Benjamin Bratton Explains “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” and Why They’re a “Recipe for Civilizational Disaster”

in Science, TED Talks | January 7th, 2014

TED Talks — they give your “dis­cov­ery-seek­ing brain a lit­tle hit of dopamine;” make you “feel part of a curi­ous, engaged, enlight­ened, and tech-savvy tribe;” almost giv­ing you the sen­sa­tion that you’re attend­ing a “new Har­vard.” That was the hype around TED Talks a few years ago. Since then, the buzz around TED has mer­ci­ful­ly died down, and the orga­ni­za­tion has gone on, stag­ing its con­fer­ences around the globe. It’s been a while since we’ve fea­tured a TED Talk whose ideas seem worth spread­ing. But today we have one for you. Intrigu­ing­ly, it’s called “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” It was pre­sent­ed by Ben­jamin Brat­ton, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Visu­al Arts at UCSD, at none oth­er than TEDxSanDiego 2013. Brat­ton makes his case (above) in 11 min­utes — well with­in the 18 allot­ted min­utes — by argu­ing that TED does­n’t just help pop­u­lar­ize ideas. Instead, it changes and cheap­ens the agen­da for sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy and tech­nol­o­gy in Amer­i­ca. He begins to frame the prob­lem by telling a sto­ry:

I was at a pre­sen­ta­tion that a friend, an astro­physi­cist, gave to a poten­tial donor. I thought the pre­sen­ta­tion was lucid and com­pelling.… After the talk the spon­sor said to him, “you know what, I’m gonna pass because I just don’t feel inspired …you should be more like Mal­colm Glad­well.”

Think about it: an actu­al sci­en­tist who pro­duces actu­al knowl­edge should be more like a jour­nal­ist who recy­cles fake insights! This is beyond pop­u­lar­iza­tion. This is tak­ing some­thing with val­ue and sub­stance and cor­ing it out so that it can be swal­lowed with­out chew­ing. This is not the solu­tion to our most fright­en­ing prob­lems – rather this is one of our most fright­en­ing prob­lems.

Brat­ton then con­cludes, “astro­physics run on the mod­el of Amer­i­can Idol is a recipe for civ­i­liza­tion­al dis­as­ter.” If “our best and bright­est waste their time – and the audi­ence’s time – danc­ing like infomer­cial hosts,” the cost will be too high, and our most dif­fi­cult prob­lems won’t get solved.

In watch­ing Brat­ton’s talk, I found myself agree­ing with many things. Sure, TED Talks are often “a com­bi­na­tion of epiphany and per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny … through which the speak­er shares a per­son­al jour­ney of insight and real­iza­tion, its tri­umphs and tribu­la­tions.” Yes, the talks offer view­ers a pre­dictably “vic­ar­i­ous insight, a fleet­ing moment of won­der, an inkling that maybe it’s all going to work out after all.” Maybe TED Talks some­times pro­vide noth­ing more than “mid­dle­brow megachurch info­tain­ment.” But is TED real­ly chang­ing the agen­da for sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists and philoso­phers? Are schol­ars actu­al­ly choos­ing their intel­lec­tu­al projects based on any­thing hav­ing to do with TED (or TED-inspired ways of think­ing)? Is some­one at the NIH dol­ing out mon­ey based on whether a project will even­tu­al­ly yield 15 good min­utes of diver­sion and enter­tain­ment? Short of empir­i­cal evi­dence that actu­al­ly applies to TED (the anec­dote above does­n’t), it feels like Brat­ton is giv­ing TED way too much cred­it. Maybe TED mat­ters on YouTube. But let’s get real, its pull large­ly starts and ends there. You can read a com­plete tran­script of Brat­ton’s talk here.

via The Guardian

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture in 2014. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 16 ) |

Albert Einstein Imposes on His First Wife a Cruel List of Marital Demands

in Letters, Physics, Science | December 30th, 2013

Albert Ein­stein pas­sion­ate­ly wooed his first wife Mil­e­va Mar­ic, against his family’s wish­es, and the two had a tur­bu­lent but intel­lec­tu­al­ly rich rela­tion­ship that they record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty in their let­ters. Ein­stein and Maric’s love let­ters have inspired the short film above, My Lit­tle Witch (in Ser­bian, I believe, with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles) and sev­er­al crit­i­cal re-eval­u­a­tions of Einstein’s life and Mar­ic’s influ­ence on his ear­ly thought. Some his­to­ri­ans have even sug­gest­ed that Maric—who was also trained in physics—made con­tri­bu­tions to Einstein’s ear­ly work, a claim hot­ly dis­put­ed and, it seems, poor­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed.

