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Some time ago I remember reading a comment.
La Repubblica, one of the first italian newspaper, holds a big internet website. As part of their initiative they have La Repubblica TV, which is a sort of television, just recorded for the net. You can download it when you want, and see it at your leisure. It includes everything: advertisments, opening music, interviews, etc.
Well the comment was discussing how that internet TV is quite dumb. Not really using up the powers of the net.
It took me as a really smart comment, and later I thought that also the lessons from the universities who are being recorded and released are still part of the old way of doing things.
And today I saw something which I thought might be part of the new way: The lessons on history from Lars Brownworth,
12 Byzantine Rulers.
Lars is a professor at a private high school, and if I got it right not even a professor in history, but history is his passion, and so in his free time he started investigating the middle ages. His lessons in pocast format really had success, and now his podcast is among the most followed on the net.
Why do I think his podcast is part of the new wave of education, and not part of the old wave:
- The lessons are not produced by a University. He did was not advertised as being an expert, and yet his succes came because of how interesting they were. How often have we followed a lesson at the university (or at high school), thinking the professor was not that good, and probably some students were actually better. Universities need to cover every class. But with podcasts there was no class to cover. He was an expert in something, he spoke about that.
- There is a great desire for real high quality content. We all recognise the power of the internet, but experts that blog about their area of expertise are still few. It is easy to find blogs and discussion forums where many amateurs discuss a topic. We are moving toward a time where the real experts start to use the internet to share about their topic. This will take away space to the amatour (it was nice to be the expert in a Taoistic forum, but am I really an expert), but real knowledge will start to flow more easily.
- It uses podcasts, and website. Cheap but high quality technology. Available to everybody
- His expertise was so great that he manage to induce an interest even in people who had no natural interest for the subject
And the conclusion of all this is that more and more material will start to flow. Up to now we have mostly seen amatours discussing subjects. While the experts would write books in the old fashion way, copyright them, and make themselves unavailable. Essentially putting a higher and higher distance between them and their public. Now an expert can teach, and if he is really good he can share not only his knowledge, but his burning passion too. The tools are available, and soon the best lessons on a subject will not be from the universities, but directly from the expert website. At that point universities will start pointing to them, and this will induce a great change in society. Maybe we might even reach the point that some website will offer lessons worth a certain number of credits. A fully decentralized university.
Paolo Rossi, an italian comedian, made a wonderful job, in taking an old discourse from Pericles, and presenting it to the modern public as part of his personal show: Il Signor Rossi e la costituzione (mr. Rossi and the constitution- but, as Rossi is the most common italian name, could be translated as mr. Smith and the constitution). The speech is so precise, so moderne, that it was censored by Berlusconi controlled state television. After confronting the italian version from Paolo Rossi, with the original which we have in the project Gutenberg, I translated Paolo Rossi’s speech in English, trying, as much as possible to use the expression of the original translator in English. What follows here is first the translation, then the whole original speech is copied, with the parts that have been taken by Paolo bolded, to clarify the context in which they originally were. In the translation there is also a phrase in italic, it is a phrase that was absent in the original text, but that fitted perfectly both in the original text, and in the italian situation. It was inspired to Paolo Rossi by the ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Here in Athens we do like this, our government favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called democracy.
Here in Athens we do like this, the laws, here, afford equal justice to all in their private differences; but we never ignore reputation for capacity.
When a citizen has shown himself worthy, he will be, upon others, favored to serve the state, not as a privilege, but as a reward for worth, and poverty doesn’t bar the way.
Here in Athens we do like this. The freedom which we enjoy, extends also to our ordinary life.There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes. We are free, free to live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. An Athenian citizen does not ignore public affairs, when he is following his private life, but, upon all, never uses public affairs to solve his private problems.
Here in Athens we do like this: we have been taught, to respect magistrates, and we have been taught to obey the laws, and never to forget those who have been injured. And we have been taught to respect that code which, although unwritten, is based upon the universal feeling of what is right, and cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.
Here in Athens we do like this: we see him who takes no interest in public matters not as unambitious but as useless, and although few are able to originate a politics, we all athenians are able to judge it. We don’t look on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way to democracy.
We believe that happiness originates from freedom, but freedom only originates from courage.
In short, I say Athens school of Hellas, and that every Athenians shows in himself a happy flexibility, self trust, and readiness to face any situation. And this is why we throw open our city and never by alien acts exclude foreigners.
What follows is the original discourse from Pericles, from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. Continue reading Here in Athens we do like this
Some of you might remember that I wrote a post about the long tail of the ruling class. The post was in Italian and got translated in English by blogger Phil Edward. I took the translation copied it in my blog (with a link), but said that I did not fully agree with Phil understanding of my post. I didn’t enter more into details. And then there was silence, and in the silence I decided it was easier to just ignore the whole discussion. But a few days ago Nicholas Carr from Rough Type wrote a post on how the long tail permits to the service the puts in touch people to make massive amount of money, but to the people who produce the actual content not much money. Absolutely true, and this is why you don’t see google advertisments in my blog. But this is a very different problem from what I was discussing when I was speaking about the long tail of the Ruling Class. Mainly because I was not speaking about the ruling class but about the ‘classe dirigente’. Which is not exactly the ruling class, although I still can’t find a better translation. Ruling class smells a bit too much of kings and queens and prime ministers. And I was actually speaking about ‘classe dirigente’ as people who have authority over a certain field.
So when Phil commented on Nick post:
I blogged on this last year, in response to Pietro Speroni:
I felt I had to answer. Because my post was all about a multidimensional space (all our interests), which gets mistreated as a unidimensional space (money). Poor chap! For a multidimensional space to be treated as a unidimensional one is fairly common, but never fair. And the general excuse is ‘to understand better’, or ‘to simplify a bit’. But I suspect that multidimensional spaces might take it personally, bacause if you treat them bad, they can become quite convoluted, if you know what I mean. Maybe I should write a long post on the importance of not making models (even mental ones) with too few dimensions. But I think I shall leave it for some time next year. And then I can say that it was long due.
In any case I decided to copy my comment to Nick post here. Continue reading Where life is and money isn’t
A fast note to point out that Phil Edwards took the ball and translated the previous post. The post was an answer to a post from my father, and as such in Italian.
Phil uses the post as his launch pad for a very interesting one on how he sees the long tail having effect on the society and how he sees this not happening. I don’t think I agree fully on what Phil writes, but I need some time to gather my ideas, and answer properly.
What follows is Phil translation of my post. The translation is incomplete, but correct and faithful to the original spirit (although I am not convinced I would translate classe dirigente as ruling class), as such I am happy to copy it here. Continue reading Ruling Class translation
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