TED | 书呆子教你如何在线学习

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书呆子教你如何在线学习

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John Green

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社会技能学习 TED 演讲

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我们有些人在教室里学得最好，有些人……嗯,我们不喜欢。但我们仍然热爱学习——我们只需要找到适合自己的方式。在这个迷人的个人谈话中，作者约翰·格林分享了他在网上视频中发现的学习社区。

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00:13

这是一张纽约州的地图，由通用制图公司在1937年绘制。这张地图在地图发烧友中非常有名，因为在卡兹奇山山脚下，有一个叫罗斯克的小镇，还是放在大屏幕上看得比较清楚。这是罗斯克，它的北边是纽约州的罗克兰县，再往北是纽约州的另一个小镇叫阿格罗。

00:36

纽约州的阿格罗，在地图发烧友中非常有名，因为它并不存在。它也被称为“版权陷阱”。因为纽约州的形状，不同制图人绘制的纽约州地图，看上去都很像——所以制图人经常会在自己的地图里加上几个不存在的地方，为的是保护自己的版权。因为如果这些假的地名出现在你的地图上，我就能确信你盗了我的版。阿格罗实际上是这幅地图的两名绘制者名字首字母相拼得来的，欧内斯特·阿尔帕斯和奥托·G·林德伯格，他们在1937年发布了这版地图。几十年后，兰德·麦克纳利出版了一份地图，他的地图上也有纽约州阿格罗这个地方，而且位置都一样，在两条并不存在的道路的交汇处。可以想象，通用制图（知道这个消息后）有多欢乐。他们立刻打电话给兰德·麦克纳利，说，“抓到你啦！纽约州阿格罗是我们编出来的。这地方纯属虚构，并不存在。我们要告得你倾家荡产！”但兰德·麦克纳利说，“不，不，不，阿格罗是存在的。”因为人们不断地前往那两条道路的交汇处。

01:52

希望在那个并不存在的地方，找到一个叫阿格罗的地方——结果真有人建了一个地方叫“纽约州阿格罗”。

02:01

那儿有一个加油站，一个百货商店，山顶还有两座房子。

02:07

这对小说家而言具有非常重要的象征意义，因为我们都愿意相信我们写下的东西能够改变我们生活的这个世界，所以我将我的第三本小说命名为《纸镇》。

02:21

但其实让我更感兴趣的并不是这件事是如何发生的，而是这种现象本身。大家很容易会想到，世界地图是由世界的形状决定的，对吗？也就是说世界是什么样，我们的地图就是什么样。但我发现更有意思的是，我们制作地图的方式反过来也会改变世界的样子。因为我们（印象中）的世界将会是另一个样子，如果（地图的）下方是北。我们（印象中）的世界将会是另一个样子，如果我们不把阿拉斯加和俄罗斯放在一起，隔海相望。我们（印象中）的世界将会是另一个样子，如果我们按照欧洲的真实比例来制作地图的话。我们（制作）的世界地图改变了世界。而我们选择的（人生）道路——就好比我们私人的地图制作公司，绘制了我们人生的地图，它反过来会影响我们的人生。

03:16

我相信我们为自己绘制的地图，能改变我们的人生。我说的并不是类似神秘的“奥普拉天使网络”计划，或者“人定胜天”之类的心灵鸡汤。但我确信一点，尽管地图不能预测你的人生将走向何处，但它至少能显示出一些可能性。因为你不太可能去一个你个人地图上都没有的地方。

03:41

我小时候是一个非常糟糕的学生。我的平均绩点一直只有2分出头。而我认为原因在于，当时我觉得学校教育就像挡在我面前的一个个障碍物，我需要一个接一个地跨越它们才能成年。而我真是不愿意去跨越这些障碍，因为在我看来教育常常是武断的，所以我经常放弃，然后就会有各种人出来威胁我，他们对我甩狠话，“你的成绩会一直记在你的档案里，”或者是“你永远找不到一份好工作。”我压根就不想找一份好工作好吗！我在十一、二岁的时候就明白，那些有好工作的人起得比鸟还早。

04:22

而他们每天早上做的第一件事就是把一根布条紧紧缠在自己脖子上。简直就是给自己套绞索，然后他们出发去上班，鬼知道那工作是什么。这不是幸福生活该有的样子。这些人——在我这个痴迷符号的、十二岁小孩的想象中——这些每天早上做的第一件事就是给自己套上绞索的人，他们怎么可能开心呢。我怎么会愿意跨过重重障碍，最后落得跟他们一样的下场呢？这下场太悲哀了！