The letters—written between 1897 and 1903 and only dis­cov­ered in 1987—reveal a wealth of pre­vi­ous­ly unknown detail about Mar­ic and the mar­riage. While the con­tro­ver­sy over Mar­ic’s influ­ence on Ein­stein’s the­o­ries raged among aca­d­e­mics and view­ers of PBS’s con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­men­tary, Einstein’s Wife, a scan­dalous per­son­al item in the let­ters got much bet­ter press. As Ein­stein and Mileva’s rela­tion­ship dete­ri­o­rat­ed, and they attempt­ed to scotch tape it togeth­er for the sake of their chil­dren, the avun­cu­lar paci­fist wrote a chill­ing list of “con­di­tions,” in out­line form, that his wife must accept upon his return. Lists of Note tran­scribes them from Wal­ter Isaacson’s biog­ra­phy Ein­stein: His Life and Uni­verse:

CONDITIONS

A. You will make sure:

1. that my clothes and laun­dry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals reg­u­lar­ly in my room;
3. that my bed­room and study are kept neat, and espe­cial­ly that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all per­son­al rela­tions with me inso­far as they are not com­plete­ly nec­es­sary for social rea­sons. Specif­i­cal­ly, You will forego:

1. my sit­ting at home with you;
2. my going out or trav­el­ling with you.

C. You will obey the fol­low­ing points in your rela­tions with me:

1. you will not expect any inti­ma­cy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talk­ing to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bed­room or study imme­di­ate­ly with­out protest if I request it.

D. You will under­take not to belit­tle me in front of our chil­dren, either through words or behav­ior.

While it may be unfair to judge anyone’s total char­ac­ter by its most glar­ing defects, there’s no way to read this with­out shud­der­ing. Although Ein­stein tried to pre­serve the mar­riage, once they sep­a­rat­ed for good, he did not lament Mil­e­va’s loss for long. Man­jit Kumar tells us in Quan­tum: Ein­stein Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Real­i­ty that although “Mil­e­va agreed to his demands and Ein­stein returned”

[I]t could not last. At the end of July, after just three months in Berlin, Mil­e­va and the boys went back to Zurich. As he stood on the plat­form wav­ing good­bye, Ein­stein wept, if not for Mil­e­va and the mem­o­ries of what had been, then for his two depart­ing sons. But with­in a mat­ter of weeks he was hap­pi­ly enjoy­ing liv­ing alone “in my large apart­ment in undi­min­ished tran­quil­i­ty.”

Ein­stein prized his soli­tude great­ly. Anoth­er remark shows his dif­fi­cul­ty with per­son­al rela­tion­ships. While he even­tu­al­ly fell in love with his cousin Elsa and final­ly divorced Mav­ic to mar­ry her in 1919, that mar­riage too was trou­bled. Elsa died in 1936 soon after the cou­ple moved to the U.S. Not long after her death, Ein­stein would write, “I have got­ten used extreme­ly well to life here. I live like a bear in my den…. This bear­ish­ness has been fur­ther enhanced by the death of my woman com­rade, who was bet­ter with oth­er peo­ple than I am.”

Einstein’s per­son­al fail­ings might pass by with­out much com­ment if had not, like his hero Gand­hi, been ele­vat­ed to the sta­tus of a “sec­u­lar saint.” Yet, it is also the per­son­al incon­sis­ten­cies, the weak­ness­es and pet­ty, even incred­i­bly cal­lous moments, that make so many famous fig­ures’ lives com­pelling, if also con­fus­ing. As Ein­stein schol­ar John Stachel says, “Too much of an idol was made of Ein­stein. He’s not an idol—he’s a human, and that’s much more inter­est­ing.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Ein­stein Doc­u­men­tary Offers A Reveal­ing Por­trait of the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Sci­en­tist

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 77 ) |

Read an 18th-Century Eyewitness Account of 8‑Year-Old Mozart’s Extraordinary Musical Skills

in K-12, Music, Science | December 30th, 2013

‘Tis the very nature of par­ent­hood to view one’s chil­dren as excep­tion­al.

