Serial Entrepreneur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities”

in Education, Google, Philosophy, Technology | August 7th, 2012

Damon Horowitz, a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor and “ser­i­al entre­pre­neur,” recent­ly joined Google as an In-House Philosopher/Director of Engi­neer­ing. Pri­or to his work at Google, Horowitz co-found­ed Aard­vark, Per­spec­ta, and a num­ber of oth­er tech com­pa­nies. In this talk at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s 2011 Bib­lioTech con­fer­ence on “Human Expe­ri­ence,”  Horowitz explains why he left a high­ly-paid tech career, in which he sought the keys to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, to pur­sue a Ph.D. in Phi­los­o­phy at Stan­ford (the text of the talk is avail­able here).

Horowitz offers fel­low techies a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge, but a worth­while one. In say­ing so, I must con­fess a bias: As a stu­dent and teacher of the human­i­ties, I have watched with some dis­may as the cul­ture becomes increas­ing­ly dom­i­nat­ed by tech­ni­cians who often ignore or dis­miss press­ing philo­soph­i­cal and eth­i­cal prob­lems in their quest to build a bet­ter world. It is grat­i­fy­ing to hear from some­one who rec­og­nized this issue by (tem­porar­i­ly) giv­ing up what he admits was a great deal of pow­er and soci­etal priv­i­lege and head­ed back to the class­room.

Horowitz describes his intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney from “tech­nol­o­gist” to philoso­pher with pas­sion and can­dor, and con­cludes that as a result of his aca­d­e­m­ic inquiry, he “no longer looks for machines to solve all of our prob­lems for us,” and no longer assumes that he knows what’s best for his users. This kind of humil­i­ty and intel­lec­tu­al flex­i­bil­i­ty is, ide­al­ly, the out­come of a high­er degree in the human­i­ties, and Horowitz uses his own tri­als to make a case for bet­ter crit­i­cal think­ing, for a “human­is­tic per­spec­tive,” in the tech sec­tor and else­where. For exam­ples, see Horow­itz’s TED talks on a “moral oper­at­ing sys­tem” and “phi­los­o­phy in prison.” Com­pli­cat­ing Google’s well-known, unof­fi­cial slo­gan “don’t be evil,” Horowitz, draw­ing on Han­nah Arendt, believes that most of the evil in the world comes not from bad inten­tions but from “not think­ing.”

In a relat­ed Stan­ford talk (above) from the same sem­i­nar, Maris­sa May­er, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent of Con­sumer Prod­ucts at Google, dis­cuss­es how she incor­po­rat­ed the human­i­ties into prod­uct inno­va­tion at Google. The first female engi­neer at Google (and its youngest exec­u­tive at the time of this talk), she has made head­lines recent­ly, becom­ing the new CEO of Yahoo.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

The Ph.D. Grind: Philip J. Guo’s Free Mem­oir Offers An Insider’s Look at Doc­tor­al Study

Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Mark Hamill’s Star Wars Screen Test (Featuring Harrison Ford)

in Film | August 7th, 2012

Watch­ing now-famous actors audi­tion for now-clas­sic films, you can’t help but feel a lit­tle thrill of false pre­science, know­ing how the sto­ry turned out — the sto­ry the film tells, cer­tain­ly, but also the sto­ry of the film itself, and those of the actors’ sub­se­quent careers. Today, hun­dreds of clips of screen test footage, none ever meant for pub­lic view­ing, have found their way onto the inter­net. We’ve fea­tured Mar­lon Bran­do’s for Rebel With­out a Cause, John Belushi’s for Sat­ur­day Night Live, and Audrey Hep­burn’s for Roman Hol­i­day, among oth­ers, here on Open Cul­ture. (And don’t for­get Andy Warhol’s dis­tinc­tive spin on the process.) Few films have become as beloved as the first chap­ter of Star Wars, and few actors have become as famous as Har­ri­son Ford, the man who played Han Solo. Above you see not Ford’s screen test, but Ford assist­ing in that of Mark Hamill, the future Luke Sky­walk­er, and per­haps the man most famous specif­i­cal­ly for act­ing in Star Wars.

