Why Every Nominated Film Will Win the 2020 Oscar: A Pretty Much Pop Podcast Debate (ep. 30)

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | February 6th, 2020

The 2020 Acad­e­my Awards are near­ly upon us! Real­is­ti­cal­ly, most of you will find this episode well after the win­ners have already been announced, but seri­ous­ly, that should not affect your enjoy­ment of this dis­cus­sion. Your intre­pid non-film-crit­ic Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast hosts have each been ran­dom­ly assigned three of the best pic­ture nom­i­nees to argue for either for why it should with the Oscar, or if we real­ly don’t like it, why we think it will win any­way. The assign­ments were as fol­lows:

  • Mark Lin­sen­may­er: 1917, Lit­tle Women, Jok­er
  • Eri­ca Spyres: Jojo Rab­bit, Par­a­site, Once Upon a Time…in Hol­ly­wood*
  • Bri­an Hirt: Ford v Fer­rari,  Mar­riage Sto­ry, The Irish­man**

*Cov­ered in our ep. 12.
**Cov­ered in our ep. 29.

As we hash out the rel­a­tive mer­its of these films, we reflect on what it is to be an Oscar-win­ning type-of-film as opposed to one peo­ple might actu­al­ly enjoy watch­ing, pat­terns of what kinds of films win in which cat­e­gories, and the effect of view­ing con­di­tions, pri­or knowl­edge, and pre­con­cep­tions on our enjoy­ment.

In prepa­ra­tion, we all watched all nine films and looked at some of the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive reviews about them. Here are a few more arti­cles cov­er­ing the Oscars more gen­er­al­ly that we also used to make our­selves more sus­cep­ti­ble to OSCAR FEVER.

The par­tic­u­lar neg­a­tive 1917 review Mark talks about was by Richard Brody. Here’s an arti­cle about Joaquin Phoenix impro­vis­ing his stunt work as Eri­ca men­tions. Speak­ing of Jok­er, have you heard the (sub)Text pod­cast pre­sen­ta­tion by Mark’s Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life co-host Wes Alwan on the psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic dimen­sions of that film?

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion mus­ing about past win­ners and 2020 act­ing cat­e­gories that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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The Most Complete Collection of Salvador Dalí’s Paintings Published in a Beautiful New Book by Taschen: Includes Never-Seen-Before Works

in Art, Books | February 5th, 2020

Sal­vador Dali was that rare avant-garde artist whose work earned the respect of near­ly every­one, even those who hat­ed him per­son­al­ly. George Orwell called Dali a “dis­gust­ing human being,” but added “Dali is a draughts­man of very excep­tion­al gifts…. He has fifty times more tal­ent than most of the peo­ple who would denounce his morals and jeer at his paint­ings.”

Walt Dis­ney was very keen to work with Dali. And Dali’s own per­son­al hero and intel­lec­tu­al father fig­ure, Sig­mund Freud—no lover of mod­ern art—found the artist’s “unde­ni­able tech­ni­cal mas­tery” so com­pelling that he rethought his long­stand­ing neg­a­tive opin­ion of Sur­re­al­ism.

It’s hard to imag­ine that Orwell, Dis­ney, and Freud would agree on much else, but when it came to Dali, all three saw what is uni­ver­sal­ly appar­ent: as an artist, he was “not a fraud,” as Orwell grudg­ing­ly admit­ted.

It is also clear that Dali was a “very hard work­er.” For all the time he spent in absolute­ly shame­less self-promotion—a full career’s worth of activ­i­ty for many a cur­rent celebrity—Dali still found the time to leave behind hun­dreds of high­ly accom­plished can­vas­es, draw­ings, pho­tographs, films, mul­ti­me­dia projects, and more. A trip to the Dali Muse­um in Tam­pa, Flori­da can be a dis­ori­ent­ing expe­ri­ence.