Anoth­er aspect of the con­di­tion is spend­ing time in the com­pa­ny of oth­er par­ents, some of whom have yet to mas­ter the art of self-restraint. Their babies are the most phys­i­cal­ly adroit, their tod­dlers the most gen­er­ous, their ele­men­tary school­ers the most culi­nar­i­ly dar­ing.

Pride in one’s chil­dren’s gifts is under­stand­able. A straight­for­ward brag or two is per­mis­si­ble. But after that, I’d real­ly like some cor­rob­o­rat­ing evi­dence, such as the Hon­ourable Daines Bar­ring­ton’s account of meet­ing a “very remark­able young musi­cian” whose father had been drag­ging him around the con­ti­nent on a 3‑and-a-half year con­cert tour.

Clear­ly, Johannes Chrysos­to­mus Wolf­gan­gus Theophilus Mozart (1756–1791) was a very accom­plished kid, but the term “prodi­gy” must have stuck in Friend of the Roy­al Soci­ety Bar­ring­ton’s craw, even after he’d attend­ed some of the boy’s pub­lic per­for­mances. Deter­mined to let sci­ence be the judge, he devised a series of on-the-spot chal­lenges designed to eval­u­ate the boy’s musi­cian­ship beyond the rig­or­ous prac­tice sched­ule imposed by his dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an father. (We all saw Amadeus, right?)

Bar­ring­ton’s detailed descrip­tion of these exper­i­ments would make a gim­crack Sci­ence Fair project for any lit­tle Ein­stein smart enough to get through 18th-cen­tu­ry typog­ra­phy with­out throw­ing a tantrum because the s’s all look like f’s (see the 18th cen­tu­ry text below). It might take a recre­ation­al math­e­mu­si­cian on the order of Vi Hart to tru­ly appre­ci­ate the com­plex­i­ty of the tasks that Bar­ring­ton assigned his young sub­ject (some­thing to do with hav­ing him play five con­tra­dic­to­ry lines simul­ta­ne­ous­ly…).

I can inter­pret the data with regard to some of Bar­ring­ton’s oth­er find­ings. Mozart, he wrote, not only looked like a young child, he ditched his harp­si­chord to chase around a cat and ran about the room “with a stick between his legs by way of a horse.” So it’s not the clas­si­cal peri­od equiv­a­lent of a stage mom lying about her kid’s age to bet­ter his chances at an audi­tion. Actu­al­ly, it’s always a relief to hear about these super-kids act­ing like… well, my kids.

Read Bar­ring­ton’s let­ter to the Roy­al Soci­ety — Account of a Very Remark­able Young Musi­cian — in its entire­ty here or below. And by all means share it with the worst offend­ers on your PTA.

via Rebec­ca Onion and her Slate blog, The Vault

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano

Great Vio­lin­ists Play­ing as Kids: Itzhak Perl­man, Anne-Sophie Mut­ter, & More

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Ayun Hal­l­i­day pro­vid­ed an hon­est account of home­school­ing her 12-year-old son in The East Vil­lage Inky #51 Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How the Iconic 1968 “Earthrise” Photo Was Made: An Engrossing Visualization by NASA

in Astronomy, Photography, Science | December 26th, 2013

Let’s let NASA paint the pic­ture for you:

In Decem­ber of 1968, the crew of Apol­lo 8 became the first peo­ple to leave our home plan­et and trav­el to anoth­er body in space. But as crew mem­bers Frank Bor­man, James Lovell, and William Anders all lat­er recalled, the most impor­tant thing they dis­cov­ered was Earth.

Using pho­to mosaics and ele­va­tion data from Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO), this video com­mem­o­rates the 45th anniver­sary of Apol­lo 8’s his­toric flight by recre­at­ing the moment when the crew first saw and pho­tographed the Earth ris­ing from behind the Moon. [See the orig­i­nal pho­to here.] Nar­ra­tor Andrew Chaikin, author of A Man on the Moon, sets the scene for a three-minute visu­al­iza­tion of the view from both inside and out­side the space­craft accom­pa­nied by the onboard audio of the astro­nauts. The visu­al­iza­tion draws on numer­ous his­tor­i­cal sources, includ­ing the actu­al cloud pat­tern on Earth from the ESSA‑7 satel­lite and dozens of pho­tographs tak­en by Apol­lo 8, and it reveals new, his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion about the Earth­rise pho­tographs. It has not been wide­ly known, for exam­ple, that the space­craft was rolling when the pho­tos were tak­en, and that it was this roll that brought the Earth into view.

