How to Build a Fictional World: Animated Video Explains What Makes Lord of the Rings & Other Fantasy Books Come Alive

in Animation, K-12, Literature, TED Talks, Writing | January 20th, 2014

Today, I was eaves­drop­ping on a young cou­ple in a cafe. The man asked the woman to rec­om­mend a book, some­thing he would­n’t be able to put down on a long, upcom­ing plane ride. The woman seemed stymied by this request. Exhaust­ed, even. (A stroller in which a fair­ly new­born baby slum­bered was parked next to them).

It must’ve been obvi­ous that my wheels were turn­ing for the woman turned to me, remark­ing, “He does­n’t like books.”

“I’m all about mag­a­zines,” the man chimed in.

Hmm. Per­haps Kather­ine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools was­n’t such a good idea after all. What would this stranger like? With­out giv­ing it very much thought at all, I reached for The Spir­it Catch­es You And You Fall Down, Anne Fadi­man’s Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle Award-win­ning non-fic­tion account of a West­ern doc­tor’s tus­sle with the fam­i­ly of an epilep­tic Hmong child. It seems unlike­ly my impromp­tu ele­va­tor pitch con­vinced him to nip round the cor­ner to see if Green­light Book­store had a copy in stock. More prob­a­bly, I impressed him  as one of those New Age‑y matrons eager to pub­licly iden­ti­fy with what­ev­er trib­al cul­ture lays with­in reach.

(Lest you think me an insuf­fer­able busy­body, the man at the next table horned in on the con­ver­sa­tion too, rec­om­mend­ing a col­lec­tion of mod­ern-day Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries and a nov­el, which we all said sound­ed great. Because real­ly, what else were we going to say?

A read­er’s taste is so sub­jec­tive, is it any won­der I felt leery going into “How to Build a Fic­tion­al World,” an ani­mat­ed Ted-Ed talk by chil­dren’s book author and for­mer mid­dle school teacher, Kate Mess­ner? The titles she name-checks—The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix,  and the Har­ry Pot­ter series—are all wild­ly suc­cess­ful, and far—as in light years—from of my cup of tea.

That’s not to say I’m opposed to fan­ta­sy. I adore Dun­geon, Lewis Trond­heim and Joann Sfar’s out­ra­geous­ly fun­ny, anthro­po­mor­phic graph­ic nov­el series. Ani­mal Farm… A Clock­work Orange…all of these per­son­al favorites are easy to decon­struct using Mess­ner’s recipe for fic­tion­al world-build­ing. (Those whose tastes run sim­i­lar to mine may want to jump ahead to the 3:15 minute mark above.)

Kudos to ani­ma­tor Avi Ofer, for the wit with which he con­cep­tu­al­izes Mess­ner’s ideas. The way he choos­es to rep­re­sent the inhab­i­tants’ rela­tion­ships with the plants and ani­mals of their fic­tion­al world (4:13) is par­tic­u­lar­ly inven­tive. His con­tri­bu­tions alone are enough to make this must-see view­ing for any reluc­tant  — or stuck — cre­ative writer.

For those of you who enjoy fan­ta­sy and sci­ence fic­tion, how do your favorite titles cleave to Mess­ner’s guide­lines? Let us know in the com­ments below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Video Explores the Invent­ed Lan­guages of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones & Star Trek

“The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor” Presents Three Free Cours­es on The Lord of the Rings

Free Audio: Down­load the Com­plete Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will be hon­or­ing fic­tion­al worlds with a trip to Urine­town this spring. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Benjamin Bratton Explains “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” and Why They’re a “Recipe for Civilizational Disaster”

in Science, TED Talks | January 7th, 2014

TED Talks — they give your “dis­cov­ery-seek­ing brain a lit­tle hit of dopamine;” make you “feel part of a curi­ous, engaged, enlight­ened, and tech-savvy tribe;” almost giv­ing you the sen­sa­tion that you’re attend­ing a “new Har­vard.” That was the hype around TED Talks a few years ago. Since then, the buzz around TED has mer­ci­ful­ly died down, and the orga­ni­za­tion has gone on, stag­ing its con­fer­ences around the globe. It’s been a while since we’ve fea­tured a TED Talk whose ideas seem worth spread­ing. But today we have one for you. Intrigu­ing­ly, it’s called “What’s Wrong with TED Talks?” It was pre­sent­ed by Ben­jamin Brat­ton, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Visu­al Arts at UCSD, at none oth­er than TEDxSanDiego 2013. Brat­ton makes his case (above) in 11 min­utes — well with­in the 18 allot­ted min­utes — by argu­ing that TED does­n’t just help pop­u­lar­ize ideas. Instead, it changes and cheap­ens the agen­da for sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy and tech­nol­o­gy in Amer­i­ca. He begins to frame the prob­lem by telling a sto­ry:

