The open source movement isn’t just for computers anymore. Numerous businesses and intellectual projects are adopting the open source model, and enjoying good results. “Open source draws on some of these collaborative traditions but remains a highly distinctive phenomenon. It has come of age thanks to global electronic networks that make exchanging information cheaper than ever before, at a time when the market for information-based products, whether software, music or opinion, is larger than ever.
Category: ideas
So Who Needs Libraries?
“Only now in the bright light of the Google Era do we see how dim and gloomy was our pregooglian world. In the distant future, historians will have a common term for the period prior to the appearance of Google: the Dark Ages.”
Love – After The Artists, Scientists Weigh In
Is there a bigger theme in the history of art than love? Poets, playwrights, composers and artists have explored love from all sides. “Romance has seemed as inexplicable as the beauty of a rainbow. But these days scientists are challenging that notion, and they have rather a lot to say about how and why people love each other. Is this useful? The scientists think so.”
America’s Christian Right
The potent force in American culture? “An estimated 70 million Americans call themselves evangelicals, and their beliefs have already reshaped American politics. In the last election, 40 percent of the votes for George W. Bush came from their ranks, and now those beliefs are beginning to reshape the culture as well – thanks to a group of best-selling novels known as the ‘Left Behind’ series.”
Of New York And Intellectuals
Will the tradition of the New York intellectual survive? “The failure of the New York Intellectuals, finally – after a life in the American public as critics and theorists, pundits and intellectuals-was the failure to pass on a tradition. They became but a historical quirk when they failed to bequeath the tradition onto another generation and another age.”
From Where Do We Get Technology?
Since World War II, the notion that “science is the engine that drives technology” has been dominant. “Before technology could advance, “scientific capital” had to be built up through research. Such a view implied that technology ultimately depended on knowledge of the natural world: Technology was nothing more than applied science. Yet increasingly, the scientists who do the sort of pure research explain natural phenomena by invoking such man-made artifacts as the computer.”
Columbia University’s Arts Initiative
Columbia University wants to become more involved in the arts. How to do this? First, Columbia has hired director Gregory Mosher. “All of us believe there should be far less separation among intellectual and creative activities. We don’t know exactly how we will do this. But we are going to make an effort. We hope to build something quite distinctive, and to make a contribution.”
That’s Great (Isn’t It?)
Charles Murray attempts to quantify greatness. Is such a thing a good idea? Is it even possible? Denis Dutton believes so: “We take pleasure in watching an athlete break a record, hearing a soprano in full flight, or reading a philosopher of depth and insight. Human accomplishment is the ultimate spectator sport. Apply as much historical analysis to it as we wish, and we’ll not unlock all its mysteries. The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.”
Familiar Music In New Settings
Looking for ways to present classical music in new formats, one French entrepreneur has developed a new sound for some familiar classics – Beethoven, Strauss, Vivaldi and others – and he’s become quite the virtuoso. Okay, it’s a joke, but it’s fun!
Chewing Gum Makes You Smarter?
A dentist at NYU devises an experiment, and discovers that students who chew gum while they study, score higher grades in a test than those who don’t chew. “The gum chewers scored, on average, a B-minus on the written component while the abstainers managed only a C-plus.”