The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge: Part 2

in History, Media, Wikipedia | March 12th, 2021

Edi­tor’s Note: This month, MIT Open Learning’s Peter B. Kauf­man has pub­lished The New Enlight­en­ment and the Fight to Free Knowl­edge, a book that takes a his­tor­i­cal look at the pow­er­ful forces that have pur­pose­ly crip­pled our efforts to share knowl­edge wide­ly and freely. His new work also maps out what we can do about it. In the com­ing days, Peter will be mak­ing his book avail­able through Open Cul­ture by pub­lish­ing three short essays along with links to cor­re­spond­ing sec­tions of his book. Today, you can read his sec­ond essay “On Wikipedia, the Ency­clopédie, and the Ver­i­fi­a­bil­i­ty of Infor­ma­tion” (below), plus down­load the sec­ond chap­ter of his book here. Read his first essay, “The Mon­ster­verse” here, and pur­chase the entire book online.

When the ideas that mat­ter most to us – lib­er­als, democ­rats, pro­gres­sives, repub­li­cans, all in the orig­i­nal sense of the words – were first put for­ward in soci­ety in order to change soci­ety, they were advanced fore­most in print. The new rules, new def­i­n­i­tions, and new cod­i­cils of human and civ­il rights that under­gird many of the free­doms we val­ue today had as their heart text and its main deliv­ery mech­a­nism, the print­ing press.

In that sense the first Enlight­en­ment was based upon the foun­da­tion of the print­ed word. And of the 18^th century’s con­tri­bu­tions to knowl­edge and soci­ety – Newton’s physics, Montesquieu’s laws, Linnaeus’s tax­onomies, Rousseau’s polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, the Dec­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Man – there was per­haps no greater print­ed offer­ing than the 22-mil­lion-word Ency­clopédie that the French Enlight­en­ment philoso­phers start­ing writ­ing, com­pil­ing, and offer­ing to the pub­lic in 1750.

The Ency­clopédie was mon­u­men­tal. Not just from a con­tent-assem­bly per­spec­tive – an effort to gath­er all the world’s knowl­edge and to print and pub­lish it – but also from a sociopo­lit­i­cal one, giv­en the pow­er­ful forces sup­press­ing knowl­edge that such an effort would pro­voke. The Ency­clopédie found the state and the church ban­ning at one time or anoth­er almost every one of its 72,000 arti­cles, 18,000 pages, and 28 vol­umes and invok­ing a hun­dred ways to for­bid its dis­tri­b­u­tion.

The encyclopedia’s entire approach to col­lect­ing and pre­sent­ing knowl­edge was rad­i­cal.  The arti­cles pre­sent­ed truths – some hereti­cal, some blas­phe­mous – that aston­ished con­tem­po­rary read­ers.  And its inno­v­a­tive approach to the ver­i­fi­ca­tion its own con­tent, to prov­ing what could be proved, which was real­ly its nuclear core, rocked the West­ern world.

The Ency­clopédie smote 18^th-cen­tu­ry ortho­doxy with ink-and-paper sledge­ham­mers. The arti­cle on “RAISON,” or “REASON,” for exam­ple, told every read­er who for cen­turies had been steeped in church doc­trine and the divine rights of roy­als that:

No propo­si­tion can be accept­ed as divine rev­e­la­tion if it con­tra­dicts what is known to us, either by imme­di­ate intu­ition, as in the case of self-evi­dent propo­si­tions, or by obvi­ous deduc­tions of rea­son, as in demon­stra­tions.  It would be ridicu­lous to give pref­er­ence to such rev­e­la­tions, because the evi­dence that caus­es us to adopt them can­not sur­pass the cer­tain­ty of our intu­itive or demon­stra­tive knowl­edge…

Cler­ics and kings, need­less to say, were not fans. Arti­cles on reli­gion, phi­los­o­phy, and pol­i­tics and soci­ety chal­lenged the gov­ern­ment and the church even as the cen­sors watched.  Direct swipes at the monar­chy and the church appeared even where you might not expect – in arti­cles on CONSCIENCE, LIBERTÉ DE; CROISADES; FANATISME; TOLÉRANCE; etc.  The entry for FORTUNE spot­light­ed the gross inequal­i­ties of wealth already evi­dent in 18th-cen­tu­ry Europe. And a zing­ing con­dem­na­tion of slav­ery in the arti­cle on the SLAVE TRADE made few friends among any who had a hand any­where in the busi­ness.

Slave trade is the pur­chase of Negroes made by Euro­peans on the coasts of Africa, who then employ these unfor­tu­nate men as slaves in their colonies. This pur­chase of Negroes to reduce them into slav­ery […] vio­lates all reli­gion, morals, nat­ur­al law, and human rights.

The Ency­clopédistes announced from day one that this new work would be, as we would say today, fact-based. There would be an under­ly­ing and over­ar­ch­ing com­mit­ment on the part of all con­trib­u­tors and the work as a whole to the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of all of its source mate­ri­als. Ver­i­fi­ca­tion is poten­tial­ly “a long and painful process,” Diderot wrote in his intro­duc­tion to the whole enter­prise – the famous “Pre­lim­i­nary Dis­course” that these philoso­phers used to sell in the whole project:

We have tried as much as pos­si­ble to avoid this incon­ve­nience by cit­ing direct­ly, in the body of the arti­cles, the authors on whose evi­dence we have relied and by quot­ing their own text when it is nec­es­sary.

We have every­where com­pared opin­ions, weighed rea­sons, and pro­posed means of doubt­ing or of escap­ing from doubt; at times we have even set­tled con­test­ed mat­ters.… Facts are cit­ed, exper­i­ments com­pared, and meth­ods elab­o­rat­ed … in order to excite genius to open unknown routes, and to advance onward to new dis­cov­er­ies, using the place where great men have end­ed their careers as the first step.