Despite the already siz­able body of work we might have seen on view or repro­duced, how­ev­er, the edi­tors of Taschen’s newest, updat­ed edi­tion of Dali: The Paint­ings have “locat­ed paint­ed works by the mas­ter that had been inac­ces­si­ble for years,” as the influ­en­tial arts pub­lish­er notes, “so many, in fact, that almost half the fea­tured illus­tra­tions appear in pub­lic for the first time.” In addi­tion to the “opu­lent” pre­sen­ta­tion of the art­work, the book (which expands on a first edi­tion pub­lished last year) also “con­tex­tu­al­izes Dali’s oeu­vre and its mean­ings by exam­in­ing con­tem­po­rary doc­u­ments, from writ­ings and draw­ings to mate­r­i­al from oth­er facets of his work, includ­ing bal­let, cin­e­ma, fash­ion, adver­tis­ing, and objets d’art.”

The first sec­tion of the book reveals how Dali found his own style by mas­ter­ing every­one else’s. He “deployed all the isms… with play­ful mas­tery” and “would bor­row from pre­vail­ing trends before ridi­cul­ing and aban­don­ing them.” Dali want­ed us to know that he could have paint­ed any­thing he want­ed, throw­ing into even high­er relief the con­found­ing dream log­ic of his cho­sen sub­jects. Per­haps Dali him­self made it impossible—as Orwell had want­ed to do—to sep­a­rate Dali the per­son from the tech­ni­cal achieve­ments of his art.

As the artist him­self saw things, his life and work were all wrapped up togeth­er in a sin­gu­lar per­for­mance. At the age of sev­en, he wrote, he had decid­ed he want­ed to be Napoleon. “Since then,” Dali mock-humbly con­fessed, “my ambi­tion has steadi­ly grown, and my mega­lo­ma­nia with it. Now I want only to be Sal­vador Dali, I have no greater wish.” A great part of Dali’s mag­net­ism, of course, is due to what he calls his “mega­lo­ma­nia,” or rather to his uncom­pro­mis­ing life’s work of becom­ing ful­ly, com­plete­ly, him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Sal­vador Dali Met Sig­mund Freud, and Changed Freud’s Mind About Sur­re­al­ism (1938)

Sal­vador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Get Re-Issued: The Occult Meets Sur­re­al­ism in a Clas­sic Tarot Card Deck

Sal­vador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Short Ani­mat­ed Film, Des­ti­no, Set to the Music of Pink Floyd

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

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Terry Jones, the Late Monty Python Actor, Helped Turn Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Into a Free App: Explore It Online

in Education, Literature, Technology | February 5th, 2020

People’s eyes tend to glaze over when they hear the phrase “dig­i­tal human­i­ties.” Grant­ed, it’s not the most thrilling com­bi­na­tion of words. But when you show them what’s pos­si­ble at the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and the arts, the glaze turns to a gleam: a Shaz­am-like app for scan­ning, iden­ti­fy­ing, and learn­ing about fine art? Yes, please…. An iPad app intro­duc­ing the works of Shake­speare, with con­tex­tu­al notes, sum­maries, essays, and videos fea­tur­ing Sir Ian McK­ellen? Fas­ci­nat­ing….

The pos­si­bil­i­ties for casu­al learn­ers and seri­ous stu­dents alike are vast. You just have to know where to look. And if you’re look­ing for a tech-savvy way into Chaucer’s Can­ter­bury Tales, the clas­sic medieval sto­ry cycle writ­ten in Mid­dle Eng­lish verse and prose, you’ve found it. Thanks in part to medieval schol­ar Ter­ry Jones, for­mer­ly a mem­ber of Mon­ty Python—and the writer and direc­tor of Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail—we now have a Chaucer app.

“The project… fea­tures a 45-minute audio per­for­mance of the Gen­er­al Pro­logue of the Tales,” writes Hen­ry Bod­kin at the Inde­pen­dent. “While lis­ten­ing to the read­ing, users have access to a mod­ern trans­la­tion, explana­to­ry notes and a vocab­u­lary explain­ing Mid­dle Eng­lish words used by Chaucer, as well as a dig­i­tized ver­sion of the orig­i­nal 14th cen­tu­ry man­u­script.” The project was Jones’ final schol­ar­ly work—he passed away last month—but his con­tri­bu­tion is sig­nif­i­cant.