The visu­al­iza­tion estab­lish­es the pre­cise tim­ing of the roll and, for the first time ever, iden­ti­fies which win­dow each pho­to­graph was tak­en from. The key to the new work is a set of ver­ti­cal stereo pho­tographs tak­en by a cam­era mount­ed in the Com­mand Mod­ule’s ren­dezvous win­dow and point­ing straight down onto the lunar sur­face. It auto­mat­i­cal­ly pho­tographed the sur­face every 20 sec­onds. By reg­is­ter­ing each pho­to­graph to a mod­el of the ter­rain based on LRO data, the ori­en­ta­tion of the space­craft can be pre­cise­ly deter­mined.

This video above is pub­lic domain and can be down­loaded here. In 1972, astro­nauts took anoth­er famous pic­ture of the Earth, known as The Big Blue Mar­ble. You can watch a film (“Overview”) that com­mem­o­rates that pho­to­graph and explores the whole con­cept of see­ing the Earth from afar. And, of course, you should always see the Carl Sagan-nar­rat­ed film, The Pale Blue Dot, too.

via Metafil­ter/Brain­Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Won­der, Thrill & Mean­ing of See­ing Earth from Space. Astro­nauts Reflect on The Big Blue Mar­ble

Astro­naut Takes Amaz­ing Self Por­trait in Space

Astro­naut Chris Had­field Sings David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” On Board the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin & Michael Collins Go Through Customs and Sign Immigration Form After the First Moon Landing (1969)

in Science | December 22nd, 2013

Apollo-11-Immigration-02

Click for larg­er image

I’m not say­ing Man of Steel depressed me, but I found myself pin­ing for Richard Donner’s sense of humor recent­ly as I watched Zack Snyder’s take on Super­man for the first time. I thought of a scene—Superman has to go through immi­gra­tion once he’s dis­cov­ered. They won’t let him in. He’s too high-mind­ed to resist, so he sleeps in an air­port wait­ing room for six months. Plen­ty of dra­mat­ic poten­tial there.

Less pre­pos­ter­ous but still absurd is the sto­ry around the doc­u­ment above, signed by Neil Arm­strong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins after they land­ed from the first manned trip to the moon. The three astro­nauts came down in the Pacif­ic Ocean and were tak­en to Hon­olu­lu on July 24, 1969, where they sup­pos­ed­ly signed the immi­gra­tion form, declar­ing a car­go of moon rocks and dust.

The form, NASA spokesper­son John Yem­brick told Space.com, is authen­tic. And, he says, it was a joke. He does not, how­ev­er, say exact­ly when the form was signed, either on the day the crew splashed down or some­time after­ward. They did not actu­al­ly arrive in Hon­olu­lu until the 26th. After their return,

The astro­nauts were trapped inside a NASA trail­er as part of a quar­an­tine effort just in case they brought back any germs or dis­ease from the moon. They even wore spe­cial bio­log­i­cal con­tain­ment suits when they walked out on the deck of the USS Hor­net after being retrieved. 

NASA trans­port­ed them to Hous­ton, quar­an­tine trail­er and all, and they emerged from iso­la­tion three weeks lat­er.

Astro­nauts these days most­ly just need a show­er when they touch down, although inter­net savvy Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion astro­naut Chris Had­field did recent­ly tell some cus­toms relat­ed sto­ries on a Red­dit AMA—maybe noth­ing so weird as the cur­rent space snor­kel­ing up there, but still a pret­ty great read.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Moon Hoax Not”: Short Film Explains Why It Was Impos­si­ble to Fake the Moon Land­ing

Michio Kaku Schools Takes on Moon Land­ing-Con­spir­a­cy Believ­er on His Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic Pod­cast