“It checks out again,” reads Ford. “There’s no mis­take.” “You can’t find Organa Major?” reads Hamill. “I found it,” reads Ford. “It just ain’t there.” Star Wars enthu­si­asts, a group of some vig­i­lance, will imme­di­ate­ly notice that these stars-to-be read dif­fer­ent lines than they deliv­er in the fin­ished film. A bit of research on Wook­ieepe­dia tells me that Organa Major, known in most ear­ly drafts of Star Wars’ script as Ogana Major, would, in lat­er revi­sions, take the name Alder­aan and become — in Wook­ieepe­di­a’s words — “the home of many famous heroes, includ­ing Leia Organa Solo, Bail Organa, and Ulic Qel-Dro­ma.” Issues of nomen­cla­ture aside, to watch Hamil­l’s screen test is to behold the hum­ble ori­gins of a film that would rise to unbe­liev­able heights of cul­tur­al rel­e­vance, claim­ing a prime spot in the mythol­o­gy of the late twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry West. Yet its gen­er­a­tion-cap­ti­vat­ing per­for­mances begin with a cou­ple guys trad­ing lines on mud­dy gray Sony Por­ta­Pak video.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Star Wars is a Remix

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Remembering Robert Hughes, the Art Critic Who Took No Prisoners

in Art | August 7th, 2012

“Some think that so much of today’s art mir­rors and thus crit­i­cizes deca­dence,” Robert Hugh­es once said; “not so. It’s just deca­dent, full stop. It serves no crit­i­cal func­tion. It is part of the prob­lem.”

Hugh­es died Mon­day at the age of 74. One of the tow­er­ing fig­ures of late 20th cen­tu­ry art crit­i­cism, the Aus­tralian writer is best known for The Shock of the New, his 1980 tele­vi­sion series on the rise and fall of mod­ernism, and the best­selling book of the same name. He wrote at least 15 oth­er wide-rang­ing books on art and his­to­ry. He was an elo­quent writer and a tough crit­ic. “It was decid­ed­ly not Mr. Hugh­es’s method to take pris­on­ers,” writes Randy Kennedy in the New York Times obit­u­ary. “He was as damn­ing about artists who fell short of his expec­ta­tions as he was ecsta­t­ic about those who met them, and his prose seemed to reach only lofti­er heights when he was angry.”

Per­haps noth­ing made Hugh­es more angry than the per­ni­cious influ­ence of mon­ey on art in the past few decades. In the scene above from the 2008 BBC doc­u­men­tary The Mona Lisa Curse, Hugh­es pays a vis­it to Alber­to Mugra­bi, whose wealthy fam­i­ly makes no secret of its efforts to manip­u­late the art mar­ket by buy­ing up large num­bers of works by cer­tain artists (often those whom Hugh­es despised, like Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst) and stor­ing them in ware­hous­es. What fol­lows is less of an inter­view than a brow­beat­ing. When it’s over and Hugh­es has left the room, Mugra­bi says, “He’s a tough cook­ie.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Robert Hugh­es, Famed Art Crit­ic, Demys­ti­fies Mod­ern Art

 

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Carl Sagan Presents Six Lectures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar System … For Kids (1977)

in Astronomy, Physics, Video - Science | August 7th, 2012

The Roy­al Insti­tu­tion Christ­mas Lec­tures for Chil­dren — it’s a tra­di­tion that began back in 1825 when the inven­tor Michael Fara­day orga­nized an annu­al lec­ture series for kids, hop­ing to instill in a younger gen­er­a­tion a love for sci­ence. Almost two cen­turies lat­er, the tra­di­tion con­tin­ues. Emi­nent fig­ures like Sir David Atten­bor­ough and Richard Dawkins (watch here) pre­sent­ed lec­tures to young­sters in 1973 and 1991 (respec­tive­ly). And the great astronomer Carl Sagan took his turn in 1977, offer­ing six lec­tures on our solar sys­tem. The first two talks offer a broad overview of the plan­e­tary sys­tem, set­ting the stage for three pre­sen­ta­tions (see below) ded­i­cat­ed to Mars, a top­ic that holds spe­cial inter­est this week. With NASA just hav­ing land­ed its rover Curios­i­ty on the sur­face of Mars, it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to watch Sagan talk about the knowl­edge gained from ear­ly NASA orbiters, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Mariner and Viking mis­sions. In a rather time­ly way, Sagan’s lec­tures put the Curios­i­ty mis­sion in a grander his­tor­i­cal con­text, a deep­er his­to­ry of space explo­ration.

Sagan’s talks assume no spe­cial­ized knowl­edge and run rough­ly 60 min­utes each. You can find more Christ­mas lec­tures on the RI web­site here.

The Out­er Solar Sys­tem and Life

The His­to­ry of Mars

Mars Before Viking

Mars After Viking

Plan­e­tary Sys­tems Beyond The Sun

We’ll be adding this course to the Astron­o­my sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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Watch the Descent of Curiosity in Stop Motion Animation: The View from the Mars Rover

in Astronomy | August 7th, 2012

The Mars rover Curios­i­ty car­ried a Descent Imager (essen­tial­ly a glo­ri­fied HD col­or cam­era), and accord­ing to Planetary.org, it start­ed shoot­ing images at a rate of 4.5 frames per sec­ond upon its descent. We’ll even­tu­al­ly get access to high-res images (1600 by 1200 pix­els). But, in the mean­time, Curios­i­ty has already beamed back 297 thumb­nail images that have been stitched into a stop ani­ma­tion video, giv­ing you anoth­er look at the dra­mat­ic land­ing. The action starts with Curios­i­ty los­ing its heat shield and ends with it touch­ing down on Mars. How cool is that?

