IdeaFestival

New digital tribe discovered in the wired, wired west: us

In the wired age, retrospectives come early. Like David Weinberger's seminal 2004 suggestion that thanks to the Internet, "everything is miscellaneous," this Kansas State professor goes deep, deep, deep on mediated culture, providing an anthropological introduction to YouTube.

Weinberger suggested that there was a new order for ordering, that a "folksonomy" (as opposed to a formal, top down taxonomy) was emerging; Michael Wesch describes that new digital tribe.

Wayne

Latest from Neuroscience: Brain scans find F. Scott Fitzgerald

Responding in the transcript of a SEED salon featuring Tom Wolfe and the founder of The Law and Neuroscience Project, Michael Gazzaniga, to a question on the state of neuroscience, Wolfe recounts what another scientist had to say on the subject of what we really know about the human brain:

'The human brain is complex beyond anybody's imagining, let alone comprehension.' He said, 'We are not a few miles down a long road; we are a few inches down the long road.' Then he said, 'All the rest is literature."

Now I realize that a celebrated author like Wolfe would say that, but the remainder of the discussion is quite good, taking its cue from that remark as the two tackle literature, social standing, why, alone among our cultural achievements, speech should be celebrated, and the role of human narrative in defining and, in one amusing anecdote relayed by Gazzaniga, expanding ethical boundaries.

They also question whether or not an understanding of the relevant science, such as it is, renders the idea of free will obsolete. And in a welcome nod to the futility of that discussion, Gazzaniga gets to the heart of the matter by asking rhetorically, "free from what?"

Gazzaniga is the author of a brand new book on the science of the unique, as well as The Ethical Brain.

An edited video of the latest SEED paring is here.

Wayne

Harry Potter Forever!

As anyone who has seen my cubicle at work knows, I am a Harry Potter fan. Yes, I admit it. I am not a closet fan as many of you out there are (you KNOW who you are don't deny it anymore). I also freely admit that I have read the books several times (too many to count) and have all of the movies and have seen them several times as well. In fact I am currently watching a Harry Potter marathon on ABC family.

I can't explain my fascination with the series. It started when I was looking for works that I thought young teens would like to read. Someone handed me the first book, and I was hooked. There is something so simple yet so amazing about the stories. For those who loved Lord of the Rings, I suppose it is a bit like that. Except for the languages and the battles and the quest (although Harry does go on a quest) we have all the elements of a "good vs evil" story. Will Harry defeat Voldemort?  Is Snape truly evil? Will Draco get his comeuppance? (that's my favorite word du jour by the way). We just don't know! Actually I do because I bought the final book at midnight and read it in 10 hours flat! But I continue to read them because I love the characters, the story and I love hating Voldemort and Snape, and Draco....

We all have our little quirky things we love (in my 20's it was Star Trek and I collected all the hallmark ornaments ;) for the past few years it's been Harry Potter. But now that he's finished what shall I do!? I've tried to replace him with other works but none seems to do. So I will continue to read them until either a. JK Rowling decides to bring the series to life again or b. I find another series to obsess about. Later,

Tina

Nicholas Carr: How is the 'Net programming us?

[T]he Net isn’t the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different.

If we create new tools and our tools in turn recreate us, what will be the lasting impact of the Internet? In The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr wonder if Google is making us stupid.

Reading.... is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains. Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.

Thanks to brain plasticity, adaptation to the Internet is happening at a biological level. Carr's question: How is the 'Net programming us?

Wayne

How things end

I was thinking.

Ends are the emotionally satisfying conclusions in a play or story.

Great ends often mark great films. Paul Simon says there are 50 ways to bring an end to a relationship.

Most people believe the ends don't justify the means, yet curiously good endings can make the interlude bearable.

"The end" is often associated with the ripeness of time, action and purpose. Current philosophy of biology is debating to what extent discussion of an organism's teleology, or purpose, "is unavoidable, or is simply a shorthand for ideas that can ultimately be spelled out non-teleologically."

In evolutionary biology, endings ensure that the best of life can go forward. So while it codes for an end, death is also a species improvement strategy.

The arrow of time, suggests that time moves in one direction to many, many ends. One quantum theory suggests that time is retrocausal, which means it doesn't end. If so, time can be rerun and its effect observed before cause.

The end can also mark the logical consequence of a premise or the something for which an event took place, which raises an interesting question. In magic the logical consequence isn't. How does magic have an end?

And speaking of logical consequence, Kurt Gödel demonstrated that incomplete systems can be whole, but whole systems can never be completely logical.

Ends can have normative values. Wordnet suggests that "end" might also be the part you are expected to play, as in "he held up his end."

Good design brings its subject matter to a satisfying ending. Good ends must to some degree be experienced.

