forat at Brave New Films

Is the Internet Good or Bad for Creative Professionals?

2008-10-22T15:30:13Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Internet cultural critic Andrew Keen debates Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales on whether the internet has increased employment for creative professionals.

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Web 2.0: Amateur Hour or Mass-ive Knowledge? A debate with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and author Andrew Keen.

In today's self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion can post a video on YouTube, change an entry on Wikipedia or publish reviews on Yelp, we increasingly turn to the collective intelligence of large numbers of people.

Should we rely on the "wisdom of the crowds," trusting that they are smarter than the expert few? Or is Web 2.0 weakening traditional media to the point where we only have opinion and chaos? - The Commonwealth Club of California

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born August 7, 1966 in Huntsville, Alabama) is the founder, board member and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit corporation that operates the Wikipedia project, and several other wiki projects, including Wiktionary and Wikinews. He is also the co-founder, along with Angela Beesley, of the for-profit company Wikia, Inc.

Andrew Keen is a Silicon Valley author, broadcaster and entrepreneur whose provocative book Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is killing our culture was recently acclaimed by The New York Times' Michiko Kakutani as "shrewdly argued" and written "with acuity and passion."

Chronicle, a commentator for NPR's Morning Edition and co-host of BioTech Nation on NPR. He has been a special correspondent and producer for ABC's Nightline and 20/20, and a producer for Discovery Television. He is a correspondent for NOVA's ScienceNow!. He is a regular contributor to National Geographic, Fortune and MIT Technology Review, and was a longtime correspondent for Life. He also writes for Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Outside, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Washington Post Book World, and The New York Times, among others. He contributes to the Dialogues column for Discover.

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb - What is a "Black Swan?"

2008-10-16T21:31:02Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses the central theme of his bestselling book, "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable."

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The Future Has Always Been Crazier Than We Thought with Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses his book, The Black Swan in relation to predicting the future, learning from the consequences of the unknown, and the power of randomness.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an essayist, belletrist, and researcher only interested in one single topic, chance (particularly extreme and rare events, the "Black Swans" i.e. outliers); but it falls at the intersection of philosophy/epistemology (skepticism; knowledge about the dynamics of history; inferential claims), philosophy/ethics (stoicism facing random events; theories of nonhedonic happiness), mathematical sciences (probability theory, statistical physics), social science/finance (opacity & incomplete information in economics), and cognitive science (the mental biases making us "fooled" by randomness). He mainly derives his intuitions from a 2-decade long and intense practice of derivatives trading ("nondull" activities with plenty of randomness).

Taleb is currently a researcher at London Business School. He the Dean’s Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Fellow in Mathematics in Finance, Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University (since 1999), and research fellow, Wharton School Financial Institutions Center, and Chairman, Empirica LLC.

Taleb held senior trading positions with trading houses in New York and London and operated as a floor trader before founding Empirica LLC. His degrees include an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. from the University of Paris. He is the author of Dynamic Hedging, Fooled by Randomness, and The Black Swan.

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Presidents at War

2008-10-25T03:30:02Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Historians David Kennedy and Joan Hoff discuss historical attitudes of U.S. Presidents during wartime.

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"Conversations on Presidential Leadership: The President at War" with Tom Brokaw, David M. Kennedy, and Joan Hoff.

The Aspen Institute and the Roosevelt House Institute for Public Policy at Hunter College are proud to present a new discussion series during the 2008 election season.

"Conversations on Presidential Leadership" will inject into the campaign season the Institute's brand of thoughtful, informed, nonpartisan dialogue among some of the nation's most respected historians and contemporary observers of the presidency. - Aspen Institute

David M. Kennedy, Ph. D. is the recipient of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in History for his book Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945, the latest addition to the award-winning Oxford History of the United States series. The Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University, he lectures on a wide variety of topics drawn from American history, about issues in higher education, and current events, both domestic and international, where he can bring some historical perspective to bear.