04:57

后来，在我十年级的时候，我转学了，我转到了一家名叫“印第安泉”的小型寄宿学校，位于阿拉巴马州伯明翰市郊区。一夜之间我就成了个好学的人。之所以有这种变化，是因为我加入了一个学习社团。我周围的人全都信奉理智主义，喜欢与人交流，他们觉得我那种自以为很酷的逃避学习的行为既不聪明，也很无聊，仅仅只是一种在面对复杂而又无法逃避的问题时所采取的简单而不成熟的应对方式。于是我也开始学习，因为学习这事儿变酷了。我明白了无限集合也有大小之分，我明白了什么是抑扬格五音步诗，还有它为什么听起来那么悦耳。我明白了南北战争实际上是民族冲突，我还学了点物理，明白了相关不蕴含因果，所有这些知识，让我的生活日渐丰富多彩。而这些知识中的大部分跟我的工作没有任何关系，其实我想说的并不是我自己，而是如何绘制地图。

06:02

地图是怎么绘制出来的呢？大体上，你航行到某一块陆地上，想着“我要把这块陆地画下来，”然后你就会想，“也许还有其他陆地可以画。”我的学习就是从那时才真正开始的。我的确遇到了没有放弃我的老师，能遇到他们是我的幸运，因为我常常会让老师们觉得在我身上浪费时间很不值。然而我高中时期学习的大部分过程，并没有发生在课堂上，而是在放学后。举个例子，我能背诵“冬日午后的阳光，以特定角度穿堂——那沉重的压迫啊，似教堂圣歌在胸膛——”并不是因为我在高中课堂上背熟了埃米莉·迪更生的诗，而是因为我高中班上有个女孩，名叫阿曼达，我很喜欢她，而她喜欢埃米莉·迪更生的诗。而我知道什么是“机会成本”，是因为有一天我躺在沙发上玩“超级玛丽赛车”，我的朋友艾米特走进来说，“你在这玩‘超级玛丽赛车’多久了？”我说，“记不得了，也许，6个小时？”他说，“你知道吗，你要是在Baskin-Robbins冰激凌店打工6小时的话，你已经挣了30美元了，也就是说，你花了30美元来玩‘超级玛丽赛车’。”而我说，“很便宜啊。”

07:20

但（通过这件事）我学会了什么是“机会成本”。

07:25

就这样，我人生的地图慢慢完整起来。版图不断扩大，地方也不断增多。可能性越来越多，我的未来选择也越来越多。当然这不是正规的，有条理的学习过程，我对此毫不避讳。这个过程断断续续，有时还前后矛盾，很多事情我也没彻底弄明白。比如说，我可能知道康托尔的理论，无限集合也有大小之分，但支持这个理论的微积分我就完全不懂。我也许明白“机会成本”这个概念，但是我不懂收益递减法则。但将学习想象成绘制地图，而不是想象成一系列障碍，需要你一个个去跨越，好处就在于，你能看见一点点海岸线，这让你想更进一步，发现更多的东西。所以我现在至少了解了微积分中最最基础的知识。

08:11

因此我在高中加入了一个学习社团，然后在大学加入了另一个，工作后又加入另一个，当时我刚刚开始在一家名为《书单》的杂志社工作，职务是助理，身边是一群热爱读书的朋友。之后我写了一本书。就像所有作家梦想的一样，我迅速辞职了。

08:30

这是我自高中以来，第一次脱离了学习社团，这很痛苦。我很不爽。在这两年期间，我读了很多书。有关于斯大林的，关于乌兹别克斯坦人民是怎么被视为穆斯林的，甚至还有关于怎么制造原子弹的，但我的感觉并不好，像是给自己制造了障碍，然后还要自己跨过去，我完全感受不到身处学习社团里时的那种兴奋，当时的我们就像一群地图发烧友，聚集在地图制作公司，试图更好地理解和描绘我们所处的世界。

09:06

然后，在2006年，我遇见了这个家伙。他叫泽·弗兰克。其实我们没有真正见面，只是在网上。当时他在做一个名叫“泽·弗兰克秀”的节目，我发现了这个节目，从此我便回归了学习社团。下面是泽·弗兰克在介绍拉斯维加斯：

09:27

（视频）泽·弗兰克：拉斯维加斯建于一片广阔炎热的沙漠中心。这里的一切几乎都是从别处运来的——像这些岩石，树木，瀑布。这些鱼出现在这儿，就像猪会飞一样奇怪。这一切与周围酷热的沙漠形成了鲜明的对比，这里的人也一样。世界各地的景观在这里重建，失去了历史的沉淀，人们对它们的感受变得单一。有时景观还会被改进——比如斯芬克斯（狮身人面像）竟然隆鼻了。这里应有尽有，你不会感觉失落。这里的纽约在你我眼里都是一样的。一切都脱离了原有的环境，意味着这里的环境可以包容一切：自助停车，活动中心，鲨鱼礁。拉斯维加斯的建造，也许是世界上最伟大的成就之一，因为无人属于这里，而人人都属于这里。今早我四处闲逛的时候，我注意到大多数建筑物就像巨大的镜子一样将阳光反射到沙漠里。但它们又与镜子不同，因为镜子会反映出你和你周围的景象，而这些建筑反映的只是一片虚无。

10:21

约翰·格林（JG）：让我回想起那些旧时光，当时的在线视频居然还能看出像素点。

10:27

泽不仅是一名出色的公知，而且是一名优秀的社团组织者，因为这些视频而聚集到一起的这些人，在很大程度上而言组成了一个学习社团。我们与泽·弗兰克下国际象棋，多对一，结果我们赢了。我们带着一个年轻人自驾游走遍了美国。我们把地球变成了一个三明治，方法是让一个人举着一片面包站在地球的某一处，然后在地球对面相对的地点，安排另一个人也举着片面包。我知道这主意很蠢，但是也有值得学习的地方不是吗，而这让我非常兴奋，如果你在网上搜一下，你能找到很多类似的社团。如果你在Tumblr搜索微积分的标签，没错，你会看到很多人在吐槽微积分，但同时你也会发现有很多人转发这些吐槽，然后争论其实微积分很有趣也非常美，一些你自己无法解答的问题，都可以在上面找到思路。你可以去Reddit这样的网站，找到sub-Reddit栏目，比如“向历史学家提问”或者“了解科学知识”，你可以向相关领域专家提问，什么问题都可以，从国计民生到花边新闻。然而对我而言，网上出现的最吸引人的学习社区是YouTube，我承认，我是脑残粉。但我觉得，从多方面来看，YouTube页面就像一间教室。举个例子，《一分钟学物理》这个视频，这个人在教全世界学物理：

11:50

（视频）言归正传。2012年7月4日，希格斯玻色子通过实验被发现，补全了粒子物理学标准模型的最后一块。但是你们也许会问，为什么希格斯玻色子会被包含在标准模型中，而其他著名的粒子比如电子、光子和夸克则被排除在外。仅仅因为它不是在70年代被发现的吗？问得好。原因主要有两点。首先，正如电子是电场中的一种激发现象，希格斯玻色子同样也是一种激发现象，发生于无处不在的希格斯场。而反过来，希格斯场在我们的弱相互作用模型中又扮演了不可或缺的角色。特别是它解释了为什么弱相互作用这么“弱”。关于这一点我们将在后面的视频详细介绍，但是尽管弱相互作用理论在80年代就被证实了，但在这些等式中，希格斯场与弱相互作用力是如此纠缠不清，以至于到现在我们也无法证明希格斯场确实是单独存在的。

12:39

JG：还有这个视频，是我的节目《速成班》中的一期，讲的是第一次世界大战：

12:43

（视频）直接起因当然是发生在萨拉热窝的刺杀事件，奥地利大公弗朗茨·费迪南遇刺身亡，发生在1914年6月28日，刺客是塞尔维亚民族主义者加夫里洛·普林西普。说句题外话：二十世纪第一场大战起源于一次恐怖主义行动，真是让人无语。弗朗茨·费迪南其实并不怎么讨他叔叔喜欢，他叔叔是弗朗茨·约瑟夫皇帝。就是这位大胡子老兄！但尽管如此，此次刺杀事件还是导致奥地利向塞尔维亚发出最后通牒，而塞尔维亚只是满足了奥地利的部分要求，从而导致奥地利向塞尔维亚宣战。然后塞尔维亚的盟国俄罗斯，开始调遣军队。奥地利的盟国德国，要求俄罗斯停止调遣军队，俄罗斯当然是拒绝的，于是德国也开始调集自己的军队，与奥斯曼土耳其结成同盟，向俄罗斯宣战，然后又向法国宣战，法国嘛，你懂的。

