Science!
nacaroni
Fumio Miyashita of the Far East Family Band on the Boffomundo Show, 1979
‘We Like Lists Because We Don’t Want to Die’ - Umberto Eco interview with SPIEGEL
SPIEGEL: But you also said that lists can establish order. So, do both order and anarchy apply? That would make the Internet, and the lists that the search engine Google creates, prefect for you.
Eco: Yes, in the case of Google, both things do converge. Google makes a list, but the minute I look at my Google-generated list, it has already changed. These lists can be dangerous — not for old people like me, who have acquired their knowledge in another way, but for young people, for whom Google is a tragedy. Schools ought to teach the high art of how to be discriminating.
SPIEGEL: Are you saying that teachers should instruct students on the difference between good and bad? If so, how should they do that?
Eco: Education should return to the way it was in the workshops of the Renaissance. There, the masters may not necessarily have been able to explain to their students why a painting was good in theoretical terms, but they did so in more practical ways. Look, this is what your finger can look like, and this is what it has to look like. Look, this is a good mixing of colors. The same approach should be used in school when dealing with the Internet. The teacher should say: “Choose any old subject, whether it be German history or the life of ants. Search 25 different Web pages and, by comparing them, try to figure out which one has good information.” If 10 pages describe the same thing, it can be a sign that the information printed there is correct. But it can also be a sign that some sites merely copied the others’ mistakes.
Eco: …Culture isn’t knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes….
If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you’re an idiot….
“ Today the annual income from New York Public Library endowments falls several million dollars short of keeping the reference collections at their present level of quality even without service to the public. At one time the Library’s doors were open to the public thirteen hours a day, on 365 days of the year; then the working man, the untrained, unmatriculated scholar could use freely and anonymously, at no cost to himself, the riches of the reference collections. A year ago, however, the Library’s financial crisis forced early closing of the reference division at 6 PM, and complete closing on weekends and holidays. Certain reference divisions (performing arts, science and technology) narrowly missed being closed entirely to the public this year.
A letter in The New York Review of Books from 1972 from notable authors:
Hannah Arendt, Ann Birstein, William F. Buckley, Dr. Eric T. Carlson, Malcolm Cowley, Phyllis Dain, Ralph Ellison, James Thomas Flexner, Betty Friedan, Eugene Genovese, Arnold Gingrich, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Irving Howe, Robert Hutchinson, Alfred Kazin, Robert Kotlowitz, Irving Kristol, Martin Mayer, Ellen Moers, Ernest Nagel, Carl Resek, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Harold C. Schonberg, Theodore Solotaroff, Lionell Trilling
Crisis in the NY Public Library - The New York Review of Books
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