Death by Amateurs?

in Books, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | July 8th, 2007

Last weekend’s New York Times Sun­day Mag­a­zine has declared this the Amateur’s Hour, an era when unpaid hob­by­ists can edit break­ing news, design space tech­nol­o­gy for NASA, and pre­dict the end of the world. That last arti­cle is clear­ly an out­lier, but the first two raise an inter­est­ing point—are we get­ting bet­ter ser­vice from process­es like Wikipedia than we did from tra­di­tion­al, top-down hier­ar­chies?

This is a debate that’s been going on for the past cou­ple of years under the guise of Web 2.0, cul­mi­nat­ing in the “You” econ­o­my announced with much fan­fare by Time Mag­a­zine last Decem­ber. In that debate, the bat­tle lines are clear­ly drawn between the YouTube-using, Google Map-mash­ing enthu­si­asts and the skep­tics, like aJaron Lanier, who pre­dicts a form of Dig­i­tal Mao­ism. In that ver­sion of the argu­ment, blog­gers are either cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists or incom­pe­tent muck­rak­ers clog­ging the pores of the body politic.

Now the debate seems to have moved into a wider circle—the realm of the ama­teur ver­sus the pro­fes­sion­al, with or with­out the inter­net. Major out­fits from Net­flix to NASA have been try­ing to out­source some of their trick­i­est prob­lems to the gen­er­al pub­lic, which is as bizarre as it is excit­ing. Andrew Keen, arguably the most Web 2.0‑enabled crit­ic of Web 2.0, is well-placed to com­bat the Times cov­er­age with his new book, The Cult of the Ama­teur: How Today’s Inter­net is Killing our Cul­ture, which he describes as a polemic against all of the mon­keys with type­writ­ers and web­cams (that is, us) the Inter­net has now unleashed upon civ­i­liza­tion.

Per­son­al­ly, I find it hard to believe that “real cul­ture” is drown­ing in a sea of YouTube. If there’s one thing we’re try­ing to do at Open Cul­ture, it’s to har­ness Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies to bring you the best stuff there is: top-notch con­tent from uni­ver­si­ties, cul­tur­al pro­grams and online media around the world. The fact that it might be cre­at­ed by any­one, for any­one doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make it bad or good—our job as a Web 2.0 fil­ter is to sort that out for you and offer our best sug­ges­tions.

Keen’s self-pro­mo­tion­al ener­gy is an excel­lent exam­ple of how tech­nol­o­gy can enhance the great con­ver­sa­tion. He’s argu­ing his case every­where from Google’s HQ (watch here on YouTube) to the Strand Book­store in Man­hat­tan. A mul­ti­plic­i­ty of view­points cre­ates debate, and debate is gen­er­al­ly a good thing. If there’s one les­son to be learned from “real cul­ture” it’s that life’s great ques­tions don’t have neat or sat­is­fy­ing answers. Inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion is about the best we can hope for, so why not invite more peo­ple to join in?

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The Skinny on Second Life

in Media, Technology, Web/Tech | May 16th, 2007

Secondlife_1_2

Ever won­dered what Sec­ond Life is and if you should care about it? Imag­ine a 3‑D immer­sive game where you con­trol an avatar and trav­el through con­struct­ed environments–and now take away the game part. What’s left is a fair­ly wide-open cre­ative space where users can cre­ate and sell in-game stuff–houses, objects, cloth­ing, etc–or engage in group activ­i­ties rang­ing from con­certs to polit­i­cal activism to pros­ti­tu­tion. It’s free to join but to own land (and receive a larg­er stipend of in-game cash) you have to sign up for a month­ly sub­scrip­tion.

The online com­mu­ni­ty has been grow­ing fair­ly rapid­ly over the past year or two, now boast­ing over one mil­lion users who logged in dur­ing the past month. Big busi­ness has tak­en notice of the trend, and com­pa­nies from Toy­ota, Microsoft and Sony BMG have all launched vir­tu­al pres­ences in SL.