I was at a pre­sen­ta­tion that a friend, an astro­physi­cist, gave to a poten­tial donor. I thought the pre­sen­ta­tion was lucid and com­pelling.… After the talk the spon­sor said to him, “you know what, I’m gonna pass because I just don’t feel inspired …you should be more like Mal­colm Glad­well.”

Think about it: an actu­al sci­en­tist who pro­duces actu­al knowl­edge should be more like a jour­nal­ist who recy­cles fake insights! This is beyond pop­u­lar­iza­tion. This is tak­ing some­thing with val­ue and sub­stance and cor­ing it out so that it can be swal­lowed with­out chew­ing. This is not the solu­tion to our most fright­en­ing prob­lems – rather this is one of our most fright­en­ing prob­lems.

Brat­ton then con­cludes, “astro­physics run on the mod­el of Amer­i­can Idol is a recipe for civ­i­liza­tion­al dis­as­ter.” If “our best and bright­est waste their time – and the audi­ence’s time – danc­ing like infomer­cial hosts,” the cost will be too high, and our most dif­fi­cult prob­lems won’t get solved.

In watch­ing Brat­ton’s talk, I found myself agree­ing with many things. Sure, TED Talks are often “a com­bi­na­tion of epiphany and per­son­al tes­ti­mo­ny … through which the speak­er shares a per­son­al jour­ney of insight and real­iza­tion, its tri­umphs and tribu­la­tions.” Yes, the talks offer view­ers a pre­dictably “vic­ar­i­ous insight, a fleet­ing moment of won­der, an inkling that maybe it’s all going to work out after all.” Maybe TED Talks some­times pro­vide noth­ing more than “mid­dle­brow megachurch info­tain­ment.” But is TED real­ly chang­ing the agen­da for sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists and philoso­phers? Are schol­ars actu­al­ly choos­ing their intel­lec­tu­al projects based on any­thing hav­ing to do with TED (or TED-inspired ways of think­ing)? Is some­one at the NIH dol­ing out mon­ey based on whether a project will even­tu­al­ly yield 15 good min­utes of diver­sion and enter­tain­ment? Short of empir­i­cal evi­dence that actu­al­ly applies to TED (the anec­dote above does­n’t), it feels like Brat­ton is giv­ing TED way too much cred­it. Maybe TED mat­ters on YouTube. But let’s get real, its pull large­ly starts and ends there. You can read a com­plete tran­script of Brat­ton’s talk here.

via The Guardian

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The “Pursuit of Ignorance” Drives All Science: Watch Neuroscientist Stuart Firestein’s Engaging New TED Talk

in Education, Philosophy, Science, TED Talks | November 26th, 2013

Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Stu­art Firestein, the chair of Colum­bia University’s Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences depart­ment, rejects  any metaphor that likens the goal of sci­ence to com­plet­ing a puz­zle, peel­ing an onion, or peek­ing beneath the sur­face to view an ice­berg in its entire­ty.

Such com­par­isons sug­gest a future in which all of our ques­tions will be answered. In Dr. Firestein’s view, every answer can and should cre­ate a whole new set of ques­tions, an opin­ion pre­vi­ous­ly voiced by play­wright George Bernard Shaw and philoso­pher Immanuel Kant.

A more apt metaphor might be an end­less cycle of chick­ens and eggs. Or, as Dr. Firestein posits in his high­ly enter­tain­ing, 18-minute TED talk above, a chal­lenge on par with find­ing a black cat in a dark room that may con­tain no cats what­so­ev­er.

