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Then Internet Archive.html

Tom Wujec’s 10 minute demonstration of the astrolabe illustrates an important point. Know “something,” like what time it is, even if that something is hugely useful, isn’t itself, education. Putting other things together that help us arrive and understand the “something” we have come to know is where real education, and innovation, happen. Libraries try to store all these things and education tries to use them productively.

Collecting all the information in the world for everyone to access is a tall order. But the Internet Archive says it can be done. It’s not Google and it’s not the NSA and it’s not Facebook. What makes it unique is that it’s a non-profit that has as its mission, “universal access to all knowledge.” It argues that every culture has made an effort to record, in one form or another, its own cultural artifacts. Some cultures pass down stories from memory. Some collect artifacts in libraries. Some establish formal institutions like religions and schools. But everyone wants to know where they came from. Since more and more of our culture is express in digital form, then a new way of archiving it has to be established. There is a terrible irony in all this and we’ll talk about it in future modules. But it seems that the easier it is to collect and store our cultural archives, the less people seem to want to do it. People can easily access and read an enormous amount of material, much more than ever before. But people read less and less.

The internet archive is partly about making it possible to access all this. But it’s also about storing it. In addition to archiving books, videos and images, it took on the task of archiving the entire internet and making it available through the
Wayback Machine. Try it. Pick a website such as cnn.com. Enter it into the Wayback Machine. Pick a date like 2001 and a date like September 11. It will return the webpage as it looked on that day, archived forever, or so the Internet Archive hopes.

 This is a little like the re-discovery of the Library of Toledo only much, much, much bigger. Can you imagine the implications of, not just the collection of everything that’s been said, but the cataloging of it all in such a way that it’s easy to find, copy and use. Some of it is small potatoes. You can find my old resumes at daeuber.com. I can’t get rid of them and, if I had a more interesting past, I’d be worried. But the point is, nothing that’s said can ever be forgotten ever again. And that’s been the way we have always filtered our histories, sanitized our past and written our myths. What will the future look like if we can retrieve our past so easily?

Between the hamlets the Roman roads crumbled under the onslaught of

bracken and bush. With no movement from one place to another, there was

little point in maintaining them. The dwindling members of the population

subsisted on what they could grow in the forest clearings, or ‘assarts’, as they

were called, which poked like hesitant fingers into the shadows of the forest.

Only the well armed, or those protected by spiritual courage, ventured into the

woods.

Gradually, however, as the forest was pushed back, the small communities

grew, and by the eighth century some were loosely linked in the manorial

system. The manor was a totally autonomous entity, seldom covering more than

a few square miles, its illiterate serfs ruled by an equally illiterate lord, whose

duty it was to protect his manor in return for payment in kind. There was no

money. The manor had to be self-sufficient, as no help could be expected from

elsewhere. Life expectancy at the time was about forty years.

Several hundred such small manors might be held in sway by one overlord,

administering them as he saw fit. All transactions were conducted in terms of

land: ownership, tenure or rent. Each man paid his debts in acreage, produce or

service. Only the seasons changed. The routine of daily life was an unvaried

cycle of sleeping, eating, working and sleeping again. The mental horizons of

even the most inquisitive were limited by the forest wall. Customs, clothes,

dialect, food and laws, all were local. And there was no way of knowing if

things were any different elsewhere, for a small community might be fortunate

to see one visitor a year.

A pen drawing from

the margin of a

twelfth-century

psalter. Women are

shown shearing

sheep, spinning the

wool into thread, and

weaving it in

to

rough, broadweave

cloth on a medieval

vertical loom . The

threads are held in

position by a weight

at the bottom of the

frame.

In every monastery and cathedral in France Charlemagne established schools

whose task it was to teach the basics of literacy, for only in this way could he

ensure the continued existence

ofthe

knowledge ofthe past. To achieve his aim,

Charlemagne made use of Capella’s seven liberal arts, maintained over the

centuries in monastic libraries. From the middle of the eighth century onwards,

the liberal arts were taught all over Europe. The English scholar Alcuin was

brought over from York to head the Palace School at Aachen, Charlemagne’s

glittering capital. It was probably Alcuin who standardised writing through the

development of Carolingian minuscule, a tiny, clear script which was one day to

become the model for modern upper and lower case lettering..