What this meant in prac­tice was rev­o­lu­tion­ary.  There would be no accept­ed truths but for those that could be proven and cit­ed. Fact-based ver­sus faith- and belief-based: the start and spark of the Enlight­en­ment.  One of Diderot’s biog­ra­phers explains that approx­i­mate­ly 23,000 arti­cles had at least one cross-ref­er­ence to anoth­er arti­cle in one of the encyclopedia’s 28 vol­umes. “The total num­ber of links – some arti­cles had five or six – reached almost 62,000.” And all while retain­ing a sly sense of humor.  The arti­cle on CANNIBALS end­ed with “the mis­chie­vous cross-ref­er­ence,” as anoth­er his­to­ri­an would lat­er describe it: “See Eucharist, Com­mu­nion, Altar, etc.”

That com­mit­ment to ref­er­ence cita­tion con­tin­ues in the Enlightenment’s most impor­tant suc­ces­sor project – Wikipedia, found­ed by Jim­my Wales and col­leagues 20 years ago this year. It’s the foun­da­tion of what today’s Wikipedia terms ver­i­fi­a­bil­i­ty, and in many key ways it’s the foun­da­tion for truth in knowl­edge and soci­ety today:

“Ver­i­fi­a­bil­i­ty” … mean[s] that mate­r­i­al added to Wikipedia must have been pub­lished pre­vi­ous­ly by a reli­able source. Edi­tors may not add their own views to arti­cles sim­ply because they believe them to be cor­rect, and may not remove sources’ views from arti­cles sim­ply because they dis­agree with them.

[V]erifiability is a nec­es­sary con­di­tion (a min­i­mum require­ment) for the inclu­sion of mate­r­i­al, though it is not a suf­fi­cient con­di­tion (it may not be enough).

In 1999, free-soft­ware activist Richard M. Stall­man called for this uni­ver­sal online ency­clo­pe­dia cov­er­ing all areas of knowl­edge, along with a com­plete library of instruc­tion­al cours­es – and, equal­ly impor­tant, a move­ment to devel­op it, “much as the Free Soft­ware Move­ment gave us the free oper­at­ing sys­tem GNU/Linux.”  That call (repro­duced in full as the appen­dix in my book) is cred­it­ed by Wikipedia as the ori­gins of the work that is now the largest knowl­edge resource in his­to­ry.

The free ency­clo­pe­dia will pro­vide an alter­na­tive to the restrict­ed ones that media cor­po­ra­tions will write.

Stall­man pub­lished a list of what that the ency­clo­pe­dia would need to do, what sort of free­doms it would need to give to the pub­lic, and how it could get start­ed.

An ency­clo­pe­dia locat­ed every­where.

An ency­clo­pe­dia open to anyone—but, most promis­ing­ly, to teach­ers and stu­dents.

An ency­clo­pe­dia built of small steps.

An ency­clo­pe­dia built on the long view: “If it takes twen­ty years to com­plete the free ency­clo­pe­dia, that will be but an instant in the his­to­ry of lit­er­a­ture and civ­i­liza­tion.”

An ency­clo­pe­dia con­tain­ing one or more arti­cles for any top­ic you would expect to find in anoth­er ency­clo­pe­dia – “for exam­ple, bird watch­ers might even­tu­al­ly con­tribute an arti­cle on each species of bird, along with pic­tures and record­ings of its calls” – and “cours­es for all aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects.”

1999, and it sounds famil­iar. Wikipedia, of course, is one of the world’s most pop­u­lar web­sites (the world’s most pop­u­lar non­com­mer­cial one) now and an irre­place­able source of ver­i­fi­able infor­ma­tion – open to any and all.  Its process­es are trans­par­ent, and thanks to hack­ers affil­i­at­ed with the project, you now can watch and lis­ten to its edits live online:

Com­mu­ni­ties that work with Wikipedia are like­ly to ben­e­fit from this com­mit­ment to cita­tion, and new col­lab­o­ra­tions that take effect around it are like­ly to ben­e­fit soci­ety. The Inter­net Archive is work­ing with Wikipedia now, dig­i­tiz­ing books so that links to sources in Wikipedia link all the way through to the books them­selves – and ren­der images and text on the cit­ed pages. The ref­er­ence link to a biog­ra­phy by Tay­lor Branch at the bot­tom of a Wikipedia arti­cle on Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., for exam­ple, now hotlinks to the read­able book online at Archive.org.  That work is essen­tial.  “Only the use of foot­notes and the research tech­niques asso­ci­at­ed with them” – as Prince­ton his­to­ri­an Antho­ny Grafton writes – “makes it pos­si­ble to resist the efforts of mod­ern gov­ern­ments, tyran­ni­cal and demo­c­ra­t­ic alike, to con­ceal the com­pro­mis­es they have made, the deaths they have caused, the tor­tures they or their allies have inflict­ed.…  Only the use of foot­notes enables his­to­ri­ans to make their texts not mono­logues but con­ver­sa­tions, in which mod­ern schol­ars, their pre­de­ces­sors, and their sub­jects all take part.”

Can we take ver­i­fi­a­bil­i­ty fur­ther now, espe­cial­ly as our epis­temic cri­sis deep­ens?  Can we improve cita­tion for the medi­um that’s begin­ning to over­take us all, which is video?  Can we make resources on the web – also a new thing – ver­i­fi­able?  What is a cita­tion like in a … pod­cast?

The great his­to­ri­an of the Ency­clopédie, Robert Darn­ton, tells us in his new book, “When the print­ed word appeared in France in 1470, the state did not know what to make of it.”  So, 700 years from now, what will tomorrow’s his­to­ri­ans say about us?  Fur­ther thoughts about how we can start more con­scious­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with one anoth­er and pro­duc­ing – but imme­di­ate­ly – for our bur­geon­ing knowl­edge net­works: next week.

Peter B. Kauf­man works at MIT Open Learn­ing and is the author of The New Enlight­en­ment and the Fight to Free Knowl­edge. This is the sec­ond of three arti­cles. You can find the first one in the Relat­eds below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New Enlight­en­ment and the Fight to Free Knowl­edge: Part 1

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Voltaire: Enlight­en­ment Philoso­pher of Plu­ral­ism & Tol­er­ance

The Diderot Effect: Enlight­en­ment Philoso­pher Denis Diderot Explains the Psy­chol­o­gy of Con­sumerism & Our Waste­ful Spend­ing

Social Media in the Age of Enlight­en­ment and Rev­o­lu­tion

Watch Cartoonist Lynda Barry’s Two-Hour Drawing Workshop

in Art, Creativity, Education, K-12 | March 12th, 2021

We know you’re Zoomed out, but might you make an excep­tion for the pre-record­ed draw­ing and writ­ing ses­sion above with leg­endary car­toon­ist and illus­tra­tor Lyn­da Bar­ry?

