Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert - "McLuhan prefigured the Internet era in a number of surprising ways. As he said in
a March 1969 Playboy interview: 'The computer thus holds out the promise of a technologically engendered state of universal understanding and unity, a state of absorption in the Logos that could knit mankind into one family and create a perpetuity of harmony and peace' ... Wikipedia, along with other crowd-sourced resources, is wreaking a certain amount of McLuhanesque havoc on conventional notions of 'authority', 'authorship', and even 'knowledge' ... Knowledge is growing more broadly and immediately participatory and collaborative by the moment."
posted by kliuless
on May 29, 2011 -
90 comments
Knowledge Score is a general knowledge quiz game. Categories include Art, Astronomy, Food and Drink, Geography, History, Literature, Movies, Politics, Music, Economics, Languages, Sports, Math and more. If you want to try out Knowledge Score without registering, use the "Play as guest" feature.
posted by netbros
on Oct 24, 2009 -
25 comments
Two articles from The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine about changes in knowledge production and acquisition,
The Last Days of the Polymath by Edward Carr and
Is Google Killing General Knowledge? by Brian Cathcart. The first deals with the implications of increasing specialization in all field of human activity and the second with whether people are not committing facts to memory because they are so easy to look up on the internet.
posted by Kattullus
on Sep 28, 2009 -
62 comments
The Case for Working With Your Hands.
In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot
on May 22, 2009 -
88 comments
For most of us, science arrives in our lives packaged neatly as fact. But how did it get that way? Science is an active process of observation and investigation.
Evidence: How Do We Know What We Know? [HTML version, Flash version also available] examines that process, revealing the ways in which ideas and information become knowledge and understanding. In this case study in human origins, the folks from the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology explore how scientific evidence is being used to shape our current understanding of ourselves: What makes us human—and how did we get this way?
posted by netbros
on Mar 25, 2009 -
15 comments
HistoryWorld is a general-knowledge website, designed for anyone above the age of about twelve with an interest in history. I found the site searching for
dance history, but it includes 400 broad topics with more added all the time. It approaches history as a narrative, making full use of
chronology. This is for the student as well as the researcher.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on May 23, 2008 -
15 comments
So, you're planning to take a trip around the world, are you? Well, in that case--you'll need to know a couple of things before you leave (in order not to offend the sensibilities of the local population). Let's see--suppose you're making your way through
Azerbaijan for example, and your host happens to be a businessman who is about to embark on a journey to the city: what would you do to give him the appropriate send off? Would you:
- a) Bid him farewell and shake his hand.
- b) Dance in front of him and do a traditional jig that everyone else is doing in order to ward off evil spirits.
- c) Throw a bowl of water in his wake.
Don't know, well, that's okay.
[more inside]
posted by hadjiboy
on Apr 9, 2008 -
25 comments
Sushi Science and Hamburger Science: I had always regarded science as universal and believed there are no differences in science at all between countries. But I was wrong. People with different cultures think in different ways, and therefore their science also may well be different. In this essay, I will describe differences I have observed between Western science and Eastern science. Let me start with a parable......
posted by Rumple
on Feb 24, 2008 -
46 comments
The new age of ignorance. A panel of well known (UK) scientists and artists are
asked some basic questions about science.
Except the questions weren't that basic (since when is the
Second Law of Thermodynamics considered basic knowledge?) so the results weren't surprising... although some of the answers were amusing ("The sky is blue because the sea reflects on it.").
The worrying thing is that the questions could have been much simpler ("How many planets are there in the Solar System?") and I suspect the results would have been much the same. Meanwhile,
ignorance marches on.
posted by bobbyelliott
on Jul 1, 2007 -
127 comments
On September 9th 2006, 112 of the world's writers, artists, activists, and social entrepeneurs (
nominees here) will gather for a
Table of Free Voices in Berlin, Germany, discussing questions about the important issues of today. Who provides those questions?
You.
posted by divabat
on Jul 24, 2006 -
6 comments
MIT World (not the same as
OpenCourseWare). And don't miss
LSE,
CMU, and
Connexions.
Still bored? Don't forget
ResearchChannel,
Vega, and
Wikiversity. Do you care for
psychology,
biology,
geology, or
math? Or maybe you prefer
journals,
papers,
textbooks, or
podcasts? Knowledge is
useful and
wonderful.
posted by foraneagle2
on Feb 23, 2006 -
27 comments
The Most Delicious Food That's Also Very Good For You - - in fact, to my mind, the
best food in
the world, including all the tastiest unhealthy ones, is
sashimi. And
sushi comes second. But sometimes it's late at night or too early in the morning; you're broke; the
restaurants are closed; you're nowhere near Tokyo's
Tsukiji Fish
Market and all your sushi
etiquette,
memories and
knowledge; your
favourite sushi websites; your well-thumbed
sushi books and your
fishy wishlists...are of no darn use to you.
Then you remember it's late or early enough to hit your local fish market... And it's
then that this ideologically incorrect and Hawaii-leaning, California-dreaming, somewhat Englishly-challenged set of video tutorials comes into its own! Truth be told, for the price of one fresh mackerel, one sardine, a slice of salmon... and sashimi is yours! [
But who am I kidding? It's just not the same. Oh well, Windows Media required for the vids.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Apr 19, 2003 -
28 comments
