June 17, 2014

Examining the Digital Age in These Free Video Talks

How has the rapid development of digital technology reshaped our world? LearnOutLoud tackles this question in a hand-selected series of video talks dedicated to examining the Digital Age. Included here you’ll find lectures on how the internet has affected human culture and join a discussion on the hidden influence of social networking. Thinkers such as Echkart Tolle take on the digital revolution from a spiritual perspective, while Tim Ferriss argues for the virtues of accelerated learning in an accelerated era. With technological progress affecting all aspects of our life, this list is a great introduction to where it all might be leading:

1. Online Personas: Defining the Self in a Virtual World

In this round table discussion at the Commonwealth Club of California Wired editor David Ewing Duncan moderates a panel featuring Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, former head of marketing for MySpace Shawn Gold, VP of Community Development for Second Life Robin Harper, and the founding CEO of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman. Delivered in 2006 when social networking and online personas were hitting the mainstream, this discussion covers a wide range of topics surrounding the implications of social media. All the panelists insist that these platforms are great ways to meet new people and reconnect with old friends. While Zuckerberg and Hoffman claim that their sites provide more efficient ways for relationship maintenance, the issue of addiction to these social sites and the possibility that they reduce productivity is also addressed. This discussion is an interesting starting point for considering what social networking actual means for humanity. It’s available on streaming video from FORA.tv.

2. What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr authored The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and he argues that the internet is basically a medium of distraction and interruption that gives us bite size pieces of information that are sometimes important and often trivial. While the stimulation of being interrupted by the wide variety of information and entertainment the internet has to offer can be very pleasurable, Carr posits that it is leading away from the in-depth contemplation and reflection that the world of books has to offer.

3. William Powers: Hamlet’s Blackberry

William Powers argues many of the same points as he discusses his book Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. Powers looks at philosophers such as Seneca and Thoreau who sought to escape the busyness of everyday life and he applies their thinking to our digital age. He talks about his family’s experiments with disconnecting from the internet on weekends and how stepping away from being wired has been a revelatory experience.

4. An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths

In this book forum from the Cato Institute, Instapundit.com blogger Glenn Reynolds discusses his book An Army of Davids. He argues that the internet and blogs are creating ways for the common man to strike back at the media and the government. Henry Farrell disagrees with Reynolds, suggesting that the blogosphere is only representational of nerdy, upper middle class, educated, white males. It’s an interesting discussion and is available on MP3 download.

5. Seminars About Long Term Thinking Podcast

From The Long Now Foundation comes this fascinating series of Seminars About Long Term Thinking. Podcasts on the feed include CEO Philip Rosedale talking about the game Second Life, Chris Anderson talking about The Long Tail, founder and president of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales speaking on vision, author Jared Diamond discussing his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, writer Bruce Sterling speaking about The Singularity, musician Brian Eno chatting with Will Wright (creator of the video game “The Sims” and forthcoming “Spore”), and dozens of other interesting podcasts on topics like climate change, human life extension, etc. Have a listen.

6. Changing the Media Landscape

Check out this compelling panel discussion on the changing frontiers of the new media landscape featuring MySpace creator Chris DeWolfe, former head of Google special initiatives Chris Sacca, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, and the Motion Picture Association of America’s current Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman. Hosted at the Aspen Ideas Festival, this talk covers a wide range of ideas including user generated content, copyright, advertising, monetizing content, online politics, and many other areas of change in media. This discussion is available on streaming video from FORA.tv.

7. Nicholas Christakis: The Hidden Influence of Social Networks

Nicholas Christakis speaks at TED on his studies of social networks and how things spread amongst these networks. He looks at a study of obesity and the ways in which obese people connect to other obese people over time. After those findings he looked at the spread of certain emotions within social networks. At the end of the talk he encourages more social connections as being ultimately beneficial. This talk is available on streaming video and MP3 audio download from TED.com.

8. WikiLeaks: Why It Matters. Why It Doesn’t?

With this roundtable hosted by the Churchill Club, the Wikileaks scandal serves as a jumping off point for a discussion on how we access government secrets. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, internet law commentator Jonathan Zittrain, and other notable pundits within the tech sector survey how Julian Assange’s work to make classified documents available on a broader scale has redefined journalism and put pressure on 4th amendment rights. They also explore new tools governments are utilizing to supress information, keep tabs on citizenry, and control behavior in a rapidly changing global exchange of information.