Under the aus­pices of Graph­ic Med­i­cine’s par­tic­i­pa­to­ry online series, Draw­ing Togeth­er, the noto­ri­ous­ly play­ful Bar­ry led par­tic­i­pants through a series of exer­cis­es from her book, Mak­ing Comics, and seemed gen­uine­ly pleased to be back in teach­ing mode. (All of her in-per­son class­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin have been can­celled until fur­ther notice due to the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, as has her usu­al sum­mer stint at the Omega Insti­tute.)

Bar­ry endeav­ored to loosen her stu­dents up right away, bran­dish­ing toys and danc­ing to an amaz­ing playlist in a friend’s bor­rowed attic, con­fid­ing that the wifi sit­u­a­tion here was far supe­ri­or to that in her old farm­house.

Teacher divid­ed the large group in half by birth­days, as a way to orga­nize view­ing each other’s work after each timed exer­cise.

This couldn’t quite repli­cate the expe­ri­ence of the live class­room, where stu­dents have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to han­dle each other’s work, and more time to take it in, but still fun to see the incred­i­ble diversity—and in the case of closed-eye exercises—thrilling sim­i­lar­i­ties on dis­play.

Barry’s delight extend­ed beyond the con­fines of the page, imi­tat­ing the way some stu­dents beam like sway­ing sun­flow­ers through­out the 60-sec­ond closed eye ses­sions, while oth­ers knit their brows, low­er their chins and pow­er through.

A series of self-por­traits fol­lowed, with prompts designed to tap into the sort of imag­i­na­tive pow­ers that fre­quent­ly seep away in adolescence—draw your­self as an ani­mal, an astro­naut, a mem­ber of a march­ing band, any fruit that’s not a banana…

Longer exer­cis­es involved turn­ing ran­dom squig­gles into mon­sters, with an extra minute grant­ed after the timer went off to add what­ev­er miss­ing things the artist felt each draw­ing need­ed, then choos­ing one of those mon­sters to star in a fam­i­ly album of sorts.

Bar­ry, who has, over the course of her career, filled a num­ber of pan­els with hilar­i­ous­ly out-of-touch teach­ers mak­ing life a hell for child char­ac­ters, is audi­bly appre­cia­tive of her stu­dents’ efforts, fre­quent­ly con­grat­u­lat­ing them for bring­ing some­thing into the world that didn’t exist a few min­utes pri­or:

This is the thing about comics! They come intact, they come all togeth­er and the most impor­tant thing you need to do is just make time to draw them, the unin­ter­rupt­ed time, even if it’s just 2 min­utes.

Truth!

The final exer­cise of the day drew on some of the writ­ing tech­niques Bar­ry fea­tured in Syl­labus, with par­tic­i­pants, quick­ly jot­ting down mem­o­ries after a prompt, then choos­ing one  to explore more deeply, with spe­cial atten­tion devot­ed to sen­so­ry recall.

To play along from home after the fact, you’ll need a cou­ple of hours, ten or so sheets of paper, a pen­cil or pen (Bar­ry favors black felt tips), and your “orig­i­nal dig­i­tal devices” (hint: they’re attached to the ends of your arms).

Find infor­ma­tion on how to par­tic­i­pate in upcom­ing free Draw­ing Togeth­er ses­sions here.

All draw­ings used with the per­mis­sion of par­tic­i­pant Ayun Hal­l­i­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Barry’s New Book Offers a Mas­ter Class in Mak­ing Comics

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

Lyn­da Barry’s Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her New UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How Looney Tunes & Other Classic Cartoons Helped Americans Become Musically Literate

in Animation, Film, Music, Television | March 9th, 2021

Dis­tance learn­ing exper­i­ments on tele­vi­sion long pre­date the medium’s use as a con­duit for adver­tis­ing and mass enter­tain­ment. “Before it became known as the ‘idiot box,’” writes Matt Novak at Smith­son­ian, “tele­vi­sion was seen as the best hope for bring­ing enlight­en­ment to the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment made way for edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming dur­ing TV’s ear­li­est years when the FCC reserved 242 non­com­mer­cial chan­nels “to encour­age edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming.”

Fund­ing did not mate­ri­al­ize, but the nation’s spir­it was will­ing, Life mag­a­zine main­tained: “the hunger of our cit­i­zen­ry for cul­ture and self-improve­ment has always been gross­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed.” Was this so? Per­haps. At the medium’s very begin­nings as stan­dard appli­ance in many Amer­i­can homes, there was Leonard Bern­stein. His Omnibus series debuted in 1952, “the first com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion out­let for exper­i­men­ta­tion in the arts,” notes Schuyler G. Chapin. Six years lat­er, he debuted his Young People’s Con­certs, spread­ing musi­cal lit­er­a­cy on TV through the for­mat for the next 14 years.

“It was to [Bernstein’s] — and our — good for­tune that he and the Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion grew to matu­ri­ty togeth­er,” wrote crit­ic Robert S. Clark in well-deserved trib­ute. Much the same could be said of some unlike­ly can­di­dates for TV musi­cal edu­ca­tors: Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and oth­er clas­sic ani­ma­tors, who did as much, and maybe more, to famil­iar­ize Amer­i­can view­ers with clas­si­cal music as per­haps all of Bernstein’s for­mi­da­ble efforts com­bined.

A Mendelssohn piece that you hear con­stant­ly in clas­sic car­toons, and even more recent ones like REN & STIMPY and SPONGEBOB, is “Früh­lingslied (Spring Song),” which is used to denote peace and tran­quil­i­ty. This is my favorite instance, from the first Ralph Wolf-Sam Sheep­dog film. pic.twitter.com/XJjup7nWU7

— Vin­cent Alexan­der (@NonsenseIsland) March 1, 2021

But Jones and his fel­low ani­ma­tors have not been giv­en their prop­er due, car­toon­ist and ani­ma­tor Vin­cent Alexan­der sug­gest­ed in a recent Twit­ter thread. Aim­ing to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion, Alexan­der post­ed a wealth of exam­ples from Bugs Bun­ny & company’s con­tri­bu­tions to Amer­i­cans’ musi­cal lit­er­a­cy. Grant­ed, many of these car­toons start­ed as short films in the­aters, but they spent many more decades on TV, enter­tain­ing mil­lions of all ages while expos­ing them to a wide vari­ety of clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions.