The cathedral schools also taught psalms, the chant and how to compute the

seasons. After Alcuin’s death it was decreed that all parish priests should

provide this minimal education free. The main cathedral schools and centres of

intellectual activity were at Paris, Chartres, Laon and Reims, in northern

France. Later, on the Royal Portal of the cathedral at Chartres, sculptors would

place an allegory of the trivium and quadrivium, as the three-and four-subject

divisions of the curriculum became k;nown, to show to the illiterate wor

shippers the power and importance of the intellect in the service of God.

The Royal Portal of

Chartres Cathedral,

added to the building

by the Chancellor,

Thierry, one of a

group of new

thinkers who called

themselves ‘the

modern ones’. In

placing the figures of

the liberal arts so

close to the Virgin

and Child, Thierry

was proclaiming the

power of reason in

faith.

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Thus began the first cautious stirrings of commerce, as each hamlet with a The medieval

surplus went in search of buyers. Markets were set up in the lee of ruined economic recovery

Roman town walls, or at monastery gates. Merchants began to travel small was stimulated by

distances to barter goods. The discovery of silver at Rammelsberg, in Saxony, at
the horseshoe, an

the end of the tenth century put a tiny amount of coin into circulation. Small
import from the

towns, which we would now call villages, grew up around the market-places,
Middle East which

following the contours ofthe land. The houses were built in terraces for warmth
improved the

performance of the

and the streets were

curved to blunt the

effect of the wind.

animal over rough

But the philosophical

viewpoint at the time of

the resurgence

of the

cities in
ground and helped to

the tenth and eleventh

centuries left their

citizens ill-prepared for

the new
protect it from foot

problems now

demanding solution.

There was no concept of

progress. In the rot.

early Middle Ages men

were aware only ofthe

greatness that

had been

lost. ‘We

stand on the shoulders

of giants,’ theysaid. The

past held all that was

great and

glorious. It was the

source of all authority.

The purpose of any

intellectual

activity was not to

question this past world,

but to add respect for it.

The trivium provided skills only for administration. What little arithmetic

the quadrivium offered was clumsy. The use of roman numerals made

multiplication and division nearly impossible. In 1050 in Liege, people worked

out geometry problems by cutting pieces of parchment into triangles. On the

spot reckoning was done with what was called ‘finger maths’. For numbers

higher than 9000, said the Venerable Bede, echoing Capella, you needed the

skills of a dancer!

Word spread in Europe of the culture beyond the Pyrenees. The northern

part of Spain, round Barcelona and along the foothills of the northern

mountains, was Christian; it had never been fully settled by the invading

Arabs, who had arrived in Spain in 711, landing at Gibraltar. By 720 they had

taken Cordoba, Toledo, Medina, Zaragoza and all of southern Spain from the

Visigoths, barbarians-in-residence. The Arabs named their new territory Al

Andalus, the land of the Vandals, from which comes the modern name

Andalusia.

For two hundred years after the invasion Al-Andalus was a backwater of

Islam, far to the west of the centres of learning and commerce in Baghdad and

Damascus. Gradually, however, the land bloomed and became rich. By 932,

when the Umayyad Caliphate took power, with its capital in Cordoba, Spain

was the jewel in the crown of Islam.

Irrigation systems imported from Syria and Arabia turned the dry plains of

Andalusia into an agricultural cornucopia. Olives and wheat had always grown

there. The Arabs added pomegranates, oranges, lemons, aubergines, artichokes,

cumin, coriander, bananas, almonds, palms, henna, woad, madder, saffron,

sugar-cane, cotton, rice, figs, grapes, peaches, apricots, rice. The Muslim

peasants who worked the land were given shares in the property. The most

spectacular Arab innovations, however, were formal gardens like those of the

Generalife (from jannat-al-arif, the Inspector’s paradise) in the Alhambra,

Granada.

The astrolabe, with

which the Arabs

could tell the date

and hour from the

position of certain

stars. Movable

sights on the

instrument were

aligned with the star

and the relevant

numbers and signs

were read off from

windows (left) or at

the circumference

(right) .

Below: In a culture

which did not perm

it

realism in art,

Spanish Arab

patterned ceramic

work reached heights

of artistic expression

unequalled anywhere

in Europe.

