Big Thinkers on Wikipedia’s 10th Anniversary

in Wikipedia | January 18th, 2011

Wikipedia just turned 10 this week­end. And, to mark the occa­sion, The Atlantic asked ten “All-Star Thinkers” respond to a sim­ple ques­tion: “What do you think about Wikipedia?” The respons­es? Well, they express the usu­al range of opin­ions, from appre­ci­a­tion to some­thing approach­ing dis­dain. Take for exam­ple the two excerpts below:

Yochai Ben­kler, pro­fes­sor, Har­vard Law School: That’s the biggest gift that Wikipedia has giv­en to us — a vision of prac­ti­cal utopia. What gift can we best give back? Per­haps it is just this, to rec­og­nize the trans­for­ma­tive role that thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als have played for all of us in how we can imag­ine our lives togeth­er as pro­duc­tive, engaged, social beings.

Jonathan Lethem, nov­el­ist, Pomona pro­fes­sor: With all respect to the noble vol­un­teer army, I call it death by pedantry. Ques­tion: had­n’t we more or less come to under­stand that no piece of extend­ed descrip­tion of real­i­ty is free of agen­das or ide­olo­gies? This lie, which any Ency­clo­pe­dia implic­it­ly tells, is cubed by the infi­nite regress of Wikipedia tin­ker­ing-unto-medi­oc­rity.

Oth­er con­trib­u­tors include Clay Shirky, NYU jour­nal­ism prof Jay Rosen, and Mari­ette DiChristi­na (edi­tor-in-chief, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can). Get the full list here.

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Steve Jobs on Life: “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”

in Apple, Life, Philosophy | January 18th, 2011

Every so often, we like to bring back a favorite talk of ours, and today seemed like a bet­ter day than most. Speak­ing at Stan­ford’s com­mence­ment in 2005, Steve Jobs gives the grad­u­ates a glimpse of his life phi­los­o­phy. Some pearls of wis­dom here for the young, to be sure. But if you have some more life under your belt, you’ll appre­ci­ate the mes­sage even more. The talk ends with Jobs telling the stu­dents to “stay hun­gry, stay fool­ish,” a line from The Whole Earth Cat­a­log, the Bible of Steve Jobs’ gen­er­a­tion, which became freely avail­able online back in 2009…

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Norman Mailer & Marshall McLuhan Debate the Electronic Age

in History, Literature, Media, Technology | January 18th, 2011

There’s noth­ing new about it. Major peri­ods of tech­no­log­i­cal change have always engen­dered dis­lo­ca­tion and debate. Some resist the changes wrought by new tech­nol­o­gy, and oth­ers embrace them. 1968 brings us back to one such moment, when the Amer­i­can nov­el­ist Nor­man Mail­er and com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist Mar­shall McLuhan appeared on the CBC pro­gram, The Sum­mer Way, to debate the rel­a­tive mer­its of our Electronic/Information Age. Are we alien­at­ing our­selves as we push the elec­tron­ic enve­lope? Or have we entered a val­ue neu­tral state (if not some­thing bet­ter)? The two big thinkers hash out the ques­tion for 28 min­utes. You can watch the con­ver­sa­tion in its entire­ty (28 min­utes) on YouTube.

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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Winter in Yosemite National Park

in Art | January 17th, 2011

Hen­ry Jun Wah Lee cap­tured this beau­ti­ful scene over the 2011 New Year week­end when a win­ter storm drift­ed into Yosemite Nation­al Park (California/Nevada). You will def­i­nite­ly want to check out his col­lec­tion videos on Vimeo, which includes more scenes from Yosemite, Joshua Tree and beyond…

via @zeitonline_vid

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MLK’s Last Days and Final Speech

in History, Life | January 17th, 2011

Mar­tin Luther King Jr. deliv­ered his last speech, known col­lo­qui­al­ly as his “I’ve Been to the Moun­tain­top” speech, in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee on April 3, 1968. The next day, he would be assas­si­nat­ed. The full address (Part 1 & Part 2) ranges wide­ly. It sweeps through Euro­pean and Amer­i­can his­to­ry, even­tu­al­ly bring­ing us into 1960s Amer­i­ca, a moment fraught with ten­sion, when African-Amer­i­cans were fight­ing for equal rights at home, and a divi­sive Viet­nam War dragged on abroad. Trac­ing the impor­tant moments of the civ­il rights move­ment, the speech ends (high­light­ed above) with Mr. King prophet­i­cal­ly fore­see­ing his own death (see the Life gallery of his last day), but know­ing that his per­son­al sac­ri­fice had cre­at­ed some­thing bul­lets could nev­er stop. A great Amer­i­can and world cit­i­zen.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

I Have a Dream

What Would MLK Say About the USA Today?