9. Eckhart Tolle on Living with Meaning, Purpose, and Wisdom in the Digital Age

Spiritual teacher and Power of Now author Eckhart Tolle visited Google headquarters last week to give a talk entitled “Living with Meaning, Purpose and Wisdom in the Digital Age”. In this 90-minute conversation with Google’s Bradley Horowitz, Tolle talks about technology and the Internet. While he feels no technology is good or evil in itself, Tolle is concerned that our digital age is ramping up the “doing” and “thinking” mind at the expense of paying attention to “being” in the present moment. He provides many helpful suggestions to take time out for “being” for anyone that spends a lot of time at the computer and on the internet. At the end of the talk he fields questions from Google employees. This talk is available on streaming video through YouTube.

10. Tim Ferriss: Accelerated Learning in Accelerated Times

Watch this recent talk from Tim Ferriss, who is the bestselling author of The 4-Hour Work Week and The 4-Hour Body. Through his ongoing learning experiments, Ferriss has developed a method for learning things quickly. He encourages people to disregard conventional knowledge when it comes to learning just about anything as most conventional learning strategies are slow and ineffective. He describes the rapid methods he used to learn languages and to accomplish some of the physical feats he accomplished in his book The 4-Hour Body. He closes the talk with giving people the best behavioral techniques for carrying out his methods until your goals are accomplished. It’s great condensed knowledge from accelerated learner Tim Ferriss. This talk was delivered at the Long Now Foundation and is available on streaming video from FORA.tv.

11. Will College Learning be Transformed by Technology?

Watch this exciting talk about the future of technology and college learning that will motivate you to learn with all of the forthcoming possibilities for online education. Stanford professor Andrew Ng provides a lot of the new ideas in the talk as he discusses the online education platform he co-founded called Coursera. Through this platform of massive open online courses (MOOCS), Coursera has provided free courses from leading universities to over 1 million people from 196 countries. In this talk U.S. Department of Education Chief of Staff Joanne Weiss provides some unfortunate statistics about the lack of young adults pursuing and completing post-secondary education, and also about the rising costs of tuition which make the traditional college experience increasingly hard to afford. She expresses the need for a more accessible and affordable form of post-secondary education. Ng addresses many of the challenges facing online education and how companies like Coursera are trying to tackle these issues. He discusses accreditation, certification, and the ability of these courses to influence potential employment. He also talks about the interaction between teachers and students and how questions and discussions can be fostered online. And he addresses the importance of grading and how students can be effectively evaluated in a massive online learning environment. While online education is still in its early stages, this talk provides us with a glimpse of what college can be in the digital age. This one hour talk is available from FORA.tv on streaming video.

12. Social Networking on the Brain

Listen to a lively panel discussion on “Social Networking on the Brain”. The panelists include neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley, documentary filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, who made a new film called Connected: An Autobiography about Love, Death and Technology, and Josh McHugh, CEO of Attention Span Media. And the moderator is David Ewing Duncan, author of the book Experimental Man. They discuss Facebook, Twitter, Google, and the rest of new media, and how these technologies are affecting our brains and our way of life. Topics include managing the information glut, breaking the filter bubble, the limits of multitasking, and the importance of face-to-face social interaction. The panelists and audience might bring up more interesting questions than answers, but they will certainly get the wheels in your head turning when it comes to your interactions with the Internet, computers, smartphones, and social networks. This talk is available on streaming video through YouTube.

13. A Few Things Learned from Craigslist

Craiglist founder Craig Newmark provides a history of his groundbreaking website in this streaming video presented by MIT World. Staying humble despite his immense success (he’s still on call for personal customer service when needed!), Newmark details how an experiment in bringing together local markets in the San Francisco Bay Area via the internet blossomed into a worldwide phenomenon that has helped urban dwellers trade all kinds of different commodities and services. At present, he describes himself as a large-scale community organizer, and Newmark’s efforts outside of the company reflect an abiding interest in social advocacy. As a result, he feels Craiglist can serve as a model for how ordinary citizens can work together to bring about cooperative change that goes beyond the scope of commerce and into the wider realms of political and social reform.