Jones’ two books on Chaucer and his trans­la­tion of the “Gen­er­al Pro­logue” are both fea­tured in the app’s intro­duc­tion and notes, as Ellen Gutoskey notes at Men­tal Floss. One of the project’s lead­ers, Peter Robin­son of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Saskatchewan, also points to his behind-the-scenes influ­ence. “His work and his pas­sion for Chaucer was an inspi­ra­tion for us. We talked a lot about Chaucer and it was his idea that the Tales would be turned into a per­for­mance.”

We can enjoy many a mod­ern Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Chaucer, and there’s noth­ing wrong with doing so, but to tru­ly under­stand what made the text so rev­o­lu­tion­ary, we should hear it in its orig­i­nal lan­guage. Mid­dle Eng­lish is beau­ti­ful­ly musi­cal, but it was not in Chaucer’s time a lit­er­ary tongue. Like Dante, he broke new ground by writ­ing in the ver­nac­u­lar when most every­one else wrote in Latin or French.

The strange­ness of Mid­dle Eng­lish to our eyes and ears can make approach­ing the Can­ter­bury Tales for the first time a daunt­ing expe­ri­ence. The Chaucer app is an excel­lent research tool for schol­ars, yet the researchers want “the pub­lic, not just aca­d­e­mics to see the man­u­script as Chaucer would have like­ly thought of it,” says Robin­son, “as a per­for­mance that mixed dra­ma and humor.” In oth­er words, read­ing Chaucer should be fun.

Why else would Ter­ry Jones—a man who knew his com­e­dy as well as his medieval history—spend decades read­ing and writ­ing about him? Find out for your­self at the Can­ter­bury Tales app, where, with a click of a few but­tons at the top of the page, you can see part of the orig­i­nal man­u­script, a tran­scrip­tion of the Mid­dle Eng­lish text, explana­to­ry notes, and Jones’ trans­la­tion of the “Gen­er­al Pro­logue.”

Enter the app here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones (RIP) Was a Come­di­an, But Also a Medieval His­to­ri­an: Get to Know His Oth­er Side

The Can­ter­bury Tales Remixed: Baba Brinkman’s New Album Uses Hip Hop to Bring Chaucer Into the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Yo

Sir Ian McK­ellen Releas­es New Apps to Make Shakespeare’s Plays More Enjoy­able & Acces­si­ble

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

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The Met Puts 650+ Japanese Illustrated Books Online: Marvel at Hokusai’s One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji and More

in Archives, Art, Books | February 5th, 2020

There are cer­tain Japan­ese wood­block prints many of us can pic­ture in our minds: Hoku­sai Kat­sushika’s The Great Wave off Kana­gawa, Uta­gawa Hiroshige’s Sud­den Show­er over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake, Kita­gawa Uta­maro’s Three Beau­ties of the Present Day. Even when we find vast archives of such works, known as ukiyo‑e or “pic­tures of the float­ing world,” we tend to appre­ci­ate the works them­selves one piece at a time; we imag­ine them on walls, not in books. But it was in books that much of the work of ukiyo‑e mas­ters first appeared in the first place. Hoku­sai, Hiroshige, and Uta­maro, as the three are usu­al­ly called, “are best known today for their wood­block prints, but also excelled at illus­tra­tions for deluxe poet­ry antholo­gies and pop­u­lar lit­er­a­ture.”

So writes John Car­pen­ter, Cura­tor of the Depart­ment of Asian Art at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, describ­ing the “fell swoop” in which the Met acquired “a superb col­lec­tion of Japan­ese books to com­ple­ment its excel­lent hold­ings in paint­ings and prints of the Edo peri­od (1615–1868).” Once the per­son­al col­lec­tion of Arthur and Char­lotte Ver­sh­bow, these books came into the muse­um’s pos­ses­sion in 2013, and have now come avail­able to browse on and even down­load from its web site.