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Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Inferno Inspired Galileo’s Physics

in History, Literature, Physics | January 17th, 2011

This com­ing fall, Mark Peter­son, a physics pro­fes­sor at Mount Holyoke Col­lege, will pub­lish a new book where he makes a rather curi­ous argu­ment: Back in 1588, a young Galileo pre­sent­ed two lec­tures before the Flo­ren­tine Acad­e­my. And there he laid the ground­work for his the­o­ret­i­cal physics when he called into ques­tion the accept­ed mea­sure­ments of Dan­te’s hell (as depict­ed in the Infer­no, the great epic poem from 1314). Did debates over a poem fig­ure into the unfold­ing of The Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion? The Boston Globe digs deep­er into the ques­tion with the video above and a longer arti­cle 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 Physics Cours­es

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

The Sto­ry of Physics Ani­mat­ed in 4 Min­utes: From Galileo and New­ton, to Ein­stein

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William F. Buckley Threatens to “Smash” Noam Chomsky in the Face (1969)

in History, Politics | January 15th, 2011


So much for the Gold­en Age of Civil­i­ty in Amer­i­ca – but at least it was said with a lit­tle smile and the ensu­ing debate had some sub­stance…

Note: A read­er sug­gests in our com­ments that Buck­ley was jok­ing­ly allud­ing here to a pre­vi­ous con­fronta­tion­al moment with Gore Vidal, and it sounds about right. (“I’ll sock you in the god­damn face and you’ll stay plas­tered.”)

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Water Sculpture

in Art | January 14th, 2011

Shinichi Maruya­ma, a Japan­ese pho­tog­ra­ph­er now liv­ing in New York, uses sim­ply his hands, glass­es of water and a Phase One P45 cam­era to cre­ate ele­gant water sculp­tures. “No mat­ter how many times I repeat the same process of throw­ing [water] in the air, I nev­er achieve the same result. And I am so fas­ci­nat­ed by this unex­pect­ed inter­ac­tion of liq­uids col­lid­ing … that I am over­whelmed by its beau­ty.” Find an inter­view with Maruya­ma here and more images of his work here. On a rather relat­ed note, don’t miss our pre­vi­ous post, Water Drop Filmed in 10,000 Frames Per Sec­ond. Anoth­er thing of beau­ty.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown

in Film, Literature, Sci Fi | January 13th, 2011

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown, a doc­u­men­tary from 2008, is avail­able online. Named the Best Doc­u­men­tary at the 2008 Com­ic-Con Inter­na­tion­al Inde­pen­dent Film Fes­ti­val, the film revis­its the life and writ­ings of H.P. Love­craft, the father of mod­ern hor­ror fic­tion. And it fea­tures impor­tant con­tem­po­rary artists (from film­mak­ers John Car­pen­ter and Guiller­mo Del Toro, to writ­ers along the lines of Neil Gaiman), all talk­ing about Love­craft’s influ­ence on their dark fan­ta­sy tra­di­tion.

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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MIT Introduces Complete Courses to OpenCourseWare Project

in MIT, Online Courses | January 13th, 2011

This week, MIT’s Open­Course­Ware project launched OCW Schol­ar, a new series of cours­es “designed for inde­pen­dent learn­ers who have few addi­tion­al resources avail­able to them.” To date, MIT has giv­en stu­dents access to iso­lat­ed mate­ri­als from MIT cours­es. Now, with this new ini­tia­tive, life­long learn­ers can work with a more round­ed set of resources. OWC Schol­ar takes video lec­tures, home­work prob­lems, prob­lem solv­ing videos, sim­u­la­tions, read­ings, etc., and stitch­es them into a struc­tured cur­ricu­lum. Per­fect for the self-dis­ci­plined stu­dent.

Below we have list­ed the first five cours­es in the OWC Schol­ar col­lec­tion. (They’re entire­ly free.) Fast for­ward three years and you will find 20 cours­es online, says MIT. All will be added to our big list of Free Online Cours­es.

Physics 1: Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics
Physics II: Elec­tric­i­ty and Mag­net­ism
Intro­duc­tion to Sol­id State Chem­istry
Sin­gle Vari­able Cal­cu­lus
Mul­ti­vari­able Cal­cu­lus

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How Musical Are You?

in Music | January 12th, 2011

Are you blessed with a musi­cal brain? If you care to find out, the BBC is now run­ning an exper­i­ment – How Musi­cal Are You? – that assess­es your over­all rela­tion­ship with music. It includes ques­tion­naires and tests designed to see whether you can group togeth­er dif­fer­ent musi­cal styles, mem­o­rize tunes and rec­og­nize the beat in a piece of music. It all takes about 25 min­utes, and, when you’re done, you will receive some (desir­able or unde­sir­able) feed­back. This exper­i­ment was designed by researchers at the Music, Mind and Brain Research Group, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, and your par­tic­i­pa­tion will con­tribute to their research into the musi­cal brain. Note: You will need to reg­is­ter with the BBC to par­tic­i­pate.

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