Andalusia became rich and elegant. In the capital, Cordoba, where the

enlightened and intellectual Hakam, the second ruler of the new dynasty,

founded the great mosque, there were half a million inhabitants, living in

113,000 houses. There were 700 mosques and 300 public baths spread

throughout the city and its twenty-one suburbs. The streets were paved, and

lit. There were bookshops and more than seventy libraries. The boast of Arab

Spain was the great central library of Cordoba, built in the Alcazar, or Royal

Palace, around 970. The catalogue alone filled forty-four volumes, each fifty

pages long. There were over 400,000 titles in the library, more than in the whole

of France.

The Arabs used paper, a material still unknown in the West. Here, its

availability encouraged the development of a highly literate community with

regular postal services delivering correspondence as far away as India. They

also used paper money for their transactions. Most of the Caliphate revenue

came from export and import duties. By the ninth century the country was

producing wool and silk (in Almeria and Malaga), glass and brass (in Almeria),

pottery (in Paterna, near Valencia), gold and silver (in Jaen), iron and lead

(Cordoba), rubies. (Malaga) and swords (Toledo). There was a major tanning

industry in Cordoba, employing over 13,000 workers. Textiles were also

produced there, as were ceramics and crystal.

Without formal

marriage, the

passage of landed

property was

insecure. Here a

father transmits his

feudal rights through

his daughter to her

new husband, with

his wife’s approval.

From a manuscript

written at the order

of Alfonso II of

Aragon (1162-96).

Then, in 1140, the great Bolognese

jurist Gratian produced his

Decretum, a

lawyer’s textbook embodying all the

new techniques. The Decretum was

heavily influenced by Abelard’s Sic

et Non. It came in two parts. The

first gave

the main outlines of all law. The

second took hypothetical cases and

reconciled

the pros and cons using what is

essentiaily the modern technique of

cross

examination, incorporating

Aristotle’s rules of argument and

deduction. This

technique was particularly valuable

in dealing with conflicting

arguments

about the

law itself. In

such cases

Gratian

would also

apply the

rules

ofgrammar

to find the

true meaning

of the

terminology

being used.

By this time

law

had

become so

important

and so

attractive as

a career that

it

had been

split into

two types,

civil and

canon law.

John of

Salisbury

noted the

increasingly

common

problems

with which

the new,

codified law

dealt. In the

late 1150s a

major area

of difficulty

in canon law

was that

ofmarriage,

the key to

inheritance

and a

hazardous

venture, as

death by one

or other

party was

common. A

woman

might marry

several

times, each

time taking

with her a

complicated

dowry of

property that

had

originally

belonged to

one of her

husbands’

families.

The act of

marriage

itself was

extremely

informal.

More

often than

not it was

not even

conducted in

church.

What then

ofthe

legitimacy

of any heirs

born to the

union?

There is a

record of the

case of

Richard of

Anstey, who

went to his

Archbishop’s

court

eighteen

times and

twice more

to

the court of

the Pope

before his

affairs were

settled.

advance due to the Islamic vaulted arch and, later, the flying buttress, but it A detail from a

also gave people in the late Middle Ages the chance to express their new-found Chartres window

power. They did so by building giant cathedrals that thrust into the sky all over shows the work of two

Europe. of the guilds which

Between 1140 and 1220 they built cathedrals in Sens, Noyons, Senlis, Paris, contributed to the costs

Laon, Chartres, Reims, Amiens and Beauvais. The buildings were encyclopedias of the cathedral: top, a

in stone, ornamented with sculptures and windows that told stories from the cobbler; below, a

Bible. In both glass and stone a new naturalism in illustration appeared. While stonemason.

piece of parchment with a pinhole through it, Theodoric discovered what

caused the rainbow.

Shining sunlight through the pinhole on to the droplet of his container of

water and raising and lowering them, and measuring the effects he observed,

Theodoric saw that the colour of the rainbow spectrum depended on the angle

at which the light entered the droplet and on the position of the observer.

Calculating the rainbow mechanism thus, Theodoric was conducting the first

properly scientific experiment in Western European history and completing a

change in thinking that had begun with the fall of Toledo.