Car­pen­ter describes the col­lec­tion as “par­tic­u­lar­ly strong in works by ukiyo‑e artists, but includes rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ples of all the var­i­ous schools of Japan­ese art. Includ­ed in the col­lec­tion of some 250 titles — more than 400 vol­umes — are numer­ous mas­ter­pieces of wood­block print­ing, many of which are near­ly impos­si­ble to find in such fine con­di­tion today.”

You’ll find in the Met’s online col­lec­tion not just the vol­umes from the Ver­sh­bow col­lec­tion, but “over 650 eigh­teenth- and nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese illus­trat­ed books” in total. Selec­tions include edi­tions of Uta­maro’s Gifts of the Ebb Tide (The Shell Book), Hiroshige’s Pic­ture Book of the Sou­venirs of Edo (the name of Tokyo in his day), and Hoku­sai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji. You can also find books full of the work of ukiyo‑e mas­ters of whom you may not have heard, such as Kat­sukawa Shun­shō’s Mir­ror of Yoshi­wara Beau­ties, Kitao Masanobu’s A New Record Com­par­ing the Hand­writ­ing of the Cour­te­sans of the Yoshi­wara, and Uta­gawa Kunisada’s That Pur­ple Image in Mag­ic Lantern Shows. Though few of us today know Kunisada’s name, in the ear­ly to mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry his pop­u­lar rep­u­ta­tion far exceed­ed those of Hoku­sai, Hiroshige, and Uta­maro — not least because of how many could enjoy his work in books like these. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Get Free Draw­ing Lessons from Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, Who Famous­ly Paint­ed The Great Wave of Kana­gawa: Read His How-To Book, Quick Lessons in Sim­pli­fied Draw­ings

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

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Free for Audible Subscribers: James Taylor Releases a New Audio Memoir, and Michael Pollan a New Audio Book on Caffeine

in Audio Books | February 4th, 2020

This is a very quick FYI for any­one who hap­pens to be an Audi­ble sub­scriber. If you’re not, you can start a free tri­al here.

This month, all Audi­ble mem­bers can get free access to James Tay­lor’s new short mem­oir called Break Shot: My First 21 Years. Read by James Tay­lor him­self, the book revis­its the musi­cian’s tur­bu­lent child­hood and his emer­gence as an artist. It also fea­tures record­ed music by the singer-song­writer.

In addi­tion, Michael Pol­lan has released a new short audio­book, Caf­feine: How Caf­feine Cre­at­ed the Mod­ern World. Read by Pol­lan, the book (only avail­able in audio for­mat) “takes us on a jour­ney through the his­to­ry of the drug, which was first dis­cov­ered in a small part of East Africa and with­in a cen­tu­ry became an addic­tion affect­ing most of the human species.”

Both books are part of the Audi­ble Orig­i­nals pro­gram. So if you down­load them, you won’t be using any of your month­ly cred­its. They are free bonus mate­r­i­al.

And now for an extra bonus:  You can lis­ten to Annette Ben­ing, Jon Hamm, Matthew Rhys, Mau­ra Tier­ney and oth­ers read “The Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Report on Tor­ture.” It’s free for all–whether you’re an Audi­ble sub­scriber or not.

To sign up for an Audi­ble free tri­al, click here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Down­load a Free Audio Book From Audible.com

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Get Two Free Audio­books from Audiobooks.com

Take UC Berkeley’s Free “Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion 101” Lec­ture Course, Fea­tur­ing a Pan­theon of Sus­tain­able Food Super­stars

 

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What is a Blade Runner? How Ridley Scott’s Movie Has Origins in William S. Burroughs’ Novella, Blade Runner: A Movie

in Film, Literature | February 4th, 2020

Why, in the course of two extra­or­di­nary films by Rid­ley Scott and Denis Vil­leneuve, do we nev­er learn what the term Blade Run­ner actu­al­ly means? Per­haps the mys­tery only deep­ens the sense of “super-real­ism” with which the film leaves audi­ences, including—and especially—Philip K. Dick, who only lived long enough to see excerpts. “The impact of Blade Run­ner is sim­ply going to be over­whelm­ing, both on the pub­lic and on cre­ative peo­ple,” he wrote. As usu­al, Dick saw beyond his con­tem­po­raries, who most­ly panned or ignored the film.