Franz von Sup­pé got quite a work­out in clas­sic car­toons. “The Poet and Peas­ant Over­ture” shows up in dozens of shorts. My favorite is Pop­eye con­duct­ing the “Spinach Over­ture” while giv­ing Blu­to a rhyth­mic beat­down per­fect­ly in time with the music. pic.twitter.com/6dAr7cgHrC

— Vin­cent Alexan­der (@NonsenseIsland) March 1, 2021

Alexan­der points out how car­toons like the first Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheep­dog (1953) set a prece­dent for using Mendelssohn’s “Früh­lingslied (Spring Song)” in lat­er ani­mat­ed favorites like Ren & Stimpy and Sponge­bob Squarepants. He gives oblig­a­tory nods to Dis­ney and cites sev­er­al oth­er non-Looney Tunes exam­ples like Popeye’s “Spinach Over­ture,” based on Franz von Suppé’s “The Poet and Peas­ant Over­ture.” But on the whole, the thread focus­es on Warn­er Bros. clas­sics, espe­cial­ly those in which Bugs Bun­ny demon­strates his tal­ents as a con­duc­tor, pianist, and bar­ber to the bald Elmer Fudd.

“I don’t know who can lis­ten to the famous opera The Bar­ber of Seville by Gioachi­no Rossi­ni with­out think­ing of Bugs Bun­ny,” writes Alexan­der. “The way direc­tor Chuck Jones syn­chro­nizes the slap­stick action to the sound­track is flat-out mas­ter­ful.” There are fair ques­tions to be asked here — and Bern­stein would sure­ly ask them: How many of those peo­ple can appre­ci­ate Rossi­ni with­out the slap­stick? How many have heard, and seen, a full per­for­mance of his work sans Fudd?

“Sobre las Olas (Over the Waves)” used to mis-attrib­ut­ed to Strauss, but it was actu­al­ly the work of Mex­i­can com­pos­er Juventi­no Rosas. It became the go-to car­toon theme for mag­ic tricks and tight-wire acts. “Roo­­ta-voo­­ta-zoot!” pic.twitter.com/4izREAGKIl

— Vin­cent Alexan­der (@NonsenseIsland) March 1, 2021

Who can hear Wag­n­er with­out want­i­ng to sing at the top of their lungs, “Kill da wab­bit, Kill da wab­bit, Kill da wab­bit!” Good­ness knows, I can’t. Nonethe­less, Chuck Jones’ What’s Opera, Doc? has been rec­og­nized for its major con­tri­bu­tions to “Amer­i­can enlight­en­ment” — deemed “cul­tur­al­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly or aes­thet­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant” by the Library of Con­gress and pre­served in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry. This, Alexan­der sug­gests, is as it should be. (Just con­sid­er the opera singers Bugs inspired). We should hon­or ani­ma­tion’s major con­tri­bu­tions to our cul­ture lit­er­a­cy: a mass musi­cal edu­ca­tion by car­toon. See many more clas­sic clips in Alexander’s Twit­ter thread here.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Evo­lu­tion of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Oth­er Looney Tunes Leg­ends: A Video Essay

Kill the Wab­bit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bun­ny Car­toon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

Books Come to Life in Clas­sic Car­toons from 1930s and 1940s

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Alexander Calder’s Archive Goes Online: Explore 1400 Works of Art by the Modernist Sculptor

in Archives, Art | March 8th, 2021

Like all great artists, Alexan­der Calder left his medi­um quite unlike he found it. Near­ly 45 years after his death, Calder’s expan­sion of the realm of sculp­ture in new direc­tions of form, col­or, and engi­neer­ing remains a sub­ject of volu­mi­nous dis­cus­sion, includ­ing crit­ic Jed Per­l’s Calder: The Con­quest of Time and Calder: The Con­quest of Space, a two-part biog­ra­phy pub­lished in full last year. More recent­ly, a wealth of mate­r­i­al has come avail­able that enables us to con­duct Calder­ian inves­ti­ga­tions of our own: the Calder Foun­da­tion’s online research archive, which as Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Valenti­na Di Lis­cia reports includes “over 1,300 Calder works across dif­fer­ent media.”

But wait, there’s more: the archive also offers “1,000 pho­tographs and archival doc­u­ments,” “48 his­toric and recent texts by the artist, his con­tem­po­raries, and present-day schol­ars,” and “over 40 microsites explor­ing Calder’s exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry.” (This in addi­tion to the Calder Foun­da­tion’s Vimeo chan­nel, where you’ll find the films seen here.)

Pace Gallery, which rep­re­sents Calder, high­lights the “new inter­ac­tive map fea­ture called ‘Calder Around the World,’ which allows view­ers to find pub­lic instal­la­tions of his mon­u­men­tal sculp­ture in 20 states domes­ti­cal­ly and 21 coun­tries inter­na­tion­al­ly, includ­ing muse­ums with impor­tant Calder hold­ings and per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the artist.”

As that map reveals, much of Calder’s work cur­rent­ly resides in his home­land of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, pri­mar­i­ly in the north­east where he spent most of his life, but also the Cal­i­for­nia in which he did some grow­ing up — not to men­tion the Paris where he lived for a time and met fel­low artists like Mar­cel Duchamp and Fer­nand Léger, infor­ma­tion about whom also appears in the online archive. You may locate a Calder near you, even if you live in anoth­er region of the world, entire­ly: liv­ing in Seoul as I do, I now see I’ll have to pay a vis­it to 1963’s Le Cèpe and 1971’s Grand Crinkly. Though this ever-more-exten­sive Calder Archive can help us under­stand this most opti­mistic of all Mod­ernists, there’s noth­ing quite like being in the pres­ence of one of his sculp­tures.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Alexan­der Calder’s Cir­cus, One of the Beloved Works at the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art

Watch Alexan­der Calder Per­form His Cir­cus, a Toy The­atre Piece Filled With Amaz­ing Kinet­ic Wire Sculp­tures

Watch Dreams that Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

178 Beau­ti­ful­ly-Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from Artists: Kahlo, Calder, Man Ray & More

The Guggen­heim Puts 109 Free Mod­ern Art Books Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

B.B. King Plays “The Thrill is Gone” with Slash, Ron Wood & Other Legends

in Music | March 8th, 2021

How many gen­er­a­tions of gui­tarists have come and gone since B.B. King emerged on the Beale Street blues scene in the late 1940s?

60s blues-rock giants, 70s hard rock­ers, 80s met­al shred­ders… at least two gen­er­a­tions between B.B. and Slash, who is prob­a­bly him­self a gui­tar grand­fa­ther by now. Whether they know it or not, every rock and blues play­er descends from the Kings of the blues (B.B., Albert, Fred­die, and gui­tarists who bore the title but not the sur­name). Slash knows it well.

We have three gen­er­a­tions of gui­tar greats, and Sim­ply Red’s Mick Huck­nall, join­ing an 86-year-old King in the live per­for­mance above from 2011 at Roy­al Albert Hall with Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, the Rolling Stones’ Ron Wood, and Slash, who sits next to the great man and lends him his top hat for a few bars.

The Guns n Ros­es lead gui­tarist named B.B. his favorite blues­man when King died in 2015 and put “The Thrill is Gone” in an ulti­mate gui­tar mix he com­piled for Q mag­a­zine in 2004. At the live jam ses­sion above, he gets to play it with his hero, “the only hit I ever had,” says King by way of self-dep­re­cat­ing intro­duc­tion.

Slash keeps a low pro­file, fit­ting him­self into the mix of six gui­tars onstage (see the longer jam ses­sion fur­ther up). Anoth­er gui­tarist, John May­er, maybe three gen­er­a­tions of play­ers removed from King, got to spread out a bit more in his jam with B.B. at the Gui­tar Cen­ter King of the Blues event in 2006. “It’s like steal­ing some­thing from some­one right in front of them,” he says. It’s a good joke, and it’s the truth.

Musi­cians have been fol­low­ing in B.B. King’s wake for over 60 years now. The best learn the same hum­bling les­son U2’s Bono did after his 1988 duet with King on “When Love Comes to Town” — “We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less con­vinc­ing we were.” See more of King and May­er just below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

How B.B. King & Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Dealt With Break­ing Strings Onstage Mid-Song: A Mas­ter­class in Han­dling Onstage Mishaps

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

Metallica Plays Antarctica, Setting a World Record as the First Band to Play All 7 Continents: Watch the Full Concert Online

in Music | March 8th, 2021

Unless they’ve got fans among pen­guins, there’s no prac­ti­cal rea­son for a band to make the jour­ney to Antarc­ti­ca to play. So why did Metal­li­ca do exact­ly that in 2013? Because they could, and because it made them the first musi­cal act to play all sev­en con­ti­nents — a Guin­ness World Record — doing it all in the same cal­en­dar year, no less. They’re also the only rock band to trav­el to Antarc­ti­ca. (With the excep­tion of Nunatak, an indie rock band made up of British cli­mate sci­en­tists, who played a “sold-out” show to 17 peo­ple at the Rothera Research Sta­tion where they worked in 2007.)

If those aren’t rea­sons enough, the con­cert was a dream real­ized for the 120 fans in atten­dance, includ­ing research sta­tion sci­en­tists and Coca Cola con­test win­ners from all over Latin Amer­i­ca who were able to see Metal­li­ca in a trans­par­ent dome near the heli­port of Argentina’s Car­li­ni Base after a week-long cruise. “Due to the continent’s frag­ile envi­ron­ment,” notes Guin­ness, the band’s amps were placed in “iso­la­tion cab­i­nets” and the audi­ence heard every­thing through head­phones, sort of like a silent rave. Called “Freeze ‘Em All,” the show was live-streamed and is now ful­ly avail­able online (see it above).

“The ener­gy in the lit­tle dome was amaz­ing!” the band writes on their Face­book page. “Words can not describe how hap­py every­one was.” But how cold were they? More spon­sor­ship, in the form of out­er­wear from snow­board and ski giant Bur­ton, kept the band bun­dled up through­out. Metal­li­ca has uploaded the audio of “Freeze ‘Em All” in MP3 and var­i­ous high-end loss­less for­mats at LiveMetallica.com. It’s a very cool idea, but is the con­cert video an hour-long Coke Zero ad? I don’t know.… I am a lit­tle curi­ous about what might have hap­pened if their amps had been at full blast in the Antarc­tic wild….

Here’s the full setlist, with time­stamps, of the record-set­ting gig:

Creep­ing Death (1:25​)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (7:47​)
Sad But True (12:28​)
Wel­come Home (San­i­tar­i­um) (18:58​)
Mas­ter of Pup­pets (25:58​)
One (34:12​)
Black­ened (41:58​)
Noth­ing Else Mat­ters (50:01​)
Enter Sand­man (55:06​)
Seek & Destroy (1:02:20​)

You too, like many a com­ment­ing fan, may feel betrayed by the lack of “Trapped Under Ice” in the setlist. Maybe too on-the-nose, they thought, too cute. But sure­ly a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty that won’t come again. Fill in the gap your­self with the live take below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Metal­li­ca Is Putting Free Con­certs Online: 6 Now Stream­ing, with More to Come

Metallica’s Bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo Plays Metal­li­ca Songs Fla­men­co-Style, Joined by Rodri­go y Gabriela

Bud­dhist Monk Cov­ers Metallica’s ”Enter Sand­man,” Then Med­i­tates

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

A Short Biography of Keith Haring Told with Comic Book Illustrations & Music

in Art, History, Museums, Music, Travel | March 8th, 2021

Singer-song­writer-car­toon­ist Jef­frey Lewis is a wor­thy exem­plar of NYC street cred.

Born, raised, and still resid­ing on New York City’s Low­er East Side, he draws comics under the “judg­men­tal” gaze of The Art of Daniel Clowes: Mod­ern Car­toon­ist and writes songs beneath a poster of The Ter­mi­na­tor onto which he graft­ed the face of Lou Reed from a stolen Time Out New York pro­mo.

Billing him­self as “among NYC’s top slingers of folk / garage­rock / antifolk,” Lewis pairs his songs with comics dur­ing live shows, pro­ject­ing orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions or flip­ping the pages of a sketch­book large enough for the audi­ence to see, a prac­tice he refers to as “low bud­get films.”

He’s also an ama­teur his­to­ri­an, as evi­denced by his eight-minute opus The His­to­ry of Punk on the Low­er East Side, 1950–1975 and  a series of extreme­ly “low bud­get films” for the His­to­ry chan­nel, on top­ics such as the French Rev­o­lu­tion, Mar­co Polo, and the fall of the Sovi­et Union.

His lat­est effort is a 3‑minute biog­ra­phy of artist Kei­th Har­ing, above, for the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art Mag­a­zine’s new Illus­trat­ed Lives series.

While Lewis isn’t a con­tem­po­rary of Haring’s, they def­i­nite­ly breathed the same air:

While Har­ing was spend­ing a cou­ple of for­ma­tive years involved with Club 57 and PS 122, there was lit­tle six-year-old me walk­ing down the street, so I can remem­ber and draw that ear­ly ’80s Low­er East Side/East Vil­lage with­out much stretch. My whole brain is made out of fire escapes and fire hydrants and ten­e­ment cor­nices.

Lewis gives then-ris­ing stars Jean-Michel Basquiat and per­for­mance artist Klaus Nomi cameo appear­ances, before escort­ing Har­ing down into the sub­way for a lit­er­al light­bulb moment.

In Haring’s own words:

…It seemed obvi­ous to me when I saw the first emp­ty sub­way pan­el that this was the per­fect sit­u­a­tion. The adver­tise­ments that fill every sub­way plat­form are changed peri­od­i­cal­ly. When there aren’t enough new ads, a black paper pan­el is sub­sti­tut­ed. I remem­ber notic­ing a pan­el in the Times Square sta­tion and imme­di­ate­ly going above­ground and buy­ing chalk. After the first draw­ing, things just fell into place. I began draw­ing in the sub­ways as a hob­by on my way to work. I had to ride the sub­ways often and would do a draw­ing while wait­ing for a train. In a few weeks, I start­ed to get respons­es from peo­ple who saw me doing it.

After a while, my sub­way draw­ings became more of a respon­si­bil­i­ty than a hob­by. So many peo­ple wished me luck and told me to “keep it up” that it became dif­fi­cult to stop. From the begin­ning, one of the main incen­tives was this con­tact with peo­ple. It became a reward­ing expe­ri­ence to draw and to see the draw­ings being appre­ci­at­ed. The num­ber of peo­ple pass­ing one of these draw­ings in a week was phe­nom­e­nal. Even if the draw­ing only remained up for only one day, enough peo­ple saw it to make it eas­i­ly worth my effort.

Towards the end of his jam-packed, 22-page “low bud­get film,” Lewis wan­ders from his tra­di­tion­al approach to car­toon­ing, reveal­ing him­self to be a keen stu­dent of Haring’s bold graph­ic style.

The final image, to the lyric, “Keith’s explo­sive short life­time and gen­er­ous heart speak like an infi­nite foun­tain from some deep well­spring of art,” is breath­tak­ing.

Spend time with some oth­er New York City icons that have cropped up in Jef­frey Lewis’ music, includ­ing the Chelsea Hotel, the sub­way, the bridges, and St. Mark’s Place.

Watch his low bud­get films for the His­to­ry Chan­nel here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kei­th Haring’s Eclec­tic Jour­nal Entries Go Online

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Dogs, Inspired by Kei­th Har­ing

The Sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Rise in the 1980s Art World Gets Told in a New Graph­ic Nov­el

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross & Banksy: Watch Banksy Paint a Mural on the Jail That Once Housed Oscar Wilde

in Art | March 5th, 2021

It would be dif­fi­cult to think of two artists who appear to have less in com­mon than Bob Ross and Banksy. One of them cre­ates art by pulling provoca­tive stunts, often ille­gal, under the cov­er of anonymi­ty; the oth­er did it by paint­ing innocu­ous land­scapes on pub­lic tele­vi­sion, spend­ing a decade as one of its most rec­og­niz­able per­son­al­i­ties. But game rec­og­nize game, as they say, in pop­u­lar art as in oth­er fields of human endeav­or. In the video above, Banksy pays trib­ute to Ross by lay­er­ing nar­ra­tion from an episode of The Joy of Paint­ing over the cre­ation of his lat­est spray paint strike, Cre­ate Escape: an image of Oscar Wilde, type­writer and all, break­ing out jail — on the actu­al exte­ri­or wall of the decom­mis­sioned HM Prison Read­ing.

“The expan­sive and unblem­ished prison wall was a dar­ing and per­fect spot for a Banksy piece,” writes Colos­sal’s Christo­pher Job­son. “It’s best known for its most famous inmate: Oscar Wilde served two years in the prison from 1895–1897 for the charge of ‘gross inde­cen­cy’ for being gay.” This expe­ri­ence result­ed in the poem The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture as read by Wilde him­self.

Where Wilde con­vert­ed his mis­for­tune into ver­bal art, Banksy ref­er­ences it to make a visu­al state­ment of char­ac­ter­is­tic brazen­ness and ambi­gu­i­ty. As with most of his recent pieces, Cre­ate Escape has clear­ly been designed to be seen not just by passers­by in Read­ing, but by the whole world online, which The Joy of Paint­ing with Bob Ross & Banksy should ensure.

“I thought we’d just do a very warm lit­tle scene that makes you feel good,” says Ross in voiceover. But what we see are the hands of a min­er’s-hel­met­ed Banksy, pre­sum­ably, prepar­ing his spray cans and putting up his sten­cil of Wilde in an inmate’s uni­form. “Lit­tle bit of white,” says Ross as a streak of that col­or is applied to the prison wall. “That ought to light­en it just a lit­tle.” In fact, every sam­ple of Ross’ nar­ra­tion reflects the action, as when he urges thought “about shape and form and how you want the limbs to look,” or when he tells us that “a nice light area between the darks, it sep­a­rates, makes every­thing real­ly stand out and look good.” With his sig­na­ture high-con­trast style, Banksy could hard­ly deny it, and he would seem also to share Ross’ feel­ing that in paint­ing, “I can cre­ate the kind of world that I want to see, and that I want to be part of.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Expe­ri­ence the Bob Ross Expe­ri­ence: A New Muse­um Open in the TV Painter’s For­mer Stu­dio Home

Banksy Strikes Again in Lon­don & Urges Every­one to Wear Masks

Banksy Debuts His COVID-19 Art Project: Good to See That He Has TP at Home

Hear Oscar Wilde Recite a Sec­tion of The Bal­lad of Read­ing Gaol (1897)

Pat­ti Smith Reads Oscar Wilde’s 1897 Love Let­ter De Pro­fundis: See the Full Three-Hour Per­for­mance

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch 12 Seasons of the Dick Cavett Show, 18 Seasons of Johnny Carson & Many Other Classic Shows on Shout! Factory

in Television | March 5th, 2021

Dick Cavett was some­times called the “think­ing man’s John­ny Car­son,” and he came up in a sim­i­lar fashion—a stand-up, a joke writer for hire— until he was giv­en a chance to host a late night show. But com­pare a Cavett episode to any late night host today, and it feels like a very dif­fer­ent time. Sure, stars were booked to talk about their upcom­ing movie or album or tele­vi­sion show, but Cavett was so laid back, so chat­ty and con­ver­sant, that it often felt like you were eaves­drop­ping. It’s a style you find more on pod­casts these days than television—Cavett is gen­uine­ly inquis­i­tive. He nev­er got high rat­ings because of it, but he cer­tain­ly got an impres­sive guest list.

We’ve been writ­ing about some of the clips here on Open Cul­ture, but Shout! Fac­to­ry, the DVD com­pa­ny that has piv­ot­ed to stream­ing, offers full episodes of Dick Cavett’s show to watch for free. They some­times have ads, but these days so do most YouTube chan­nels we fea­ture. (Of the episodes I let run, I didn’t real­ly see any com­mer­cials so your mileage may vary as they say).

And what a cul­tur­al trove is there on their site: a select­ed his­to­ry of Cavett’s show, arranged into themed “sea­sons” that stretch from 1969 to 1995. There’s “Rock Icons” (Sly Stone, Janis Joplin, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, George Har­ri­son, David Bowie, Frank Zap­pa, etc.),

“Hol­ly­wood Greats” (Alfred Hitch­cock, Grou­cho Marx, Bet­ty Davis, et al), authors, sports icons, politi­cians, vision­ar­ies (from Jim Hen­son to Ter­ry Gilliam), film direc­tors (includ­ing Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Jean-Luc Godard, and Ing­mar Bergman), and one called “Black His­to­ry Month” although it’s from dif­fer­ent months and dif­fer­ent years, fea­tur­ing inter­views with Shirley Chisholm, Alice Walk­er, and James Earl Jones. (Let’s also men­tion that Cavett’s inter­view with John Cas­savetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gaz­zara is one of the most anar­chic tele­vi­sion inter­views in his­to­ry). Enter the Cavett col­lec­tion here.

Along sim­i­lar lines, Shout! Fac­to­ry fea­tures 18 themed “sea­sons” of The Tonight Show with John­ny Car­son, the man who refined the talk show tem­plate that late night has fol­lowed ever since. There’s “Ani­mal Antics” with Car­son encoun­ter­ing var­i­ous zoo ani­mals brought on by Joan Embery and Jim Fowler; a wide selec­tion of stand-up come­di­ans—The Tonight Show was con­sid­ered the big break for any come­di­an (and some­times future host); and a selec­tion of Hol­ly­wood leg­ends. (View the episodes here.)

In fact, the whole web­site is a fan­tas­tic time-suck of the first order: a huge assort­ment of Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000, episodes of Ernie Kovacs, The Pris­on­er and its pre­quel of sorts Secret Agent, and much more.

And a spe­cial men­tion to host­ing the first sea­son of Soul! the 1968–69 performance/variety hour that exclu­sive­ly focused on the African-Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence. In its hey­day, Soul! was watched by near­ly three-quar­ters of the Black pop­u­la­tion. And why not: guests includ­ed Muham­mad Ali, James Bald­win, Bill With­ers, Al Green, Gladys Knight, Har­ry Bela­fonte, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, and jazz leg­ends Lee Mor­gan, Horace Sil­ver, and Bob­bi Humphrey.

Explore the entire Shout! Fac­to­ry media col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Posts:

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Appears in a Rare Tele­vi­sion & Tells Dick Cavett about His Love of Old Tokyo & His Samu­rai Lin­eage (1981)

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge: Part 1

in History, Media | March 4th, 2021

Edi­tor’s Note: This month, MIT Open Learning’s Peter B. Kauf­man has pub­lished The New Enlight­en­ment and the Fight to Free Knowl­edge, a book that takes a his­tor­i­cal look at the pow­er­ful forces that have pur­pose­ly crip­pled our efforts to share knowl­edge wide­ly and freely. His new work also maps out what we can do about it. In the com­ing days, Peter will be mak­ing his book avail­able through Open Cul­ture by pub­lish­ing three short essays along with links to cor­re­spond­ing sec­tions of his book. Today, you can find his short essay “The Mon­ster­verse” below, and mean­while read/download the first chap­ter of his book here. You can pur­chase the entire book online.

The Mon­ster­verse – what exact­ly is it?  Like Sauron and his min­ions from Mor­dor in The Lord of the Rings, like Sheev Pal­pa­tine and the armies of the Galac­tic empire from Star Wars, like Lord Volde­mort and his hench­men the Death Eaters in Har­ry Pot­ter, it’s the col­lec­tive force of evil, one that strives to shut down human progress, free­dom, jus­tice, the spread of knowl­edge –the dis­sem­i­na­tion of (let us just say it) open cul­ture.  It’s the sub­ject of the first chap­ter of my book, The New Enlight­en­ment and the Fight to Free Knowl­edge – and its incar­na­tions have been with us for thou­sands of years.