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A Room With A View: Camera Obscura Captures Beauty of Venice, Inside and Out

in Photography | August 6th, 2012

When we hear the word “cam­era” we tend to think of a lit­tle device that fits in the hand. Actu­al­ly, the word is Latin for “vault­ed cham­ber,” or room. The first cam­eras were rooms.

Long before the inven­tion of pho­to­graph­ic film, it was dis­cov­ered that if you have a dark­ened room with a small hole in it, the light pass­ing through will project an upside-down image of the sur­round­ing scenery onto the oppo­site wall. The Chi­nese philoso­pher Mo Tzu, who died in the ear­ly 4th cen­tu­ry BCE, called it the “locked trea­sure room.” In 1604 the Ger­man math­e­mati­cian and astronomer Johannes Kepler coined the term “cam­era obscu­ra,” or dark­ened room.

Kepler and oth­er astronomers used the cam­era obscu­ra to observe the sun. The prob­lem with view­ing dim­mer objects, though, is that the tiny aper­ture lets in very lit­tle light. You can widen the hole to let in more light, but as you do so the image gets blur­ri­er. Even­tu­al­ly it was dis­cov­ered that you can have a wide aper­ture if you place a glass lens over it to focus the light.

With advances in optics, artists made more use of the device. The painter David Hock­ney and physi­cist Charles M. Fal­co have the­o­rized that as ear­ly as the 15th cen­tu­ry, Renais­sance painters were using the cam­era obscu­ra and oth­er opti­cal devices to project images onto their can­vas­es as an aid to com­po­si­tion. By the time the chem­i­cal process of pho­tog­ra­phy was invent­ed in the 1820s, the cam­era was old hat.

In the scene above from the 2007 BBC series The Genius of Pho­tog­ra­phy, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Abelar­do Morell returns to the cam­er­a’s roots to cre­ate a strik­ing image of the Basil­i­ca di San­ta Maria del­la Salute in Venice pro­ject­ed onto an inte­ri­or wall of a palaz­zo on the oth­er side of the Grand Canal. To cap­ture the strange inte­ri­or-exte­ri­or scene on film, he uses a cam­era-with­in-a-cam­era.

Morell has been com­bin­ing mod­ern pho­tog­ra­phy with the ancient cam­era obscu­ra tech­nique for over 20 years. He first tried it in the liv­ing room of his home in Quin­cy, Mass­a­chu­setts. He sealed off all the win­dows, cut a dime-sized hole in the cov­er­ing and set up a view cam­era. His first expo­sures last­ed five to 10 hours. Since then, Mor­rell has trav­eled the globe to cap­ture exot­ic exte­ri­ors pro­ject­ed onto inte­ri­or walls. He now uses high-speed dig­i­tal cam­eras to cut the expo­sure time down to min­utes. “One of the sat­is­fac­tions I get from mak­ing this imagery,” he says on his Web site, “comes from my see­ing the weird and yet nat­ur­al mar­riage of the inside and the out­side.”

You can view a selec­tion of Morel­l’s cam­era obscu­ra pho­tographs at AbelardoMorell.net. And if you’d like to try it your­self, watch the video below from Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, “Mak­ing Your Own Room With a View.”

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

in Animation, History, Politics | August 6th, 2012

George Orwell pub­lished his satir­i­cal alle­go­ry Ani­mal Farm in 1945 at the tail end of World War II. While Orwell claimed his inspi­ra­tion for the farm set­ting was a bucol­ic vil­lage scene, it’s tempt­ing to imag­ine that he also drew some of his ideas from Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da car­toons made dur­ing WWII by Dis­ney (see below) and Warn­er Broth­ers. One par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing exam­ple from 1942 is Loony Tunes’ “The Duck­ta­tors,” set on a farm that becomes Europe under a new­ly-hatched Adolf Hitler duck­ling, sport­ing the fore­lock and mus­tache and shout­ing “sieg heil” as soon as he emerges from his jet-black egg. Hitler-duck’s pos­tur­ing appeals to a strut­ting, broad­ly stereo­typ­i­cal Ital­ian goose (Mus­soli­ni), and many of the ducks and geese on the farm, who line to up salute and, um… goos­es­tep. There are plen­ty of lit­tle gags thrown in—it’s all played for comedy—but of course, there is a mes­sage (or two) here.

