Skillshare: Decentralized Education for All

A lot has been said about changing educational paradigms over the past year, but very little — if anything — has been done. According to our friends at Skillshare, whom you may recall as one of our favorite alternative education outposts for the lifelong learner and who just launched their online community, education isn’t something to pontificate about, write books on, or petition for; rather, it’s something to take into our own hands, a tool of decentralized empowerment rather than a hand-down at the mercy of centralized institutions. That’s precisely the sentiment captured in this beautifully animated video, which Skillshare microfunded on Kickstarter to mark the debut of the site:

Learning is not a product of schooling but the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” ~ Albert Einstein

The new Skillshare site is a portal for practical knowledge-sharing that offers a “marketplace to learn anything from anyone,” using the power of communities and networks to redefine our conception of education.

We believe that people care more about real-world skills than antiquated accreditation systems. Our communities are filled with these people who are great at what they do, whether it’s delivering a fantastic speech at a conference or baking a triple layer chocolate cake. Our vision is to unlock this knowledge and allow people to share their skills with those who want to learn them.”

We’re in. Are you?

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Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything

Out-geniusing Einstein, or what the Pope and quantum mechanics have in common.

In 1988, iconic theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking — the living paradox of a superhuman brain trapped in a body that doesn’t work, held in the merciless grip of Lou Gehrig’s disease — published the landmark A Brief History of Time as he set out to “know the mind of God” by developing a simple, elegant set of laws that would explain how our universe works and where it came from. And unlike other grand existential questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, whether God exists and what time is, his was the grandest quest of all: To build a complete theory everything. To do that, he had to do the seemingly impossible: Unify the two great theories of physics — the theory of the very big, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and the theory of the very small, quantum mechanics.

Twenty years later, Discovery captured Hawking’s grand quest to find the fundamental reasons for our existence and his life’s work in Stephen Hawking and the Theory of Everything. The ambitious documentary follows Hawking who, at the age of 66, still puts in a tireless full week’s worth of teaching and research, and contextualizes his landmark work over the past two decades through rare and revealing interviews with renowned scientists who collaborated with Hawking, as well as with Hawking himself.

At a conference on cosmology in The Vatican, the pope told the delegates that it was OK to study the universe after it began, but they should not inquire into the beginning itself because that was the moment of creation and the work of God. I was glad he didn’t realize I had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began — I didn’t fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo.” ~ Stephen Hawking

Though the DVD is most excellent, the film is also available on YouTube in 10 parts, gathered for your cognitive pleasure in this playlist:

My life’s work has been to unify the theories of the very large and the very small. Only then can we answer the more challenging questions: Why are we here? Where did we come from?” ~ Stephen Hawking

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What Is Time? Michio Kaku’s BBC Documentary

What string theory has to do with fish mating and your sleep-wake cycle.

We have a soft spot for BBC documentaries that attempt to answer some of life’s biggest questions. Previously, we’ve explored the nature of reality, how music works, is there God, the politics of fear and where innovation comes from. Last week, we saw this beautifully filmed teaser for an NPR story on why time seems to fly by as you get older:

So it made us wonder about the nature of time: What is it, how do we experience it, why does it play the tricks it does on us? Luckily, there’s a BBC documentary that explores precisely that: Time is a fascinating four-part series by string theory pioneer and prolific author Michio Kaku exploring our sense of time passing, the biological clocks governing our bodies, the geological clues to the depth of time on a planetary level, and the cosmic origin of time itself.

As a physicist, I’ve spent most of my life studying time and I know it’s one of the greatest mysteries in all of nature. We all know that time is out there, but we can’t see it, feel it, taste it, touch it, or smell it. So how does it exert such power over our lives? In this program, I’m going to find out.” ~ Michio Kaku

The series is now available online in its entirely, compiled in this playlist for your illuminating pleasure:

Time drives every second of our lives in ways we can scarecely imagine. But what is time? This is the quest to understand time and our place within it. It’s a journey that starts with cutting-edge discoveries into what makes us tick and ends with the mind-boggling implications of cosmological time. It’s a journey that reveals something extraordinary: The more we understand time, the more we find that it is time that makes us uniquely human.”

For an even more mind-bending look at the trickeries of time, we highly recommend Kaku’s classic Einstein’s Cosmos: How Albert Einstein’s Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time — not only a deeply fascinating yet digestible distillation of the iconic physicist’s work, but also a fine companion read to the 7 newly digitized Einstein gems we featured earlier this month.

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The Word Project: Obscure Words in Bricolage

What avian resemblance has to do with the study of soil and the irresistible urge to dance.

We love words and language, especially artful intersections of lingolove and design. Earlier this week, we spotlighted illustrator Veronika Heckova’s lovely Words Without Words project and, thanks to reader Cassandra Marketos, we discovered the utterly wonderful work of artist Polly M. Law. The Word Project is a compendium of 100 odd and obscure words, illustrated in Law’s signature bricolage paper-dolls style.

Strigiform: (adj) resembling an owl; Struthiform (adj) resembling an ostrich

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

Dinomania: (n) irresistible urge to dance

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

Godwottery: (n) an overly ornate garden

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

Pedology: (n) the study of soils

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

Lucubrate: (v) to work by artificial light

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

Bibliotaph: (n) a person who hides books

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

Empyreal: (adj) celestial, elevated

Image courtesy of Polly M. Law

At once whimsical and illuminating, The Word Project is a playful and inspired gateway into grown-up vocabulary, approaching the intellectual with the kind of childlike curiosity we so encourage.

Thanks, Cass

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