TED just posted a fascinating clip from 2002 where Mae Jemison talks about the relationship between the arts and sciences. As someone who is at heart an artist, but who chose to study science in university, I’ve always been painfully aware of the communication barriers between the two worlds. To the artist, science is often too cold and calculating to be any fun. To the scientist, art can be subjective to the point of being irrelevant. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance made a case for seeing art and science as complimentary ways of approaching life over thirty years ago, but I think Jemison states their relationship even more eloquently in this video, saying: “Science provides an understanding of a universal experience and art provides a universal understanding of a personal experience.” Now the only problem is convincing universities and high schools to teach this way…
Around 12 AM last night, Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing got pointed to a major fuck up and wrote about it. That fuck up was owned by none other than Warner Music Group, and since there are about a bazillion blogs on the Internet, Warner would normally have had nothing to worry about. Except that probably everyone who has written a blog post knows of Cory Doctorow. He’s like that kid in the back of the class that never stopped pestering the teacher with questions. You didn’t like him growing up, but then maybe you got to that age where you started doubting your own infallible wisdom just a bit, and you realized how easy it is to compromise between your ideals and “the way it is”. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that turning pissing contests with authority into a business model at the peak of an age where the Corporation has almost complete dominion over us is a pretty decent achievement. It was sort of like watching David and Goliath and knowing how the story ends while you’re watching it unfold. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was hardly mentioned by the mainstream media outlets, but everyone who really matters in terms of the future of the music industry already knows. (more…)