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

Find Astron­o­my Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 800 Free Cours­es Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Power of Empathy: A Quick Animated Lesson That Can Make You a Better Person

in Animation, Psychology, Science | December 19th, 2013

Sev­er­al years back, the RSA (Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts) cre­at­ed a series of dis­tinc­tive ani­mat­ed shorts where heavy-hit­ter intel­lec­tu­als pre­sent­ed big ideas, and a tal­ent­ed artist rapid­ly illus­trat­ed them on a white­board. Some of those talks fea­tured the likes of Slavoj Zizek, Steven Pinker and Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich. Now RSA presents a new video series cre­at­ed in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic. Above, you can watch what will hope­ful­ly be the first of many “espres­so shots for the mind.” This clip fea­tures Dr. Brené Brown, a research pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton Grad­u­ate Col­lege of Social Work, pro­vid­ing some quick insights into the dif­fer­ence between sym­pa­thy and empa­thy, and explain­ing why empa­thy is much more mean­ing­ful. To learn more about The Pow­er of Empa­thy, you can watch Brown’s com­plete RSA lec­ture here. You can also watch her very pop­u­lar TED Talk on The Pow­er of Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty here.

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:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es (Part of our list of Free Online Cours­es)

Carl Gus­tav Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in Rare Inter­view (1957)

Jacques Lacan’s Con­fronta­tion with a Young Rebel: Clas­sic Moment, 1972

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

In 1900, Ladies’ Home Journal Publishes 28 Predictions for the Year 2000

in History, Science | December 13th, 2013

Ladies Home Journal Dec 1900 paleofuture paleo-future

At least since that 17th cen­tu­ry archi­tect of the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion, Sir Fran­cis Bacon (who was most­ly right), peo­ple have been mak­ing pre­dic­tions about the tech­nolo­gies and social advance­ments of the future. And since Bacon, sci­en­tists and futur­is­tic writ­ers have been espe­cial­ly in demand dur­ing times of great change and uncer­tain­ty, such as at the turn of the last cen­tu­ry. In 1900, civ­il engi­neer John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. in Ladies’ Home Jour­nal claimed to have sur­veyed “the most learned and con­ser­v­a­tive minds in Amer­i­ca… the wis­est and most care­ful men in our great­est insti­tu­tions of sci­ence and learn­ing.”

Spec­i­fy­ing advances like­ly to occur 100 years thence, “before the dawn of 2001,” Watkins culled 28 pre­dic­tions about such things as trav­el and the trans­mis­sion of infor­ma­tion over great dis­tances, bio­log­i­cal and genet­ic muta­tions, and the domes­tic com­forts of the aver­age con­sumer. Sev­er­al of the pre­dic­tions are very Bacon­ian indeed—as per the strange list at the end of Bacon’s sci­ence fic­tion frag­ment New Atlantis, a text obsessed with alter­ing the appear­ance of the nat­ur­al world for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son oth­er than that it could be done. Watkins’ list includes such pre­dic­tions as “Peas as Large as Beets,” “Black, Blue, and Green Ros­es,” and “Straw­ber­ries as Large as Apples.” Some are Bacon­ian in more sin­is­ter ways, and these are also a bit more accu­rate. Take the below, for exam­ple:

There will be No Wild Ani­mals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exter­mi­nat­ed. The horse will have become prac­ti­cal­ly extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for rac­ing, hunt­ing and exer­cise. The auto­mo­bile will have dri­ven out the horse. Cat­tle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fat­tened hog of to-day. A cen­tu­ry ago the wild hog could out­run a horse. Food ani­mals will be bred to expend prac­ti­cal­ly all of their life ener­gy in pro­duc­ing meat, milk, wool and oth­er by-prod­ucts. Horns, bones, mus­cles and lungs will have been neglect­ed.

I would defer to ecol­o­gists and meat indus­try watch­dogs to con­firm my intu­itions, but it does seem that some of this, except­ing the exter­mi­na­tion of ver­min and horns, has come to pass or is very like­ly in regard to sev­er­al species. Anoth­er pre­dic­tion, this one about our own species, is laugh­ably opti­mistic:

Every­body will Walk Ten Miles. Gym­nas­tics will begin in the nurs­ery, where toys and games will be designed to strength­en the mus­cles. Exer­cise will be com­pul­so­ry in the schools. Every school, col­lege and com­mu­ni­ty will have a com­plete gym­na­si­um. All cities will have pub­lic gym­na­si­ums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regard­ed as a weak­ling.