The ser­vice has been receiv­ing some of its most enthu­si­as­tic press from edu­ca­tors who hope to take advan­tage of the free-for-all 3D spaces as tools for ped­a­gogy. You can find a lot of engi­neer­ing schools, med­ical insti­tu­tions and, of course, the Star Trek Muse­um of Sci­ence on this list of sci­ence places in SL. The world’s cre­ators active­ly encour­age edu­ca­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion and teach­ers from many uni­ver­si­ties (includ­ing Har­vard, Colum­bia and more) have tried run­ning cours­es or train­ing ses­sions in the sim­u­la­tion. There is at least one skep­tic out there, though: Clark Aldrich, a con­sul­tant for an e‑learning com­pa­ny, offers up ten things he sees miss­ing from SL as an edu­ca­tion­al tool.

Whether or not Sec­ond Life becomes a per­ma­nent fix­ture of the Inter­net land­scape, it’s cer­tain­ly cap­tured a lot of peo­ples’ atten­tion. To learn more about it check out the pletho­ra of pod­casts avail­able on iTunes. At the very least this world does offer some zany oppor­tu­ni­ties for mul­ti­ple lay­ers of sim­u­la­tion. Check out this video of a U2 “vir­tu­al trib­ute band” per­form­ing a con­cert with lov­ing­ly ren­dered trib­ute avatars:

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25 Smart Video Podcasts That You Can Watch on Apple TV

in Apple, Technology, Web/Tech | March 29th, 2007

Apple_tv_4_3Ear­li­er this week, we dis­cussed the recent release of Apple TV, the new gad­get that lets you wire­less­ly down­load videos from iTunes to your cushy widescreen TV. For many con­sumers, the log­i­cal ques­tion to ask is whether there’s much to watch if they plunk down the $299 for the hard­ware. (Check it out in our Ama­zon store.) And our read­ers might par­tic­u­lar­ly won­der whether there’s much in the way of cul­tur­al video. With these ques­tions in mind, we’ve put togeth­er a sam­pling of worth­while video pod­casts (oth­er­wise called “vod­casts”) that you can imme­di­ate­ly start con­sum­ing with Apple TV. These videos can also be found in our pod­cast library.

  • Arts & Cul­ture Vod­casts
    • New York­er Car­toons iTunes Feed
      • Catch ani­mat­ed ver­sions of The New York­er’s famous car­toons.
    • Son­ny Rollins Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
      • A 12-part video pod­cast series (to be released in month­ly install­ments) that intro­duces Son­ny Rollins, one of our jazz greats.
    • Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val iTunes Web Site
      • Get behind the scenes cov­er­age at the lat­est stag­ing of the influ­en­tial Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val.
  • For­eign Lan­guage Lessons
    • MyGermanClass.com Ler­nen Wir Deutsch! iTunes Feed Web Site
      • A series of edu­ca­tion­al and enter­tain­ing video pod­casts that will teach you Ger­man.
    • Japan­ese Class iTunes Web Site
      • These video­casts from the Kyoto Japan­ese Lan­guage School use video to demon­strate how to writein Japan­ese.
  • News & Infor­ma­tion
  • Sci­ence
    • Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Sci­ence Fes­ti­val iTunes Web Site
    • Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel Video Pod­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
      • A trove of video pod­casts from Dis­cov­ery. It includes Ever­est — Beyond the Lim­it (iTunes).
    • NASAcast iTunes Feed Web Site
      • A series of the lat­est videos from NASA.
    • Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Wild Chron­i­cles iTunes Feed Web Site
      • “See the nat­ur­al world like nev­er before through the eyes of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic adven­tur­ers, sci­en­tists, researchers, and the extra­or­di­nary Crit­ter­cam.”
    • NOVA iTunes Feed Web Site
      • A series of short vod­casts from NOVA.
  • Tech­nol­o­gy
    • Adobe Cre­ative Suite Video Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
      • Ter­ry­White teach­es you how to unlock the pow­er of Cre­ative Suite with visualex­am­ples. Empha­sis gets placed on inDe­sign and Pho­to­shop.
    • InDig­i­tal iTunes Feed Web Site
      • A pop­u­lar video pod­cast focus­ing on the lat­est gad­gets and high-tech prod­ucts.
    • GeekBrief.TV Video Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
      • Fea­tur­ing­Cali Lewis, this “fast, fun and flir­ty” vod­cast explores news­about tech toys and tools. Gen­er­al­ly very well reviewed by users.
    • Dig­gna­tion iTunes Feed Web Site
      • A week­ly web cul­ture pod­cast that focus­es on the tops sto­ries on Digg.com, the pop­u­lar social con­tent web site. Host­ed by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht.
  • Uni­ver­si­ty
    • INSEAD­’s Lead­er­cast iTunes Web Site
      • A series of video pod­casts that come out of one of Europe’s elite busi­ness pro­grams.
    • Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
      • Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics: Quan­tum Entan­gle­ment iTunes Web Info
        • A cut­ting edge physics video course taught by Leonard Susskind, one of the lead­ing fig­ures in the field.
        • Host­ed by Ted Kop­pel, this pan­el dis­cus­sion focus­es on the glob­al chal­lenges that we’re fac­ing in this cen­tu­ry. Pan­elists include: Supre­me­Court Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy, for­mer Sec­re­tary of State GeorgeSchultz, for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense William Per­ry, Yahoo co-Founder

