Tag Archive for 'the web makes learning fun'

We’re All Monsters

jaell published on February 23, 2009 in zeitgeist. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Good evening SuperForesters.  It is nearing 10pm here in the Mini-Apple (Minneapolis) and I am sitting awake, perusing the internet and restlessly typing.  At these parts of my day, I tend to look up a reliable video that makes me giggle. 

It is of the Yip Yips… a television sensation that perhaps all of you do not remember.  As part of the most fantastic puppet show ever, Sesame Street, the Yip Yips came to planet Earth from outer space and, with only an encyclopedia of earthly knowledge in their tentacles, attempt to understand our world.  Adorable hilarity ensues as these gentle creatures interact with this strange environment:

What a wonderful way to show kids that peaceful understanding is the best way to learn and grow.  I didn’t realize when I was young just how much these puppets taught me about how I should relate to people and how to go about learning in the world.

Enjoy these clips, darlings.  My personal favorite monster, however, is Grover.  What an underdog!

Love Always,

jaell

2-D to 3-D

jackson published on March 20, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Good Morning All!

We were thinking yesterday about a very interesting development for humankind.
Namely, for the entirety of human history ideas have been communicated in 2-D.

With the exception of human to human teaching, (i.e. “Bend over like this, put this seed in the ground like so, cover and water, and now we’re farming…”) all knowledge, from the Lascaux cave paintings, to the Gutenberg Bible, to Junkyard Wars on our TV’s, ideas have all been as flat as pancakes.*


Flat.

Flat.

Flat.

Until now.

Now, with the advent of the computer, virtual reality, and the refinement of 3-D technology, ideas are beginning to be transmitted in their entirety, in real space, completely unflattened. Super-round, even.

It’s like the difference between looking at a picture of an origami crane and holding one in your hand, able to examine it from any angle, unfold it, play with it.

An enormous paradigm shift in human comprehension is upon us, and it will only get shiftier as more information is added to the web, and the technology for representing it in real space gets cheaper and more accessible.

Here’s the old way:

“Urrmmm, compressed animal skeletons on a flat chunk of rock.”

And, here’s the new way:

“Wheee! I’m flying through ideas!”

Now, that helmet is bulky and ridiculous. But that’s just Version 1.
Version 10 will be either a laser spraying images directly onto the surface of your eye, or a little wire in your brain. Either way, the idea is seamless and elegant transmission of intelligence from one human to the next.

The children being born now will have access to an mountain of information so high and wide, it makes us seems like 13th Century peasants.

Very exciting times.

We are at the very beginning.

Love to all,

Team SF

*(With the exception of sculpture, but sculptures are singular things, unsuited for mass distribution,1 so sculpture don’t really count.)

(chalkboard image via aspirecommunity.co.uk)
(VR helmet image via techliberation.com)

  1. there’s only one Venus De Milo, [↩]