13:35

除了物理和世界历史，人们还可以在YouTube上选择学习其他东西。下面是一个关于抽象数学的视频。

13:45

（视频）假设你是我，你再次来到了数学课堂上，因为数学课每天都有。你现在学的，可能是无穷级数求和。是高中的题，对吗？这事儿很怪，因为本来这道题很有趣，但他们（老师）总是有办法把它毁掉。我想这就是为什么他们会把无穷级数列入课程吧。因为无聊的原因，你可能会一边在本子上乱画一边在想，“级数”这个词的复数形式应该是什么，而没有想这道题本身："serieses,""seriese,""seriesen,"还是"serii?"或者单数形式是不规则变化：一个"serie,"或者"serum,"就像“sheep”的单数应该是“shoop”。但是这个概念，就像1/2+1/4+1/8+1/16并以此类推，直到无穷接近于1，在什么时候有用呢，你想画一排大象，每一只都叼着下一只的尾巴：普通大象，年轻大象，婴儿大象，像狗那么大的大象，像小狗那么大的大象，一直小到看不见。这么想还是挺神奇的，因为你可以画无穷多的大象站成一排，仅仅只需要一张笔记本纸就能画下。

14:39

JG：最后是《每天聪明一点点》的德斯丁，为我们讲述动量守恒，由于是在YouTube上，所以他用猫来举例：

14:46

（视频）嗨，我是德斯丁，欢迎再次收看《每天聪明一点点》。也许你们注意到了，猫在落地的时候总是脚先着地。今天我们就来讲讲这是为什么。大多数简单的问题都有一个异常复杂的答案。所以，我来换一种问法：为什么猫在一个下降坐标系中，可以将四脚朝天的姿态调整为四脚着地，而又不违反角动量守恒呢？

15:09

JG：这四个视频有一些共同之处：它们在YouTube上的观看数都超过了50万。虽然观看的人没有坐在教室里，但他们都是学习社团的一部分，而学习社团就是由这些（YouTube）频道组成的。我之前说过，YouTube对我而言就像教室，因为它跟教室很像，有老师在讲课，就像传统的课堂：老师在前面讲，学生坐在下面听，而且他们还可以交流。我知道YouTube的评论在互联网世界里名声非常不好，但实际上，如果你去看这些频道的评论，你会发现人们真的在讨论视频的内容，他们会针对视频内容问各种复杂的问题，其他网友则会回答这些问题。因为YouTube页面是设定好的，所以我刚刚讲一战的那个网页，会和你们发表的评论，在同一个页面出现，你们参与的是一个实时的、真实的、活跃的对话。因为我也经常发表评论，所以我也跟大家一起在参与。这些（评论）有关于世界历史的，关于数学的，或者科学的，包罗万象。

16:22

你还发现年轻人在使用互联网工具，来创建可以进行知识交流的空间，而不是宣扬可笑的反智主义，这也许会让我们大多数人联想起另一种互联网对话，类似于，“太无聊了，于是发明了微积分。”或者就像哈尼布布批判工业资本主义：

16:46

给你们几秒钟看一下她说的——字幕：“自由资本主义（展现的）并不是人类的优点。

16:49

恰恰相反，它就像野人开的汽车，既虚无又具有破坏性。”

16:52

我确信，这些（网络上的）空间，这些社团，已经成为新一代学习者的学习园地，（就像前面说到的）地图爱好者社团，就像我在高中和大学时代曾经参加过的学习社团一样。作为一个成年人，再次找到这样的社团，让我重新成为一名学习者，鼓励我在成年之后继续学习，因此我不再觉得学习是年轻人的专利。怀·哈特和《一分钟学物理》带我了解了以前从未涉足过的领域。我知道我们都憧憬过文艺复兴时代的巴黎沙龙，或者阿尔冈琴圆桌会议，感慨着，“啊，我多希望能置身其中，我多希望能听听多萝西·帕克讲的笑话。”但我要告诉你们，这些地方真的还存在。它们存在于互联网的角落，老年人不敢涉足的角落。

17:54

我真心相信，当我们在60年代捏造了纽约州阿格罗这个地方时，当我们将阿格罗变为现实时，我们（的旅途）才刚刚开始。

18:05

谢谢大家。

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00:13

This is a map of New York State that was made in 1937 by the General Drafting Company. It's an extremely famous map among cartography nerds, because down here at the bottom of the Catskill Mountains, there is a little town called Roscoe -- actually, this will go easier if I just put it up here -- There's Roscoe, and then right above Roscoe is Rockland, New York, and then right above that is the tiny town of Agloe, New York.

