Visualizing Enlightenment-Era Social Networks

Why Mark Zuckerberg has nothing on Voltaire.

Social networking isn’t really a modern phenomenon. Long before there was Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, there was the Republic of Letters — a vast and intricate network of intellectuals, linking the finest “philosophes” of the Enlightenment across national borders and language barriers. This self-defined community of writers, scholars, philosophers and other thinkers included greats like Voltaire, Leibniz, Rousseau, Linnaeus, Franklin, Newton, Diderot and many others we’ve come to see as linchpins of cultural history.

Mapping the Republic of Letters is a fascinating project by a team of students and professors at Stanford, visualizing the famous intellectual correspondence of the Enlightenment, how they traveled, and how the network evolved over time — an inspired cross-pollination of humanitarian scholarship and computer science. (An important larger trend thoughtfully examined in this New York Times article.)

The project pulls data from the Electronic Enlightenment database, an archive of more than 55,000 letters and documents exchanged between 6,400 correspondents, and maps the geographic origin and destination of the correspondence — something we’ve come to take for granted in the age of real-time GPS tracking, but an incredibly ambitious task for 300-year-old letters.

They were able to create and to foster public opinion, critical thinking, something that was going on in one city or country would soon be known and discussed elsewhere. So there was a sort of freedom of information that was created thanks to these networks.” ~ Dan Edelstein

For more on the Republic of Letters, its cultural legacy and the networking model it provided, we highly recommend Dena Goodman’s The Republic of Letters : A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment — a book controversial for its feminist undertones but nonetheless fascinating in its bold reframing of the Enlightenment not as a set of ideas that gave rise to “masculine self-governance” but as a rhetoric that borrowed heavily from female thought.

via MetaFilter

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BBC’s Sherlock: Modernization Done Right

If Guy Ritchie’s rendition of Sherlock Holmes let you down — let’s face it, juicy as Robert Downey Jr. may be, the effects-driven blockbusternes of it all robbed the Arthur Conan Doyle classic of some of its original edge — the BBC have your back. Sherlock is a fantastic three-part adaptation by directors Paul McGuigan and co-creator Steven Moffat of Doctor Who fame, recasting the classic detective series in modern-day London, where Sherlock roams as a brilliant yet socially abrasive “high-functioning sociopath” and sidekick Dr. Watson is an introspective injured Afghanistan war veteran. Through a mutual friend, the two become roommates — or, to use the proper Brit-speak, flatmates — at the iconic 221B Baker Street.

Modern Holmes trades in traditional Holmes’ famous deerstalker caps for a fine selection of borderline-hipster scarves and modern Watson tends labors over a blog rather than a journal, but the signature qualities of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic — quick wit, dynamic dialogue, fast-paced adventure — remain intact and come to life in ever more brilliant detail. From McGuigan’s superb visual storytelling to the captivating costumes and cinematography to the keen casting of Benedict Cumberbatch (Amazing Grace, Hawking) as Sherlock and Martin Freeman (Love Actually, The Office original) as Dr. Watson, the series is an absolutely treat.

I’m not a psychopath, Anderson, I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.” ~ Sherlock

Each of the three episodes — A Study In Pink, The Blind Banker and The Great Game — tackles a different mystery, revealing a new facet of Sherlock’s genius.

What makes the modernization all the greater a feat is the difficulty of believably translating the original concept into a contemporary setting, where forensic science and advances in technology necessitate even more superhuman a level of intelligence and logical deduction to make Sherlock the one-man detective show Arthur Conan Doyle designed him to be.

The series airs on PBS in the US and, for a limited time, you can watch it in its entirety online. The DVD, featuring the original pilot and a fascinating making-of featurette, is out this week and we highly recommend it.

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Interactive Quixote: A Vision for the Future of Dead Manuscripts

The digitization of text has been a topic of increasing cultural concern in recent year and may often feel like fighting windmills as some of humanity’s greatest literary artifacts crumble under the unforgiving effects of time, tucked away in the world’s disjointed libraries. Now, Biblioteca Nacional de España, The National Library of Spain, offers an ambitious vision for what the afterlife of dying books could hold. Quijote Interactivo is an impressive interactive digitization of the original edition of Miguel de Cervantes’ cult 1605-1615 novel, Don Quixote. Though the site is entirely in Spanish, the sleek interface, rich multimedia galleries and charmingly appropriate sound design make it a joy to explore whatever your linguistic heritage.

A social widget even makes each of the 668 pages from the book shareable via email or on Facebook, and a transcription overlay makes the original 17th-century manuscript legible in Times New Roman.

via Quipsologies

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Inside The Kelly Writers House Audio Archives

The muses of happiness and misery, or what closet hedonism has to do with the arts.

For the past fifteen years, Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, our alma mater, has been hosting over 150 public programs each semester — poetry readings, lectures, film screenings, seminars, workshops, radio broadcasts, salon-style gatherings and other multimedia happenings. One of KWH’s most invaluable assets is the Fellows Program, connecting young writers with seasoned and accomplished ones. Since 1999, KWH Fellows have included cultural luminaries like Gay Talese, Susan Sontag, David Sedaris, E. L. Doctorow and many more. Archival recordings of readings by and discussions with many of the fellows are available on the program website and, today, we’ve curated a few of our favorites.

Ian Frazier on imitation and writing (2:18)

Susan Sontag on the physical spaces of writing: her library and New York City (5:29)

I’m very drawn to the ways in which the arts transform us, or have the potentiality of transforming us and deepening us. You can say that lots of other experiences could do that too, but then what instrument of consciousness do we bring to that experience?” ~ Susan Sontag

David Sedaris on the importance of anger (6:35)

Art Spiegelman on disaster as a muse (05:29)

I don’t work when I’m feeling good. I know artists who do, they work out of exuberance, and I work more out of trying to retain enough equilibrium so I can say ‘good morning’ to people in an elevator and just function in a day.” ~ Art Spiegelman

The question always is there: What kind of a privilege is it just to be able to feel purely and simply happy? But we can, and in spite of so much knowledge.” ~ Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich on happiness as the opposite of guilt (5:19)

Susan Sontag on conversion that sticks: the need for narration & promoting the inner life (10:02)

I’m such an up-front, out-in-the-open moralist. I am a closet hedonist. I do respect the search for pleasure because I don’t believe it is to be taken for granted. And just the sheer pleasure that the arts give, the pleasure of color, for instance, and the education of the eye, actually to see, the education of the ear — those things, I don’t really know how to factor them in. But I think of the arts as being something that really keeps you alive, keeps you going, keeps you growing.” ~ Susan Sontag

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