We’re much clos­er to the future of Pixar’s Wall‑E than any­thing resem­bling this sce­nario (unless you live in the world of Cross­fit). Anoth­er pre­dic­tion is both dead on and dead wrong at once. Claim­ing that there will be “from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 peo­ple in the Amer­i­c­as and its pos­ses­sions by the lapse of anoth­er cen­tu­ry” did in fact turn out to be almost uncan­ni­ly accurate—current esti­mates are some­where around 300,000,000. The “pos­ses­sions” allud­ed to, how­ev­er, dis­play the atti­tude of blithe Mon­roe doc­trine expan­sion­ism that held the nation in its sway at the turn of the cen­tu­ry. The pre­dic­tion goes on to say that most of the “South and Cen­tral Amer­i­can republics would be vot­ed into the Union by their own peo­ple.” A few more of Watkins’ pre­dic­tions, some pre­scient, some pre­pos­ter­ous:

Tele­phones Around the World. Wire­less tele­phone and tele­graph cir­cuits will span the world.

Store Pur­chas­es by Tube. Pneu­mat­ic tubes instead of store wag­ons, will deliv­er pack­ages and bun­dles.

Hot and Cold Air from Spig­ots. Ris­ing ear­ly to build the fur­nace fire will be a task of the old­en times.

Ready-Cooked Meals will be Bought from estab­lish­ments sim­i­lar to our bak­eries of to-day [see the above Wall‑E ref­er­ence]

There will be No C, X, or Q in our every-day alpha­bet. They will be aban­doned because unnec­es­sary.

Aeriel War-Ships and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twen­ty-five miles or more, and will hurl any­where with­in such a radius shells explod­ing and destroy­ing whole cities.

How Chil­dren will be Taught. A uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion will be free to every man and woman.

Ah, if only that last one had come true! To read all of Watkins pre­dic­tions in detail, click on the image above for a larg­er, read­able, ver­sion of the full arti­cle.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asimov’s 1964 Pre­dic­tions About What the World Will Look 50 Years Lat­er — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

1930s Fash­ion Design­ers Imag­ine How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Watch Michel Gondry Animate Philosopher, Linguist & Activist Noam Chomsky

in Animation, Film, Philosophy, Science | December 13th, 2013

As an arts major who doo­dled my way through every required sci­ence course in high school and col­lege, I am deeply grat­i­fied by film­mak­er Michel Gondry’s approach to doc­u­ment­ing the ideas of Noam Chom­sky. Hav­ing filmed about three hours worth of inter­views with the activist, philoso­pher, and father of mod­ern lin­guis­tics in a ster­ile MIT con­fer­ence room, Gondry head­ed back to his charm­ing­ly ana­log Brook­lyn digs to spend three years ani­mat­ing the con­ver­sa­tions. It’s nice to see a film­mak­er of his stature using books to jer­ry-rig his cam­era set up. At one point, he hud­dles on the floor, puz­zling over some sequen­tial draw­ings on 3‑hole punch paper. Seems like the kind of thing most peo­ple in his field would tack­le with an iPad and an assis­tant.

Gondry may have felt intel­lec­tu­al­ly dwarfed by his sub­ject, but there’s a kind of genius afoot in his work too. Describ­ing the stop-motion tech­nique he used for Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py?, he told Amy Good­man of Democ­ra­cy Now, “I have a light­box, and I put paper on it, and I ani­mate with Sharpies, col­or Sharpies. And I have a 16-mil­lime­ter cam­era that is set up on a tri­pod and looks down, and I take a pic­ture. I do a draw­ing and take a pic­ture.”

A pret­ty apt summation—watch him in action above—but the curios­i­ty and human­i­ty so evi­dent in such fea­tures as Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind and The Sci­ence of Sleep is a mag­i­cal ingre­di­ent here, too. He attrib­ut­es bio­log­i­cal prop­er­ties to his Sharpie mark­ers, and takes a break from some of Chom­sky’s more com­plex thoughts to ask about his feel­ings when his wife passed away. He does­n’t seem to mind that he might seem a bit of a school­boy in com­par­i­son, one whose tal­ents lie beyond this par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sor’s scope.

As Chom­sky him­self remarks in the trail­er, below, “Learn­ing comes from ask­ing why do things work like that, why not some oth­er way?”

Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py? is avail­able on iTunes.

H/T @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Noam Chom­sky Schools 9/11 Truther; Explains the Sci­ence of Mak­ing Cred­i­ble Claims

Ayun Hal­l­i­day puts her life­long pen­chant for doo­dling to good use in her award-win­ning, hand­writ­ten, illus­trat­ed zine, The East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast