CyberLaw: Harvard Law School Opens to You

in Harvard | December 5th, 2006

Here’s anoth­er free­bie for the intel­lec­tu­al tech junkie. Har­vard Law School is offer­ing this semes­ter an inno­v­a­tive course, CyberOne: Law in the Court of Pub­lic Opin­ion. What it cov­ers is how arguments/debates get played out in the media space cre­at­ed by the Inter­net and oth­er new tech­nolo­gies. And, beyond that, it specif­i­cal­ly focus­es on how the “First World and cor­po­rate dom­i­na­tion of enter­tain­ment media, laws, and news can be bal­anced by the voic­es of indi­vid­u­als, groups and uni­ver­si­ties who use new media intel­li­gent­ly.” To bet­ter exam­ine how dif­fer­ent con­stituen­cies use the Net, the course has been opened not only to law stu­dents, but to dis­tance learn­ers reg­is­tered in Har­vard’s Exten­sion School, and also to every­one who has an inter­net con­nec­tion, or so-called “At-Large” Learn­ers. (This is where you come in, and there’s no cost.) In keep­ing with its tech­no­log­i­cal focus, the course incor­po­rates a range of Inter­net tech­nolo­gies into the teach­ing. Blogs, wikis, Google mes­sage boards, vir­tu­al worlds cre­at­ed by Sec­ond Life  — it’s all part of the exper­i­ment that you might want to look into more close­ly.

Resources: 

• Course Descrip­tion
• Infor­ma­tion for “At-Large” Learn­ers
• Course Video Lec­tures
• Read­ings
• Instruc­tor Blog

iTunes & Foreign Language Lessons For Free

in Uncategorized | December 4th, 2006

We’ll be the first to admit it. We’ve been going on some­thing of an iTunes tear late­ly. We told you first about the great uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts that you can grab on iTunes. Next, it was the cul­tur­al pod­casts. Now, it’s time for free for­eign lan­guage lessons.

If you search hard enough on iTunes, you can find pod­casts that will help you learn Chi­nese, Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Greek, Ital­ian, Japan­ese, Kore­an, Por­tuguese, Russ­ian, and Span­ish. But, if you want to save your­self the time and has­sle, just vis­it our iTunes For­eign Lan­guages page, and you’ll find a sol­id list of pod­casts that you can load on to your iPod and keep busy for a good long while.

The Nobel Prize in Literature: Who is Orhan Pamuk?

in Books, Literature | November 28th, 2006

Image by David Shankbone, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We now know the list of Nobel Prize win­ners for 2006, and the award cer­e­mo­ny in Stock­holm is not far off (Decem­ber 10th). This year’s prize in lit­er­a­ture went to Orhan Pamuk, who is almost a rock star in his home coun­try, Turkey, but less well known out­side. But that’s clear­ly about to change. If you’re not already famil­iar with Pamuk’s work, we’ve pulled togeth­er some resources for you. Born in Istan­bul in 1952 (check out the Nobel bio here), Pamuk has writ­ten 10 books in Turk­ish — of which 7 have been trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish — and, through com­plex plots and post-mod­ern devices, his books repeat­ed­ly come back to explor­ing a dual­i­ty — the rela­tion­ship between East and West, Islam­ic val­ues and West­ern val­ues, reli­gion and sec­u­lar­ism. As John Updike puts it in a review of Snow, a par­tic­u­lar­ly acclaimed work, what Pamuk deliv­ers is an artis­tic look at “the ten­sion between the sec­u­lar­ism estab­lished by Kemal Atatürk in the nine­teen-twen­ties and the recent rise of polit­i­cal Islam; … the cul­tur­al divide between a West­ern­ized élite and the the­is­tic mass­es.”

Much to his cha­grin, Pamuk has gained pub­lic stature not sim­ply because of his lit­er­ary achieve­ments, but because he has tak­en strong pub­lic stands against the repres­sive ten­den­cies of his gov­ern­ment and Islam­ic rad­i­cal­ism more gen­er­al­ly. And he has paid a per­son­al price. Notably, he was the first writer in the Mus­lim world to denounce the fat­wa against Salman Rushdie. Also, when he declared in a 2005 inter­view that “Thir­ty thou­sand Kurds and a mil­lion Arme­ni­ans were killed in these lands [Turkey between 1915 and 1917] and nobody dares to talk about it,” the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment respond­ed by har­rass­ing him and then bring­ing him up on charges — charges it was even­tu­al­ly forced to drop because of inter­na­tion­al pres­sure. As this inter­view makes clear, Pamuk is not exact­ly what you’d call an eager dis­si­dent. Rather, you get the strong sense that it’s a moral oblig­a­tion for him, the eth­i­cal cost of being famous in a coun­try that has too few peo­ple will­ing to call on the gov­ern­ment to account for its actions.

Resources:

Text

• Pamuk on “The Free­dom to Write”
• Pamuk’s Short Per­son­al Piece in The New York­er
• A Con­ver­sa­tion with Orhan Pamuk
• Guardian Pro­file

Media

• Orhan Pamuk Inter­view: Nobel Prize Win­ner 2006 (Real Play­er — Audio)
• Pamuk on his nov­el, “Snow” (Online Stream)

Podcasting Taking Off Slowly … But Certainly

in Uncategorized | November 24th, 2006

There is a lot of buzz around pod­cast­ing these days. Last Decem­ber, the edi­tors of the New Oxford Amer­i­can Dic­tio­nary select­ed “pod­cast” as the word of the year (and they defined it as “a dig­i­tal record­ing of a radio broad­cast or sim­i­lar pro­gram, made avail­able on the Inter­net for down­load­ing to a per­son­al audio play­er”). Since then, the chat­ter has only picked up. How­ev­er, just how many peo­ple reg­u­lar­ly down­load and use pod­casts is a some­what dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

This week, the Pew Inter­net & Amer­i­can Life Project issued a new study show­ing that pod­cast­ing has­n’t quite been inte­grat­ed into the fab­ric of every­day life. Although 12% of those sur­veyed have down­loaded a pod­cast at some point, only 1% do so on a dai­ly basis. That’s a far cry (in terms of fre­quen­cy) from how peo­ple use their cell phones, TVs and the Inter­net.

Despite these low num­bers, I strong­ly sus­pect that dai­ly pod­cast usage will inex­orably climb in the com­ing few years. Just think about it. Over 20 mil­lion Amer­i­cans now own an iPod or mp3 play­er, and those fig­ures will almost cer­tain­ly con­tin­ue to rise. The ever-increas­ing num­ber of iPod/mp3 own­ers will get more com­fort­able adding con­tent to their play­ers. And broad­cast­ers will con­tin­ue the trend of using sites like iTunes as an alter­na­tive means of dis­trib­ut­ing their con­tent. Fast for­ward a few years, and here’s what you’ll have: A coun­try awash with iPods and dig­i­tal con­tent, and a nation of con­sumers who real­ize that they can use their mp3 play­ers to access content/information ful­ly on-demand. You’ll be able to access what­ev­er con­tent you want (no mat­ter how spe­cif­ic your inter­est), wher­ev­er you want, when­ev­er you want, with­out com­mer­cials and often for free. Con­tent with­out com­pro­mis­es. Who would want to miss out on that?

Check out Open Cul­ture’s Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

iTunes — Podcasts from 25 Leading Universities

in Uncategorized | November 22nd, 2006

Uni­ver­si­ties pump out knowl­edge every day, and thank­ful­ly, many of the best uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges are now start­ing to tape impor­tant lec­tures, if not full cours­es, and make them avail­able as pod­casts. We’ve spent the past few weeks find­ing the best pod­cast col­lec­tions, both on iTunes and off. If you vis­it the Uni­ver­si­ty iTunes/Podcasts Col­lec­tion (which can always be found in the Free Learn­ing Por­tal on the right side of the page), you’ll find sets of pod­casts from 25 lead­ing edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions, most in the US, but some out­side. As the uni­verse of edu­ca­tion­al pod­casts grows, so will our list. So pay us a vis­it here and there, and keep your iPod poised to add new con­tent.

Free University Podcasts, Videos, and Online Courses: The Central Collection

in Uncategorized | November 20th, 2006

There’s a lot of free, high qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als float­ing around the ether. It’s just a ques­tion of know­ing where to find them, and what’s wheat and what’s chaff. On the left hand side of this page, you will find care­ful­ly-select­ed col­lec­tions of free uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts, free online cours­es and media, and free edu­ca­tion­al web resources. These pages will stay under active devel­op­ment. So book­mark them, watch them grow, and prof­it well from them.

The Pynchon Reviews Roll Out

in Literature | November 20th, 2006

And it’s not look­ing too pret­ty. The New York Times review begins:

Thomas Pynchon’s new nov­el, “Against the Day,” reads like the sort of imi­ta­tion of a Thomas Pyn­chon nov­el that a dogged but ungain­ly fan of this author’s might have writ­ten on quaaludes. It is a humon­gous, bloat­ed jig­saw puz­zle of a sto­ry, pre­ten­tious with­out being provoca­tive, ellip­ti­cal with­out being illu­mi­nat­ing, com­pli­cat­ed with­out being reward­ing­ly com­plex.

