Videos to watch
I spent today catching up on videos I’ve been meaning to watch:
Wired/New York Public Library debate: The Battle Over Books, from 2005
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Larry Lessig and representatives from Google, a publisher’s association, and an authors’ guild all debate the legality and necessity of Google Book Search. It’s worthwhile, if only because both sides get their ideas across pretty well. Lessig is very convincing, as usual.
A Discussion with danah boyd, from 2006
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Danah was in the news yesterday for her piece on social class divisions between MySpace and Facebook. This video covers some similar ground: It’s a rambling talk/discussion about how people interact socially online, focusing mostly on MySpace and Friendster. She’s a good speaker.
Richard Feynman: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, from 1981
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Everything from discussing what’s wrong with the way maths is taught, to getting toungue-tied trying to explain hadrons and quarks off-the-cuff without using any big words. The most interesting part, to me, is his extremely frank discussion of how he felt about his part in developing the first nuclear weapons.