"Eventually you could have local campuses becoming places where MITx students seek tutoring, network, & socialize—reclaiming some of the college experience they’d otherwise have lost.

Phil thought this sounded like college as a giant coffee shop. I agree. Every education would be ad hoc. It would be student-directed toward the job market she’s aiming for.

This trend toward…coffeeshopification…is changing more than just colleges:

Book Stores Will Shrink to Coffee Shops…

The Coffee Shop Will Displace Most Retail Shops…

Offices Become Coffee Shops…Again…

What Doesn’t Become a Coffee Shop?…

…houses of worship…

What will remain other than coffee shops? Upscale retail will remain…[for] experience…Restaurants remain. Grocery stores remain.

Brick and mortar retail stores will be converted to public spaces. Multi-use space will be in increasing demand as connectivity tools allow easy coordination of impromptu events…"

"Noam Chomsky discusses the purpose of education, impact of technology, whether education should be perceived as a cost or an investment and the value of standardised assessment."

"This started one of the most ambitious projects in art: Teaching us all how to see things with our own eyes<br />
<br />
Visipix.com publishes here the complete 15 volumes in facsimile quality. This is a world premiere in the internet<br />
<br />
The success of western culture is based on the 'Enlightenment': Think with your own brain, find your religion in your own heart. I go that far: I prefer to be wrong with my own brain - and do my darndest to learn, especially learn from others - than to blindly depend on somebody else's belief. We learn this from Socrates, Luther, Lessing, Kant, Popper and others.<br />
 <br />
What the western culture achieved verbally, Hokusai does visually. Artistic genius and wise teachings are well balanced. Nothing could be more difficult."

"The very word 'Revolution' conjures up peasants storming the palace gates, Kings fleeing for their lives, a corrupt system of government crumbling, and a new form of fair order taking its place. What kind of revolution was this, then? It was one that greatly changed the "natural order" of Europe. The French Revolution was not just a revolt against the regime of the Bourbon Kings; it embodied an entire new way of viewing the world and human society. Although the Revolution failed to live up to its own rallying cry, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", it spread these ideals far and wide. It has partially made our world what it is today.

To begin your exploration of the French Revolution, click below. We recommend you start at 'The Enlightenment.'"

"The most vital element for the future of our cities is that the bicycle is an instrument of experiential understanding.<br />
<br />
On a bicycle, citizens experience their city with deep intimacy, often for the first time. For a regular motorist to take that two or three mile trip by bicycle instead is to decimate an enormous wall between them and their communities.<br />
In a car, the world is reduced to mere equation; “What is the fastest route from A to B?” one will ask as they start their engine. This invariably leads to a cascade of freeway concrete flying by at incomprehensible speeds. Their environment, the neighborhoods that compose their communities, the beauty of architecture, the immense societal problems in distressed areas, the faces of neighbors… all of this becomes a conceptually abstract blur from the driver’s seat…"

"Over past few decades, we have tended to define human capital in the narrow way, emphasizing I.Q., degrees, professional skills…all important, obviously, but this research illuminates a range of deeper talents, which span reason & emotion & make a hash of both categories:<br />
Attunement: the ability to enter other minds & learn what they have to offer.<br />
Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind & correct for biases & shortcomings.<br />
Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world & derive a gist from complex situations.<br />
Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you & thrive in groups.<br />
Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money & success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away & we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others."

"People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web."

"Where Good Ideas Come From…pairs insight of Everything Bad Is Good for You & dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map & The Invention of Air to address an urgent & universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides complete, exciting, & encouraging story of how we generate ideas that push our careers, lives, society, & culture forward.<br />
<br />
Beginning w/ Darwin's first encounter w/ teeming ecosystem of coral reef & drawing connections to intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities & to instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, & inspiring…identifies 7 key principles to genesis of such ideas, & traces them across time & disciplines."

"What We Do

"...Cynicism is enlightened false consciousness. It is that modernized, unhappy consciousness, on which enlightenment has labored both successfully and in vain. It has learned its lessons in enlightenment, but it has not, and probably was not able to, put them into practice. Well-off and miserable at the same time, this consciousness no longer feels affected by any critique of ideology; its falseness is already reflexively buffered." via: http://varnelis.net/notices/infrastructural_city_in_dwell

"not so much that Americans oscillate btwn periods of anti & pro-intellectualism, but tend to harbor simultaneously an "ingrained distrust of eggheads" & "a genuine yearning for enlightenment & culture."...Rather than telling ourselves a back&forth tale of virtue vs vigilantism, academics concerned with the life of the mind generally & the academic humanities in particular, might be better served by looking inward & asking what we can do to earn public trust...Among the purposes of liberal education is the inculcation of self-questioning & self-doubt, qualities that many academics have lately — & rightly — found lacking in our political & managerial elite. But can we honestly say that we have held ourselves to the same standard?...balance btwn curatorial & critical has always been essential if humanistic education is to have power & meaning for young. Yet in recent decades the academic humanities have been overwhelmingly ironic and iconoclastic & thereby failed to sustain the balance"

"The term now refers mainly to the free transfer of thought and technical expertise, usually carried out without the establishment of designated facilities or institutional authority, spread by a loosely connected system of word-of-mouth referral or localized bulletin-board system, and supported through barter (i.e. trade of knowledge or services) or apprenticeship."