In 1536, which is when the book begins, it found its embod­i­ment in Jacobus Lato­mus, who over­saw the tri­al and exe­cu­tion – by stran­gling and burn­ing at the stake – of a trans­la­tor and a priest named William Tyn­dale.  Lato­mus, who him­self was over­seen by Thomas More, who him­self was over­seen by Hen­ry VIII (with Pope Clement VII in a sup­port­ing role), chore­o­graphed Tyndale’s for­mal degra­da­tion, such that a cou­ple dozen apos­tolic inquisi­tors and the­olo­gians, uni­ver­si­ty rec­tors and fac­ul­ty, lawyers and privy coun­cilors – “heresy-hunters,” as his biog­ra­ph­er calls them – led him out of his prison cell in pub­lic and in his priest­ly rai­ment to a high plat­form out­doors where oils of anoint­ment were scraped sym­bol­i­cal­ly from his hands, the bread and wine of the Eucharist sit­u­at­ed next to him and then just as quick­ly removed, and then his vest­ments “cer­e­mo­ni­al­ly stripped away,” so that he would find him­self, and all would see him as, no longer a priest.  Death came next.  This schol­ar and poly­math to whom, it is now known, we owe as much as we owe William Shake­speare for our lan­guage, this lone man sought and slain by church and king and holy Roman emper­or – his ini­tial stran­gling did not go well, so that when he was sub­se­quent­ly lit on fire, and the flames first lapped at his feet and up his legs, lashed tight to the stake, he came to, and, while burn­ing alive in front of the crowd of reli­gious lead­ers and so-called jus­tices (some sev­en­teen tri­al com­mis­sion­ers) who had so sum­mar­i­ly sent Tyn­dale to his death and gath­ered to watch it, live, he cried out, less to the crowd, it would seem, than to Anoth­er: “Lord! Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes!”

What did Tyn­dale do?  He believed that the struc­ture of com­mu­ni­ca­tion dur­ing his time was bro­ken and unfair, and with a core, unwa­ver­ing focus, he sought to make it so that the main body of knowl­edge in his day could be accessed and then shared again by every man alive. He engaged in an unpar­al­leled act of cod­ing (not for noth­ing do we speak of com­put­er pro­gram­ming “lan­guages”), work­ing through the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Ara­ma­ic of the Bible’s Old, then New, Tes­ta­ments to bring all of its good books – from Gen­e­sis 1 to Rev­e­la­tion 22—into Eng­lish for every­day read­ers. He is report­ed to have said, in response to a ques­tion from a priest who had chal­lenged his work, a priest who read the Bible only in Latin: “I will cause a boy that dri­veth the plough shall know more of the Scrip­ture than thou dost.” And he worked with the dis­tri­b­u­tion tech­nolo­gies of his time – the YouTubes, web­sites, and Twit­ters back then – by con­nect­ing per­son­al­ly with book design­ers, paper sup­pli­ers, print­ers, boat cap­tains, and horse­men across six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Europe to bring the knowl­edge and the book that con­tained it into the hands of the peo­ple.

It wasn’t easy. In Tyndale’s time, popes and kings had decreed, out of con­cern for keep­ing their pow­er, that the Bible could exist and be read and dis­trib­uted “only in the assem­bly of Latin trans­la­tions” that had been com­plet­ed by the monk Saint Jerome in approx­i­mate­ly 400 CE. The penal­ties for chal­leng­ing the law were among the most severe imag­in­able, for such vio­la­tions rep­re­sent­ed a panoply of civ­il trans­gres­sions and an entire com­plex­i­ty of here­sies. In tak­ing on the church and the king – in his effort sim­ply and sole­ly to trans­late and then dis­trib­ute the Bible in Eng­lish – Tyn­dale con­front­ed “the great­est power[s] in the West­ern world.” As he “was trans­lat­ing and print­ing his New Tes­ta­ment in Worms,” his lead­ing biog­ra­ph­er reminds us, “a young man in Nor­wich was burned alive for the crime of own­ing a piece of paper on which was writ­ten the Lord’s Prayer in Eng­lish.” The Bible had been inac­ces­si­ble in Latin for a thou­sand years, this biog­ra­ph­er writes, and “to trans­late it for the peo­ple became heresy, pun­ish­able by a soli­tary lin­ger­ing death as a heretic; or, as had hap­pened to the Cathars in south­ern France, or the Hus­sites in Bohemia and Lol­lards in Eng­land, offi­cial and bloody attempts to exter­mi­nate the species.”

Yuck­adoo, the Mon­ster­verse, but very much still with us.  The stran­gle­holds are real.  And Tyndale’s suc­ces­sors in the fight to free knowl­edge include many free­dom fight­ers and rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies – going up against the forces that seek to con­strain our growth as a soci­ety.  Were Tyn­dale alive today, he would won­der about the state of copy­right law and its over­reach; the per­va­sive estate of sur­veil­lance cap­i­tal­ism; the sweep­ing pow­ers of gov­ern­ment to see and inter­fere in our com­mu­ni­ca­tion.  And he would won­der why the seem­ing­ly pro­gres­sive forces on the side of free­dom today – uni­ver­si­ties, muse­ums, libraries, archives – don’t fight more against infor­ma­tion oppres­sion.  Tyn­dale would rec­og­nize that the health pan­dem­ic, the eco­nom­ic cri­sis, the polit­i­cal vio­lence we face today, are all the result of an infor­ma­tion dis­or­der, one that relies on squelch­ing knowl­edge and pro­mot­ing the dark­est forms of igno­rance for its suc­cess.  How we come to grips with that chal­lenge is the num­ber-one ques­tion for our time.  Dis­cov­er­ing new paths to defeat­ing it – over­com­ing the Dark Lords, destroy­ing the Hor­crux­es, final­ly har­ness­ing the Force – is the sub­ject of the next two arti­cles, and of the rest of the book.

Peter B. Kauf­man works at MIT Open Learn­ing and is the author of The New Enlight­en­ment and the Fight to Free Knowl­edge.  This is the first of three arti­cles.