augmenting intellect

A short clip in which Thomas Sowell argues that demand for intellectuals is manufactured by intellectuals, using global warming predictions as an example. It is an excerpt from a longer talk on his book Intellectuals and Society.

Part 3 of WIRED's Future Cities series on Shenzhen. It examines how attitudes toward patents and intellectual property differ from the West, and how shanzhai (copycat) manufacturing created an ecosystem of rapid iteration and distribution.

Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Conservancy speaks at the 2009 Law of the Commons Conference about free and open software as a model for a new intellectual commons. The talk covers the legal and social case for sharing knowledge.

A Talks at Google visit by Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the mouse. He presents his lifelong aim of augmenting collective human intelligence, followed by a Q&A.

A Computer History Museum interview in which John Markoff of the New York Times talks with Douglas Engelbart about his life and research. It covers the influences and struggles behind his work on the mouse, hypertext and collaborative computing, and his aim of helping humanity tackle complex problems.

A Soho Forum debate in which patent lawyer Stephan Kinsella argues for abolishing copyright and patents against law professor Richard Epstein. Both come from libertarian perspectives.

A short National Geographic piece showing a laser system that tracks and kills mosquitoes, filmed in slow motion, as part of anti-malaria efforts. It comes from Intellectual Ventures' 2010 work.

A 2012 lecture by Richard Stallman at Reykjavik University arguing that copyright, built for the printing press, fits poorly with computer networks. He criticizes draconian enforcement and corporate lobbying.

Karl Fogel's 2006 Google Tech Talk traces copyright from a 16th-century English censorship law to a distribution monopoly. It then surveys alternative economic bases for creation and distribution.

Nina Paley's TEDxMaastricht talk arguing against copyright and for copyleft and free culture. She argues that restricting ideas harms creativity and that culture belongs to everyone.

A 1952 filmed interview in which Romney Wheeler talks with philosopher Bertrand Russell at his home in Surrey. Russell discusses his outlook and reflects on how the world changed over the first half of the century.

A reading of David Foster Wallace's essay Consider the Lobster, about the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival and the ethics of boiling lobsters alive. The reading runs about 50 minutes.

The full unedited 2003 ZDF television interview with David Foster Wallace, running about an hour and a half. He talks about literature, boredom, silence, television and what stories do.

A 1983 BBC interview in which Richard Feynman is asked how magnets work and explains why 'why' questions are hard to answer in everyday terms. He reflects on what counts as an explanation and the limits of analogy.

Jonathan Haidt's Hayek Lecture at Duke argues American universities pursue two potentially incompatible sacred values, truth and social justice. He discusses campus conflict, honor, dignity and victimhood cultures, and viewpoint diversity.

Peter Robinson interviews Peter Thiel at the Hoover Institution about Thiel's essay The Straussian Moment. Thiel discusses how people trust the will more than the intellect and reason, and how the question of human nature has been abandoned.

An animated Sprouts video presenting Dietrich Bonhoeffer's argument that stupidity is more dangerous than evil, because reason cannot reach stupid people. It frames stupidity as a social and moral phenomenon.