Accord­ing to Firestein, by the time we reach adult­hood, 90% of us will have lost our inter­est in sci­ence. Young chil­dren are like­ly to expe­ri­ence the sub­ject as some­thing jol­ly, hands-on, and adven­tur­ous. As we grow old­er, a del­uge of facts often ends up trump­ing the fun. Prin­ci­ples of Neur­al Sci­ence, a required text for Firestein’s under­grad­u­ate Cel­lu­lar and Mol­e­c­u­lar Neu­ro­science course weighs twice as much as the aver­age human brain.

The major­i­ty of the gen­er­al pub­lic may feel sci­ence is best left to the experts, but Firestein is quick to point out that when he and his col­leagues are relax­ing with post-work beers, the con­ver­sa­tion is fueled by the stuff that they don’t know.

Hence the “pur­suit of igno­rance,” the title of his talk.

Giv­en the edu­ca­tion­al con­text, his choice of word­ing could cause a knee-jerk response. He takes it to mean nei­ther stu­pid­i­ty, nor “cal­low indif­fer­ence,” but rather the “thor­ough­ly con­scious” igno­rance that James Clerk Maxwell, the father of mod­ern physics, dubbed the pre­lude to all sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment.

I bet the 19th-cen­tu­ry physi­cist would have shared Firestein’s dis­may at the test-based approach so preva­lent in today’s schools.

The igno­rance-embrac­ing reboot he pro­pos­es at the end of his talk is as rad­i­cal as it is fun­ny.

For more of Stu­art Firestein’s thoughts on igno­rance check out the descrip­tion for his Colum­bia course on Igno­rance and his book, Igno­rance: How It Dri­ves Sci­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

 

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day recent­ly direct­ed 16 home­school­ers in Yeast Nation, the world’s first bio-his­tor­i­cal musi­cal.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Enter E.O. Wilson’s Encyclopedia of Life: Free Access to All The World’s Knowledge About Life

in Education, Environment, Science, TED Talks | September 16th, 2013

One of the trea­sures of our time, biol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son, the folksy and bril­liant author of two Pulitzer Prize-win­ning books and the world’s lead­ing author­i­ty on ants, is 84 years old and retired from his pro­fes­sor­ship at Har­vard. But even in retire­ment he came up with one of the most inno­v­a­tive new sci­en­tif­ic resources avail­able today: the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life, a net­worked ency­clo­pe­dia of all the world’s knowl­edge about life.

Six years ago Wil­son announced his vision for such a project while accept­ing the 2007 TED Prize. He expressed a wish for a col­lab­o­ra­tive tool to cre­ate an infi­nite­ly expand­able page for each species—all 1.9 mil­lion known so far—where sci­en­tists around the world can con­tribute text and images.

Wilson’s dream came true, not long after he announced it, and the EOL was so pop­u­lar right away that it had to go off-line for a spell to expand its capac­i­ty to han­dle the traf­fic. The site was redesigned to be more acces­si­ble and to encour­age con­tri­bu­tions from users. It’s vision: to con­tin­ue to dynam­i­cal­ly cat­a­log every liv­ing species, as research is com­plet­ed, and to include the rough­ly 20,000 new species dis­cov­ered every year.

Wilson’s vision is man­i­fest in a fun and well-designed site use­ful for edu­ca­tors, aca­d­e­mics, and any curi­ous per­son with access to the Inter­net.

Search for a species or just browse. Each EOL tax­on­o­my page fea­tures a detailed overview of the species, research, arti­cles and media. Media can be fil­tered by images, video, and sound. There are 66 dif­fer­ent pieces of media about Tas­man­ian Dev­ils, for exam­ple. A group of Tassies, as they’re known, get pret­ty dev­il­ish over their din­ner in this video, con­tributed by an Aus­tralian Ph.D. stu­dent.

As E.O. Wil­son so elo­quent­ly puts it, the EOL has the poten­tial to inspire oth­ers to search for life, to under­stand it, and, most impor­tant­ly, to pre­serve it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

E.O. Wilson’s Olive Branch: The Cre­ation

Cen­tral Intel­li­gence: From Ants to the Web

Free Biol­o­gy Cours­es

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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John Searle Makes A Forceful Case for Studying Consciousness, Where Everything Else Begins

in Philosophy, TED Talks | August 26th, 2013

Con­scious­ness is the sin­gle most impor­tant aspect of our lives, says philoso­pher John Sear­le. Why? “It’s a nec­es­sary con­di­tion on any­thing being impor­tant in our lives,” he says. “If you care about sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, music, art — what­ev­er — it’s no good if you are a zom­bie or in a coma.”