Dick seemed to have “had no beef with the fact Blade Run­ner was not a faith­ful adap­ta­tion of his nov­el,” writes David Bar­nett at the Inde­pen­dent. Not only did he not write a book called Blade Run­ner—the film was loose­ly adapt­ed from his 1968 book Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?—but he also nev­er used those words, “Blade Run­ner,” to describe his char­ac­ters. “It’s not a phrase used in the book and it doesn’t real­ly make much sense in the con­text of the movie…. It’s sim­ply a throw­away slang for cops who hunt repli­cants.”

The phrase, as Keele Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Oliv­er Har­ris tells The Qui­etus, is so much more than that. It brings along with it “a weird back­sto­ry that tells us some­thing about how the Bur­roughs virus spreads around,” infect­ing near­ly every­thing sci­ence fic­tion­al and coun­ter­cul­tur­al over the past half-cen­tu­ry or so. That’s William S. Bur­roughs, of course, author of—among a few oth­er things—a 1979 nov­el­is­tic film treat­ment called Blade Run­ner: A Movie.

If Scott and screen­writer Hamp­ton Fanch­er had adapt­ed Bur­roughs’ night­mar­ish 21st cen­tu­ry to the cin­e­ma, we would have seen a much dif­fer­ent film—though one as whol­ly res­o­nant with our cur­rent dystopia. The sto­ry imag­ines “a med­ical-care apoc­a­lypse,” in which med­ical sup­plies like scalpels become smug­gled contraband—hence “blade run­ners.” Bur­roughs’ book is itself an adaptation—or a re-writ­ing and re-editing—of sci-fi writer Alan Nourse’s 1974 pulp sci-fi nov­el The Bladerun­ner.

It is Nourse who intro­duced the sce­nario of a “med­ical apoc­a­lypse” and who coined the term “blade run­ner,” though we owe its sep­a­ra­tion into two words to Bur­roughs. “Read­ing one text against the oth­er is fas­ci­nat­ing,” says Har­ris. “Nourse writes pedes­tri­an, real­ist prose with two-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters who all talk in the same colour­less style.” Bur­roughs, on the oth­er hand, writes with “extra­or­di­nary econ­o­my, mas­tery of idiom, and wild­ly unbound imag­i­na­tion.”

In the crum­bling New York (not L.A.) of Bur­roughs’ future world, the gov­ern­ment con­trols its cit­i­zens “through the abil­i­ty to with­hold essen­tial ser­vices includ­ing work, cred­it, hous­ing, retire­ment ben­e­fits and med­ical care through com­put­er­i­za­tion.” Grant­ed, this might not seem to lend itself to a very cin­e­mat­ic treat­ment, but Bur­roughs was attract­ed to the cen­tral con­cept of Nourse’s book, one inher­ent­ly rich in human tragedy: “med­ical pan­demics appealed to his vision of a species in per­il, a plan­et head­ing for ter­mi­nal dis­as­ter.”

Dick imag­ined a species in per­il from a dif­fer­ent kind of infec­tion, as Bur­roughs would have it—artificial intel­li­gence. Was the most cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly-adapt­ed sci-fi nov­el­ist aware that he had indi­rect­ly helped rein­tro­duce a strain of the Bur­roughs virus—a para­noid, if jus­ti­fied, sus­pi­cion of authority—back into pop­u­lar cul­ture through Blade Run­ner? We might expect, giv­en his sta­tus in the sci­ence fic­tion com­mu­ni­ty at the time of his death, three months before the film debuted, that he might be aware of the con­nec­tion. But he gave no hint of it, leav­ing us to pon­der what Bur­roughs’ Blade Run­ner: The Movie, the movie, would be like, made with the skill and sen­si­bil­i­ty of a Scott or Vil­leneuve.

via The Verge

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Blade Run­ner Cap­tured the Imag­i­na­tion of a Gen­er­a­tion of Elec­tron­ic Musi­cians