Joan Hoff is a Research Professor of History in the Department of History and Philosophy at Montana State University. She is a specialist in twentieth-century American foreign policy and politics and in the legal status of American women. She was executive secretary of the Organization of American Historians from 1981 to 1989. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, includig the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians' Article Prize and the Stuart L. Bernath Prize for the best book on American diplomacy. She is the author of several books including Law, Gender, and Injustice: A Legal History of U.S. Women and Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive. Her latest book is A Faustian Foreign Policy from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush: Dreams of Perfectability.

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Shelby Steele - "Racial Masking" in American Popular Culture

2008-11-17T23:40:22Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Shelby Steele explains "racial masking," a phenomenon he identifies as a common experience for minorities in American culture.

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A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win

Shelby Steele examines the challenges that Barack Obama must overcome in his bid to become President of the United States in A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win. Having to cater to both black voters and white voters in what binds Obama, and his dilemma is that he achieved visibility more as a racial icon than as an individual. In his analysis, Shelby Steele discusses his own mixed race background, and he empathizes with Obama's inner conflicts even as he critiques him. He also identifies the two 'masks' that blacks wear in order to seek success and power in the American mainstream: bargaining and challenging, and he argues that Obama is too constrained by divisive racial politics to find his own true political voice - and proposes a way for him to break those bonds and find his own voice.

Shelby Steele is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of The Content of Our Character and White Guilt, and a contributing editor at Harper's; his work has also appeared in numerous other magazines and newspapers - Cody's Books

Shelby Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. He was appointed a Hoover fellow in 1994.

Steele has written widely on race in American society and the consequences of contemporary social programs on race relations

In 2006, Steele received the Bradley Prize for his contributions to the study of race in America. In 2004, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. Steele is the author of White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era and most recently A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win.

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How Has Increased Life Expectancy Changed Aging?

2008-10-14T11:30:53Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Author Lilian Rubin discusses changes to our concept of aging brought about by increased life expectancy.

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Lillian Rubin discusses "60 On Up: The Truth About Aging In America."

Best-selling author, sociologist, and psychotherapist, Dr. Rubin takes a penetrating look at the profound changes - personal and societal - that come with the new longevity, for those living it now and the boomers behind them in her new book, "60 On Up." - Grace Cathedral

Lillian Rubin lives and works in San Francisco. She is an internationally known writer and lecturer, who has published twelve books over the last three decades. She is most recently the author of the book "60 On Up: The Truth About Aging In America."

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John Mearsheimer - Iraq, the Neocons and the Israel Lobby

2008-10-19T15:29:32Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Author and political scientist John J. Mearsheimer argues that neoconservative and pro-Israel lobby groups were both greatly influential to the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq.

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John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt discuss "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy."

What is at the heart of the special relationship between the United States and the state of Israel? Does Israel truly represent a strategic U.S. asset in the Middle East? Are the two nations really partners in the same "War on Terror", with the same threats up against them, and the same interests at stake?

Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt had become well-known authorities in our understanding of contemporary international relations theory, security, and policy long before their collaboration on The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Atlantic Monthly approached the pair in the fall of 2002 to research the depth of influence of the pro-Israel lobby on U.S. policy. By the time they returned with the results of their research, the magazine's editor had decided not to go ahead with the piece, and was not even interested in a revision. At the prompting of an American academic peer, they decided to submit the article to the London Review of Books where it was finally published in March of 2006.

Mearsheimer and Walt argue that if there ever truly were significant strategic (i.e. balance of power considerations during the Cold War) and/or moral (i.e. common Judeo-Christian and democratic values) grounds to justify the unique level of American support afforded the Jewish state, they have long been exhausted. Has this unwavering support made Israel a liability in U.S. foreign policy? And, does this special relationship threaten, rather than enhance, American security in the Middle East, in the world, and at home? - World Affairs Council of Oregon

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982.

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