First, cut to the sim­per­ing “Dove of Peace,” an androg­y­nous crea­ture who wrings its hands and says, “Have they for­got? ‘Tis love that’s right, and naught is gained by show of might.” This is clear­ly a car­i­ca­ture of Neville Cham­ber­lain, whose inef­fec­tu­al poli­cies enabled and embold­ened Hitler.

Cham­ber­lain is remem­bered for pre­ma­ture­ly declar­ing that his appease­ment of Hitler in the 1938 Munich Pact (here rep­re­sent­ed by a barn­yard “Peace Con­fer­ence”) had secured “peace for our time.” The ref­er­ence is an inter­est­ing exam­ple of a wartime dig at the U.S.’s British allies.

Hitler-duck tears up the “Peace Con­fer­ence” treaty and beats up the British and French ducks. Then a (painful­ly racist) Japan­ese duck rows ashore singing “I’m a Japan­ese Sandman”—a stand in for Tojo Hide­ki or Emper­or Hiro­hi­to. The three “Duck­ta­tors” rule the roost and tram­ple the Dove of Peace under­foot. His­tor­i­cal alle­go­ry gives way to slap­stick, and the wimpy Dove morphs into a pudgy, vic­to­ri­ous Churchill with the Duck­ta­tors’ heads mount­ed on his wall. Then, mes­sage num­ber two appears with fan­fare: “If you’d like to make this true, here’s all you have to do: For Vic­to­ry Buy Unit­ed States Sav­ings Bonds and Stamps.” Over­all, The Duck­ta­tors is a fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of wartime adver­tis­ing, and of con­tem­po­rary U.S. feel­ings towards its Euro­pean allies. You can down­load The Duck­ta­tors here.

Find Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Films Here:

The Mak­ing of a Nazi: Disney’s 1943 Ani­mat­ed Short

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream (1942)

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

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Portrait Werner Herzog: The Director’s Autobiographical Short Film from 1986

in Film | August 6th, 2012

The past decade has seen film­mak­er Wern­er Her­zog rise up on a new, seem­ing­ly sud­den burst of inter­na­tion­al fame. Cinephiles have paid great respect to his work, or at least felt great admi­ra­tion toward his work’s audac­i­ty, since the sev­en­ties. But Her­zog him­self has been at his craft since the six­ties, and you can see pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence of it in the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal doc­u­men­tary above, Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog. In it, he reveals that he turned to film­mak­ing after a friend’s seri­ous injury con­vinced him to aban­don his pre­vi­ous dream of becom­ing a cham­pi­on ski jumper. But Her­zog’s fans know he did­n’t stop feel­ing the vis­cer­al impact of the sport, since he went on to make 1974’s The Great Ecsta­sy of Wood­carv­er Stein­er, per­haps the defin­i­tive visu­al study of that par­tic­u­lar thrill. We hear him say this over clips from that film, as we hear him recount oth­er for­ma­tive moments over images from oth­er Her­zog favorites, includ­ing Fata Mor­gana, Heart of Glass, and Fitz­car­ral­do.

A 1986 Ger­man pro­duc­tion direct­ed by Her­zog him­self, Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog shows him at a time and from a cul­tur­al angle that count­less more recent inter­views and pro­files don’t. We see his footage of Munich’s elab­o­rate­ly bois­ter­ous Okto­ber­fest; we see him in the green Bavar­i­an val­ley of his youth. “I’m the kind of per­son who trav­els on foot,” he explains, “even for long dis­tances.” This leads to the sto­ry of his walk from Munich to Paris to vis­it the ail­ing film crit­ic Lotte Eis­ner (whom Her­zog calls “the con­scious­ness of the new Ger­man cin­e­ma”), which became his book Of Walk­ing In Ice. He speaks of hyp­no­tiz­ing an entire cast for Heart of Glass, of fight­ing the aggres­sive­ly film­mak­ing-unfriend­ly Peru­vian jun­gle to shoot Fitz­car­ral­do, and of plan­ning a nev­er-real­ized Himalayan film star­ring fre­quent (and fre­quent­ly volatile) col­lab­o­ra­tor Klaus Kin­s­ki. “Here we can tru­ly see how hard it is to make a film,” so Her­zog sums up his strug­gle, “but this is my life, and I don’t want to live it in any oth­er way.” In that respect, noth­ing has changed in 25 years.

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog will be added to our list of 500 Free Movies.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Evening with Wern­er Her­zog

Errol Mor­ris and Wern­er Her­zog in Con­ver­sa­tion

Wern­er Her­zog Los­es a Bet to Errol Mor­ris, and Eats His Shoe (Lit­er­al­ly)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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