Sear­le is one of today’s pre­em­i­nent philoso­phers of mind. Author of the famous “Chi­nese Room” argu­ment against the pos­si­bil­i­ty of true arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, Sear­le has been a per­sis­tent thorn in the side of those who would reduce con­scious­ness to com­pu­ta­tion, or con­flate it with behav­ior. Despite its intrin­si­cal­ly sub­jec­tive nature, con­scious­ness is an irre­ducible bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non, he says, “as much sub­ject to sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis as any oth­er phe­nom­e­non in biol­o­gy, or for that mat­ter the rest of sci­ence.”

Sear­le made his remarks at the May 3 TEDx con­fer­ence at CERN — the Euro­pean Orga­ni­za­tion for Nuclear Research — near Gene­va, Switzer­land. The video above gives a thought-pro­vok­ing overview of his basic con­clu­sions about con­scious­ness, but to delve deep­er into Sear­le’s phi­los­o­phy of mind — and also his phi­los­o­phy of lan­guage and soci­ety — see our ear­li­er post about his online Berke­ley lec­tures: “Phi­los­o­phy with John Sear­le: Three Free Cours­es.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Sear­le on Fou­cault and the Obscu­ran­tism in French Phi­los­o­phy

What Do Most Philoso­phers Believe? A Wide-Rang­ing Sur­vey Project Gives Us Some Idea

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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Ken Robinson Explains How to Escape the Death Valley of American Education

in Education, TED Talks | May 15th, 2013

Right now, you can find 1,520 TED Talks com­piled into a neat online spread­sheet. That’s a lot of TED Talks. And the most pop­u­lar one (in case you’re won­der­ing) was deliv­ered by Sir Ken Robin­son in 2006. If you reg­u­lar­ly vis­it our site, then chances are you’re among the 20 mil­lion peo­ple who have viewed Robin­son’s talk on why Schools Kill Cre­ativ­i­ty. There’s also a good chance that you’ll want to watch his new­ly-released TED Talk, How to Escape Edu­ca­tion’s Death Val­ley. Filmed just last month, this talk takes aim at Amer­i­ca’s test-cen­tric edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, a sys­tem that increas­ing­ly treats edu­ca­tion as an indus­tri­al process and bleeds cre­ativ­i­ty and curios­i­ty out of our class­rooms. You get that prob­lem when you put tech­nocrats and politi­cians, not teach­ers, in charge of things. And you’re only going to get more of it (sor­ry to say) as com­put­er sci­en­tists start putting their stamp on Amer­i­ca’s edu­ca­tion­al future.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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How Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive Will Preserve the Infinite Information on the Web

in Archives, Internet Archive, Technology, TED Talks, Web/Tech | May 11th, 2013

Brew­ster Kahle is an unas­sum­ing man. But as an inter­net pio­neer and dig­i­tal librar­i­an, he may right­ly be called a found­ing father of the Open Cul­ture ethos. In 1996, Kahle began work on the Inter­net Archive, a tremen­dous­ly impor­tant project that acts as a safe­ty net for the mem­o­ry hole prob­lem of Inter­net pub­lish­ing. Kahle devel­oped tech­nol­o­gy that finds and aggre­gates as much of the inter­net as it is able in his mas­sive dig­i­tal library.

Along with the archive, which Open Cul­ture has drawn from many a time, comes Kahle’s “Way­back Machine,” named for the time-trav­el­ing device in a Rocky and Bull­win­kle seg­ment fea­tur­ing the genius dog Mr. Peabody and his pet boy Sher­man (the car­toon spelled it as an acronym: WABAC). The “Way­back Machine,” as you prob­a­bly know, logs pre­vi­ous ver­sions of web­sites, hold­ing on to the web’s past like clas­sic paper libraries hold on to an author’s papers. (Here’s what we looked like in 2006.)