          Jer­ry Yang, and Stan­ford Pres­i­dent John Hen­nessy, among oth­ers.

    • The Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel iTunes Feed Web Site
      • Prince­ton­has assem­bled a col­lec­tion of pub­lic affairs lec­tures, pan­els ande­vents from aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions all over the world. You can find

        lec­tures here from some of the world’s lead­ing thinkers.

    If we’re miss­ing any­thing great, please drop us a line.

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Apple TV: Turn Your TV into a Smart Box

in Apple, Technology, Web/Tech | March 26th, 2007

Appletv3_3When Steve Jobs announced Apple’s new line­up of gad­gets at Mac­world in Jan­u­ary (lis­ten on iTunes or stream it), all eyes were focused on the planned release of the iPhone. Rel­a­tive­ly lost in the com­mo­tion, how­ev­er, was Apple TV, which start­ed ship­ping this week. (Check it out in our Ama­zon store.) Despite the name, Apple TV does­n’t come with a TV. But, for $299, you do get a piece of hard­ware that lets you wire­less­ly sync your iTunes col­lec­tion to your widescreen TV. And, with that, you can watch down­loaded movies, TV shows, and video pod­casts in a much more suit­able and plea­sur­able envi­ron­ment. (Even­tu­al­ly, you’ll be able to watch videos via Apple TV in high def.) If giv­en the choice between watch­ing your video down­loads on a small iPod screen or a cushy plas­ma TV in your liv­ing room, the deci­sion becomes a no-brain­er. The new gad­get instant­ly makes Apple a cred­i­ble play­er in the video dis­tri­b­u­tion mar­ket, and it clear­ly fur­thers along the com­pa­ny’s trans­for­ma­tion into a more diver­si­fied con­sumer-elec­tron­ics and media com­pa­ny.

For Open Cul­ture read­ers, Apple TV has some ben­e­fits on the near hori­zon. Over the past sev­er­al months, we’ve noticed more pod­casts com­ing out in a video fla­vor. (See our pod­cast library.) And that trend should only pick up over time. (Indeed, Robert X. Cring­ley, the astute observ­er of tech trends, fore­sees a video glut this year that could over­whelm the cur­rent capac­i­ty of the Net.) Thanks to Apple TV, you might soon be able to use your tele­vi­sion as much as your iPod to con­sume high qual­i­ty cul­tur­al con­tent. And this may become all the more true if the rumors pan out that Apple and Google have been talk­ing about dis­trib­ut­ing Google Video through iTunes. Just think of the pos­si­bil­i­ties that lie ahead.

For more infor­ma­tion on Apple TV, you can vis­it Apple’s site, check out the cov­er­age on Engad­get and CNET, or watch the Wal­ter Moss­berg video below.

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