Where men had once said, ‘Credo ut intelligam’ (understanding can come only

through belief), they now said, ‘Intelligo ut credam’ (belief can come only

through understanding). In 1277, Roger Bacon was imprisoned for an indefinite

period for holding these opinions. Free and rational investigation of nature was

to come hard in the clash between reason and faith which would echo down to

our own time.

One of Theodoric of

Freiburg’ s sketches

showing how the

rainbow was formed,

which clearly

demonstrates his

understanding of

reflection and

refraction. The sun

shines, from the left,

on to the droplets,

and the eye perceives

the colours, in order,

at bottom centre.

chapter 2 of James Burke’s 
The Day the Universe Changed,  “In the Light of the Above”, 

You can download the chapter here.

Watch Tom Wujec’s 10 minute demonstration of the astrolabe. Here is a link 

This is the video introduces the idea of networks as a way of distributing information (about 55 minutes) : 

http://ctcproxy.mnpals.net/login?url=https://fod.infobase.com/PortalPlaylists.aspx?wID=105843&xtid=206193

What does it mean to learn something? And has it changed over time? Some people say that technology changes the way we learn. Is this true? Just as importantly, does it change what we learn and why we learn? Burke outlines historic changes in learning and how these impacted the world in very big ways. Are the changes we see today, if any, just as big? Pay special attention to Wujec’s comments on what context is required to tell the time with the astrolabe. What about networks as a way of teaching? We will see this issue of Context come up over and over again in the course when it comes to how we perceive information. 

All assignments are due at 11:59 in the morning.

Disruption – Video – Films On Demand (mnpals.net)

– here’s the 55mins video

Instructions on writing discussion post

How to write a good initial discussion post:

1. The purpose of writing a discussion post is to reflect on what you have learned from the assigned material. How does it support what you already thought? How does it challenge conventional wisdom? Where it conflicts with your understanding of the world, does it convince you? Where it agrees, what further understandings does it imply?

2. Your initial discussion post must include at least 300 words of your own material. Repeating the question, titles, quotations, paraphrases and other additions are not counted as your own material. Any discussion that does not meet the 300 word minimum will receive a grade of 0.

3. Refer to at least two of the assigned resources. You need to give some thought to what’s presented in the assigned material. For example, you might write: The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy explains Locke’s understanding of the relationship between simple and complex ideas this way: “Once the mind has a store of simple ideas, it can combine them into complex ideas of a variety of kinds” (

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/)

. Don’t make the class guess at the reference. We have to be able to find it. So it needs to be relevant and specific. People get busy and time is sometimes short, so it may be tempting at times to excerpt something from readings you haven’t considered carefully and stick it in your post to meet this requirement. Try not to do this. See point 5 on why. There is no need to use an MLA style citation to the end of a post. We need to read the quotation, and we need to know what in the material helped you arrive at the conclusions you arrived at and where we can find it. That means you need to include an author and a page number if it’s a printed resource, or a title reference for audio and video resources. Points will be deducted if the location of the reference isn’t obvious. To earn full points for your discussion, you need to refer to more than one of the assigned resources in the module if more are available. The resources work together.

4. Any discussion that includes sufficiently poor grammar or spelling to suggest that the posting was not proof-read and spell checked will receive a grade of 0.

5. The best way to meet the requirement to reference the readings is to quote them directly. But please do not quote lengthy sections of the readings. I am looking for your ideas concerning the readings and classes. See point 3. for a good example. Quotations are not considered part of the 300 word minimum.

6. Remember that you are reflecting on the material presented in the module and taking an informed position on the topic. It doesn’t help to simply repeat facts from the module. What do they mean? Use your existing opinion wisely. The distinction between research and opinion is an artificial distinction we don’t want to make in this class. Criticism is useful but only if it’s thoughtful and reasonable. If, at the end of every unit, you think exactly the same way you did when you started the unit, something has gone wrong.

8. You will need to post your own initial post before you can read the responses from others. It makes for a much more diverse conversation. After you have posted your initial post, I hope you will consider other ideas as well and comment on them. There is no grade-sensitive requirement to comment on other posts but, needless to say, your ideas on others’ thinking is the best way for all of us to learn. And feel free to respond to my comments on your post.