In the ani­mat­ed adven­tures of Peabody and Sher­man, the Way­back Machine was a mon­strous con­trap­tion that occu­pied half of Peabody’s den. And while we often think of Inter­net space as lim­it­less and dis­em­bod­ied, Kahle’s Inter­net Archive is also phys­i­cal­ly housed, in a for­mer Chris­t­ian Sci­ence church now lined with tow­er­ing servers that store dig­i­tized books, music, film and oth­er media for free access. It’s an impres­sive space for an impres­sive project that will like­ly expand past its phys­i­cal bound­aries. As Kahle says above, “it turns out there is no end; the web is, in fact, infi­nite.”

Kahle is deeply invest­ed in data. The chal­lenges of main­tain­ing the Inter­net Archive are immense, includ­ing trans­lat­ing old, unplayable for­mats to new ones. But what Kahle calls the great­est chal­lenge is the peren­ni­al threat to all libraries: “they burn.” And he’s com­mit­ted to design­ing for that even­tu­al­i­ty by mak­ing copies of the archive and dis­trib­ut­ing them around the world. If you’re inter­est­ed in what moti­vates Kahle, you should watch his 2007 TED talk above. He frames the busi­ness of archiv­ing the inter­net as one of mak­ing avail­able “the best we have to offer” to suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions. “If we don’t do that,” Kahle warns, “we’re going to get the gen­er­a­tion we deserve.” It’s a warn­ing worth heed­ing, I think.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

10 Clas­sic Films from the Inter­net Archive

8,976 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive, Explored by the New York­er

Kids (and Less Savvy Mar­keters) Imag­ine the Inter­net in 1995

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Roger Ebert Talks Movingly About Losing and Re-Finding His Voice (TED 2011)

in Film, Life, Technology, TED Talks | April 4th, 2013

Film crit­ic Roger Ebert, like Pauline Kael before him, leaves behind a great tor­rent of words. Those of us accus­tomed to seek­ing out his opin­ion can com­fort our­selves on the Inter­net, where his thoughts on the great (and not-so-great) films of the last four decades live in per­pe­tu­ity.

After a rup­tured carotid artery robbed him of the pow­er of speech, words assumed an even greater impor­tance for Ebert. Even though he felt lucky to be alive in an age when most home com­put­ers come equipped with a text-to-speech option, he mourned the loss of inflec­tion, tim­ing, and spon­tane­ity. Cere­Proc, a Scot­tish firm spe­cial­iz­ing in per­son­al­ized com­put­er voic­es, cre­at­ed a cus­tom ver­sion he breezi­ly referred to as Roger Junior or Roger 2.0, a Franken­stein’s mon­ster assem­bled from hours of tele­vi­sion appear­ances. A noble, but flawed attempt. Despite his Mid­west­ern attrac­tion to Apple’s com­put­er­ized British accent, Ebert returned to its Amer­i­can male voice, “Alex”, as the most expres­sive option.

In 2011, the speech­less Ebert gave a TED Talk on the sub­ject. “Alex” was giv­en his moment to shine, but there’s no way the tech­no­log­i­cal mir­a­cle can com­pete with the human spec­ta­cle onstage.

Rather than rely on the rel­a­tive­ly autonomous voice sub­sti­tute, Ebert arranged for his wife, Chaz Ham­mel­smith, and friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, to read his words from pre­pared scripts.

For­get W.C. Fields’ caveat about per­form­ing with chil­dren and dogs. Ebert stole his own show, shame­less­ly upstag­ing his loved ones with jol­ly pan­tomimed thumbs ups and oth­er antics. When he’s on cam­era, you can’t take your eyes off him…as he clear­ly knew. A 2010 Esquire arti­cle by Chica­go-based the­ater crit­ic, Chris Jones, described how the removal of Ebert’s low­er jaw gave him the aspect of a per­ma­nent smile. The dis­fig­ure­ment was shock­ing, but espe­cial­ly so on one whose face was so famil­iar. It led to fre­quent mis­as­sump­tions that he had been men­tal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed as well. Ham­mel­smith’s tears when she gets to this part of her hus­band’s elo­quent TED Talk speak vol­umes as well. His will­ing­ness to place him­self front and cen­ter, where peo­ple who might think it impo­lite to stare could not help but see and hear him as a whole per­son, was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary act.

“With­out intel­li­gence and mem­o­ry, there is no his­to­ry.”  — Roger Ebert, 1942 — 2013

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a writer in the Big Apple.

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