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

How Jim Jar­musch Gets Cre­ative Ideas from William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method and Bri­an Eno’s Oblique Strate­gies

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

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36,000 Flash Games Have Been Archived and Saved Before Flash Goes Extinct: Play Them Offline

in Archives, Video Games | February 4th, 2020

Adobe has announced that the Flash Play­er will come to the offi­cial end of its life on the last day of this year, Decem­ber 31, 2020. News of the demise of an obso­lete inter­net mul­ti­me­dia plat­form pre­sum­ably both­ers few of today’s web-surfers, but those of us belong­ing to a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion feel in it the end of an era. First intro­duced by Macro­me­dia in 1996, Flash made pos­si­ble the kind of ani­ma­tion and sound we’d sel­dom seen and heard — assum­ing we could man­age to load it through our slug­gish con­nec­tions at all — on the inter­net before. By the ear­ly 2000s, Flash seemed to pow­er most every­thing fun on the inter­net, espe­cial­ly every­thing fun to the kids then in mid­dle and high school who’d grown up along­side the World Wide Web.

Though now deep into adult­hood, we all remem­ber the hours of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry we hap­pi­ly whiled away on Flash games, rac­ing cars, solv­ing puz­zles, shoot­ing zom­bies, dodg­ing comets, fir­ing can­nons, and pilot­ing heli­copters on class­room com­put­ers. We could, in the­o­ry, find many of these games and play them still today, but that may become impos­si­ble next year when all major web browsers will dis­con­tin­ue their sup­port for Flash.

“That’s where Flash­point comes in to save a huge chunk of gam­ing his­to­ry,” writes Kotaku’s Zack Zwiezen. “Flash­point uses open-source tech to allow folks to down­load and play a large list of games and ani­ma­tions. The full list con­tains just over 36,000 games and you can sug­gest new games to be added if some­thing you love isn’t on here.”

On Flash­point’s down­load page you’ll find its full 290-giga­byte col­lec­tion of Flash games, as well as a small­er ver­sion that only down­loads games as you play them. “While Flash games might not be as impres­sive today, they are still an impor­tant part of gam­ing his­to­ry,” writes Zwiezen. “These small web games can be direct­ly linked to the lat­er rise of mobile and indie games and helped many cre­ators get their feet wet with build­ing and cre­at­ing video games.” In oth­er words, the sim­ple Flash amuse­ments of our school­days gave rise to the graph­i­cal­ly and son­i­cal­ly intense games that we play so com­pul­sive­ly today. Now we have kids who play those sorts of games too, but who among us will ini­ti­ate the next gen­er­a­tion into the ways of Crush the Cas­tle, Age of War, and Bub­ble Trou­ble?

You can find more infor­ma­tion on the flash video game archive on this FAQ page.

via Kotaku

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Archive Makes 2,500 More Clas­sic MS-DOS Video Games Free to Play Online: Alone in the Dark, Doom, Microsoft Adven­ture, and Oth­ers

Run Vin­tage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Soft­ware in Your Web Brows­er, Thanks to Archive.org

1,100 Clas­sic Arcade Machines Added to the Inter­net Arcade: Play Them Free Online

Play a Col­lec­tion of Clas­sic Hand­held Video Games at the Inter­net Archive: Pac-Man, Don­key Kong, Tron and MC Ham­mer

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The Word “Robot” Originated in a Czech Play in 1921: Discover Karel Čapek’s Sci-Fi Play R.U.R. (a.k.a. Rossum’s Universal Robots)

in History, Literature, Science, Technology | February 4th, 2020

When I hear the word robot, I like to imag­ine Isaac Asimov’s delight­ful­ly Yid­dish-inflect­ed Brook­ly­nese pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the word: “ro-butt,” with heavy stress on the first syl­la­ble. (A quirk shared by Futu­ra­ma’s crus­tacean Doc­tor Zoid­berg.) Asi­mov warned us that robots could be dan­ger­ous and impos­si­ble to con­trol. But he also showed young readers—in his Nor­by series of kids’ books writ­ten with his wife Janet—that robots could be hero­ic com­pan­ions, sav­ing the solar sys­tem from cos­mic supervil­lains.