Interestingly, the "end" may not even necessarily be so: an end can also mean "remnant," an historically consequential idea with deep roots in the monotheistic traditions.

It can also mark a transition, or the beginning of something new, or signify the conclusion of one blog post.

Now can be an end.

Wayne

The Importance of Being Earnest

At the risk of sounding like a sad English teacher pushing her favorite works on the masses, I give you The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde. Much like Chaucer, Oscar Wilde was a genius at commenting on society. Lady Bracknell is one of my favorite characters, not because I admire her politics (hehe) but because she is so ruthlessly honest that it comes off as funny. 

This is just a small scene but I highly recommend this film version of the play.

TIna

Stolen Stories

Every now and then I take my daughter to McDonald's. (Yes I know but they do have salads, milk and fruit now) And every time we are there, there is this interesting man sitting in one of the booths, drawing and writing a fantastic story. Sitting around him on the table are his carvings; beautiful pieces that depict the characters in the fantastical story he is writing. So it was with extreme sadness that I read this. 

So many times there are stories out there that never get published. There are Harry Potters, Grendels, Raskolnikov's, Junie B Jones and others floating around in people's heads. They never even get the chance to become a sentence on a piece of scrap paper. I too have a story, several in fact that have never had the chance to become. So when someone has one, when someone has put years and years into a story and then it just disappears because another felt it was funny to take something, that makes me sad.

So write down your ideas. Explore those fantasy worlds you've been pretending since you were a child. Allow yourself to become the writer that is in you. If nothing else, it will give you a sense of accomplishment that you've put a thought down for posterity. And while you are, think of that man in the booth at McDonald's and send him some positive energy. This world needs good stories to read, to explore, to experience. And the loss of even one is a tragedy.

Tina 

Vampire objections

Once again I find myself reflecting on something that Wayne has posted. The Math of Eternal Life brought to mind Anne Rice, who is probably my favorite author.

Although I heart Harry Potter, (more on him some time soon) Anne was with me through college and grad school, and later when I taught AP English literature. She was the one who made me appreciate writing as a craft and not just something that people did so I could be amused or educated. Anne is most known for her Vampire Chronicles, a series of books whose lead character Lestat is both antogonist and protagnoist. We love and hate him. He is feared and adored. Anne's ability to make us actually "see" her world and believe is part of her talent. But what makes her series so lasting (pun intended) is her ability to make us ponder eternal life. Lestat, Louis and all of the other vampires continually bemoan the fact that they must live forever. This along with the fact that most don't seem so ready to walk into the sun and give it up either. 

The series is violent, beautiful and thought-provoking. Anne says of the works,

The major theme of the novel is the misery of this character because he cannot find redemption and does not have the strength to end the evil of which he knows himself to be a part. This book reflects for me a protest against the post World War II nihilism to which I was exposed in college from 1960 through 1972. It is an expression of grief for a lost religious heritage that seemed at that time beyond recovery.

What better character to delve into the question of eternal life than one that seems to be cursed into that existence, a vampire? These books are certainly not for everyone, but if you have the time and the stomach for it, start with Interview With The Vampire, and then see what you think.

Tina 

Moral Grammar, "Crime and Punishment"

Reading Wayne's post "Do we posses a Universal Moral Grammar", brought back wonderful memories of Dostoevsky's most read novel, Crime and Punishment. Wonderful because it was the first novel my Senior AP English Literature students read and we just loved saying all those Russian names.

Written after his stint in prison in Siberia, this novel explores the very question of passion vs reason. Written in the stream-of-consciousness of the main character, Raskolnikov, it takes us through his Psyche via his aimless wandering and confusing rationalizations of "I did something wrong, but she deserved it, I did something wrong, but I'm helping society, I did something wrong, but I needed the money....." and it goes on and on until his mind and the purity of the ironic prostitute Sophia, get the best of him.

"Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly.... No, it's nonsense, it's rubbish!" he added resolutely. "And how could such an atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome!--and for a whole month I've been.... But no words, no exclamations, could express his agitation."

And so it goes until he actually does commit the murder in a gruesome, terrible fashion. (I dare not post that excerpt here as it really is quite atrocious and you'll just have to read it yourself to believe me)

Do we possess a universal moral grammar? Raskolnikov (don't you just love that name?) is the perfect character to study because his thoughts are based on the interviews Dostoevsky, while he was incarcerated, had with criminals. It's a great read and one I highly recommend.

TIna

Chaucer told it like it was

As most of our literary attention is often given to the bard, William Shakespeare (and rightly so) I thought it only fitting to spend some time discussing one given the title "The father of English Poetry", Geoffrey Chaucer. If Chaucer and Shakespeare were side by side, Shakespeare would get the limo and Chaucer would be left to search for a cab.