­ing in Rus­sia in a lec­ture called “Of Spies and Spokes­men: The Chal­lenge of Jour­nal­ism in Rus­sia.”

The Forum Net­work is now hap­pi­ly added to our col­lec­tion, Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites. (You will find about 50 intel­li­gent video sites here.) For more free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent, be sure to vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es. It now fea­tures 200 free cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, and you can down­load them all to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er.

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The Future of Content

in Books, Media | July 12th, 2009

Late last week, we fea­tured the free audio and text ver­sions of Chris Ander­son­’s new book, Free: The Future of a Rad­i­cal Price. Today, we high­light a con­ver­sa­tion that recent­ly took place at The Aspen Insti­tute’s Ideas Fes­ti­val, and it focus­es on a sim­i­lar ques­tion, real­ly the main ques­tion pre­oc­cu­py­ing many busi­ness lead­ers these days : How to make mon­ey in an era when con­sumers expect infor­ma­tion-based prod­ucts (books, news­pa­pers, etc.) to be free. The talk is mod­er­at­ed by James Fal­lows, and fea­tures Josh Tyrang­iel (man­ag­ing edi­tor of Time.com), Priscil­la Painton (edi­tor-in-chief of the Simon & Schus­ter adult trade imprint), Bob Pittman (for­mer CEO of MTV Net­works, AOL Net­works), and Deirdre Stan­ley (exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al coun­sel for Thom­son Reuters). It runs an hour plus.

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