The word robot con­jures all of these asso­ci­a­tions in sci­ence fic­tion: from Blade Run­ner’s repli­cants to Star Trek’s Data. We might refer to these par­tic­u­lar exam­ples as androids rather than robots, but this con­fu­sion is pre­cise­ly to the point. Our lan­guage has for­got­ten that robots start­ed in sci-fi as more human than human, before they became Asi­mov-like machines. Like the sci-fi writer’s pro­nun­ci­a­tion of robot, the word orig­i­nat­ed in East­ern Europe in 1921, the year after Asimov’s birth, in a play by Czech intel­lec­tu­al Karel Čapek called R.U.R., or “Rossum’s Uni­ver­sal Robots.”

The title refers to the cre­ations of Mr. Rossum, a Franken­stein-like inven­tor and pos­si­ble inspi­ra­tion for Metrop­o­lis’s Rot­wang (who was him­self an inspi­ra­tion for Dr. Strangelove). Čapek told the Lon­don Sat­ur­day Review after the play pre­miered that Rossum was a “typ­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the sci­en­tif­ic mate­ri­al­ism of the last [nine­teenth] cen­tu­ry,” with a “desire to cre­ate an arti­fi­cial man—in the chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal, not mechan­i­cal sense.”

Rossum did not wish to play God so much as “to prove God to be unnec­es­sary and absurd.” This was but one stop on “the road to indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion.” As tech­nol­o­gy ana­lyst and Penn State pro­fes­sor John M. Jor­dan writes at the MIT Press Read­er, Čapek’s robots were not appli­ances become sen­tient, nor trusty, super­pow­ered side­kicks. They were, in fact, invent­ed to be slaves.

The robot… was a cri­tique of mech­a­niza­tion and the ways it can dehu­man­ize peo­ple. The word itself derives from the Czech word “rob­o­ta,” or forced labor, as done by serfs. Its Slav­ic lin­guis­tic root, “rab,” means “slave.” The orig­i­nal word for robots more accu­rate­ly defines androids, then, in that they were nei­ther metal­lic nor mechan­i­cal.

Jor­dan describes this his­to­ry in an excerpt from his book Robots, part of the MIT Press Essen­tial Knowl­edge Series, and a time­li­er than ever inter­ven­tion in the cul­tur­al and tech­no­log­i­cal his­to­ry of robots, who walk (and moon­walk) among us in all sorts of machine forms, if not quite yet in the sense Čapek imag­ined. But a Blade Run­ner-like sce­nario seemed inevitable to him in a soci­ety ruled by “utopi­an notions of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.”

In the time he imag­ines, he says, “the prod­uct of the human brain has escaped the con­trol of human hands.” Čapek has one char­ac­ter, the robot Radius, make the point plain­ly:

The pow­er of man has fall­en. By gain­ing pos­ses­sion of the fac­to­ry we have become mas­ters of every­thing. The peri­od of mankind has passed away. A new world has arisen. … Mankind is no more. Mankind gave us too lit­tle life. We want­ed more life.

Sound famil­iar? While R.U.R. owes a “sub­stan­tial” debt to Mary Shelley’s Franken­stein, it’s also clear that Čapek con­tributed some­thing orig­i­nal to the cri­tique, a vision of a world in which “humans become more like their machines,” writes Jor­dan. “Humans and robots… are essen­tial­ly one and the same.” Beyond the sur­face fears of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, the play that intro­duced the word robot to the cul­tur­al lex­i­con also intro­duced the dark­er social cri­tique in most sto­ries about them: We have rea­son to fear robots because in cre­at­ing them, we’ve recre­at­ed our­selves; then we’ve treat­ed them the way we treat each oth­er.

You can find the text of Čapek’s play in book for­mat on Ama­zon.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asi­mov Explains His Three Laws of Robots

Twerk­ing, Moon­walk­ing AI Robots–They’re Now Here

The Robots of Your Dystopi­an Future Are Already Here: Two Chill­ing Videos Dri­ve It All Home

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

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