You can read the rest here.

Also see the New York­er review.

Yale Takes the Podcast Plunge

in Yale | November 17th, 2006

Image by Pradip­ta Mitra, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Yale announced yes­ter­day that it’s join­ing the pod­cast rev­o­lu­tion, and they’re doing it with a lit­tle bit of ooomph. (Click here to enter Yale’s col­lec­tion.) What you’ll find on Yale iTunes are free lec­tures by Yale’s big hit­ters. You’ll find Vin­cent Scul­ly talk­ing about Philip John­son’s archi­tec­ture, John Gad­dis giv­ing us his spiel on the future of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, Made­line Albright prais­ing the virtues of pub­lic ser­vice, and Tian Xu giv­ing us the low­down on the state of the human genome. As a part­ing thought, I guess this means that Har­vard should be launch­ing some­thing some time soon. Days? weeks? months? It’s only a mat­ter of time. We’ll keep an eye on it. In the mean­time, load Yale’s finest on to your iPod and pros­per.

Stanford on Your iPod: The Literature of Crisis

in Stanford | November 15th, 2006

Day after day, on cam­pus­es across the coun­try, pro­fes­sors impart invalu­able knowl­edge to stu­dents. And, some­what unfor­tu­nate­ly, this knowl­edge has been tra­di­tion­al­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed only so far — which is to say not beyond the class­room walls.

We’re per­haps at the ear­ly stages of see­ing this change. Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty has recent­ly teamed up with Apple to pilot iTunes U — a vari­a­tion on the iTunes soft­ware pack­age that explod­ed into con­sumer con­scious­ness with the iPod rev­o­lu­tion.

Until recent­ly, Stan­ford has used iTunes U to make avail­able a series of one-off lec­tures, many of them extreme­ly worth­while. (If you have iTunes, click here to enter Stan­ford iTunes. If you don’t, you can down­load it from Apple for free.) But what’s new is the uni­ver­si­ty’s deci­sion to make full-fledged cours­es avail­able to the pub­lic. This quar­ter we’re start­ing to see that deci­sion bear some fruit. In iTunes, you’ll now find week­ly install­ments of a course called The Lit­er­a­ture of Cri­sis. Taught by Marsh McCall and Mar­tin Evans, two senior fac­ul­ty mem­bers, the course explores how cri­sis — dra­mat­ic per­son­al cri­sis and larg­er soci­etal cri­sis — have shaped the lives and writ­ings of major intel­lec­tu­als, from Pla­to, to Shake­speare, to Voltaire. Whether you live in Palo Alto, New York, or Ban­ga­lore, you can sub­scribe to this course as a pod­cast by click­ing here, and, each week your iPod should auto­mat­i­cal­ly down­load the lat­est install­ment. (If you don’t have an iPod, you can sim­ply lis­ten to the course on your com­put­er.)

Click to access:

Stan­ford on iTunes

Lit­er­a­ture and Cri­sis

The Quick Start Guide to Stan­ford on iTunes

If you want to sub­scribe to the indi­vid­ual RSS feeds rolling into Stan­ford on iTunes, just click here.

Countdown to Pynchon

in Uncategorized | November 15th, 2006

Thomas Pyn­chon has made a career milk­ing elu­sive­ness for all its worth. His writ­ing is noto­ri­ous­ly hard to pin down. Pub­lish­ers nev­er know when to expect some­thing new. (He has only put out 6 books since 1963.) And, phys­i­cal­ly, Pyn­chon is nowhere, ever, to be found.

But this much we know right now. Against the Day, his next nov­el and the first since 1997, is set to be pub­lished on Novem­ber 21, 2006.

This big book (1120 pages) is a big deal with­in Pyn­chon cir­cles, so much so that Pyn­chon’s pub­lish­er, Pen­guin, has­n’t both­ered pro­mot­ing the book, oth­er than casu­al­ly list­ing it on Ama­zon. Admist the hoopla, one of the cool­er things to emerge is the Against the Day Wiki. Using the same soft­ware as Wikipedia, the Pyn­chon wiki will let Pyn­chon enthu­si­asts devel­op entries that tease out the nov­el­’s char­ac­ters and events. Oh, can’t you taste the min­u­taie?!