00:36

Agloe, New York, is very famous to cartographers, because it's a paper town. It's also known as a copyright trap. Mapmakers -- because my map of New York and your map of New York are going to look very similar, on account of the shape of New York -- often, mapmakers will insert fake places onto their maps, in order to protect their copyright. Because then, if my fake place shows up on your map, I can be well and truly sure that you have robbed me. Agloe is a scrabblization of the initials of the two guys who made this map, Ernest Alpers and Otto [G.] Lindberg, and they released this map in 1937. Decades later, Rand McNally releases a map with Agloe, New York, on it, at the same exact intersection of two dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. Well, you can imagine the delight over at General Drafting. They immediately call Rand McNally, and they say, "We've caught you! We made Agloe, New York, up. It is a fake place. It's a paper town. We're going to sue your pants off!" And Rand McNally says, "No, no, no, no, Agloe is real." Because people kept going to that intersection of two dirt roads --

01:52

in the middle of nowhere, expecting there to be a place called Agloe -- someone built a place called Agloe, New York.

02:01

It had a gas station, a general store, two houses at its peak.

02:07

And this is of course a completely irresistible metaphor to a novelist, because we would all like to believe that the stuff that we write down on paper can change the actual world in which we're actually living, which is why my third book is called "Paper Towns".

02:21

But what interests me ultimately more than the medium in which this happened, is the phenomenon itself. It's easy enough to say that the world shapes our maps of the world, right? Like the overall shape of the world is obviously going to affect our maps. But what I find a lot more interesting is the way that the manner in which we map the world changes the world. Because the world would truly be a different place if North were down. And the world would be a truly different place if Alaska and Russia weren't on opposite sides of the map. And the world would be a different place if we projected Europe to show it in its actual size. The world is changed by our maps of the world. The way that we choose -- sort of, our personal cartographic enterprise, also shapes the map of our lives, and that in turn shapes our lives.

03:16

I believe that what we map changes the life we lead. And I don't mean that in some, like, secret-y Oprah's Angels network, like, you-can-think-your-way- out-of-cancer sense. But I do believe that while maps don't show you where you will go in your life, they show you where you might go. You very rarely go to a place that isn't on your personal map.

03:41

So I was a really terrible student when I was a kid. My GPA was consistently in the low 2s. And I think the reason that I was such a terrible student is that I felt like education was just a series of hurdles that had been erected before me, and I had to jump over in order to achieve adulthood. And I didn't really want to jump over these hurdles, because they seemed completely arbitrary, so I often wouldn't, and then people would threaten me, you know, they'd threaten me with this "going on [my] permanent record," or "You'll never get a good job." I didn't want a good job! As far as I could tell at eleven or twelve years old, like, people with good jobs woke up very early in the morning,

04:22

and the men who had good jobs, one of the first things they did was tie a strangulation item of clothing around their necks. They literally put nooses on themselves, and then they went off to their jobs, whatever they were. That's not a recipe for a happy life. These people -- in my, symbol-obsessed, twelve year-old imagination -- these people who are strangling themselves as one of the first things they do each morning, they can't possibly be happy. Why would I want to jump over all of these hurdles and have that be the end? That's a terrible end!

04:57

And then, when I was in tenth grade, I went to this school, Indian Springs School, a small boarding school, outside of Birmingham, Alabama. And all at once I became a learner. And I became a learner, because I found myself in a community of learners. I found myself surrounded by people who celebrated intellectualism and engagement, and who thought that my ironic oh-so-cool disengagement wasn't clever, or funny, but, like, it was a simple and unspectacular response to very complicated and compelling problems. And so I started to learn, because learning was cool. I learned that some infinite sets are bigger than other infinite sets, and I learned that iambic pentameter is and why it sounds so good to human ears. I learned that the Civil War was a nationalizing conflict, I learned some physics, I learned that correlation shouldn't be confused with causation -- all of these things, by the way, enriched my life on a literally daily basis. And it's true that I don't use most of them for my "job," but that's not what it's about for me. It's about cartography.

06:02

What is the process of cartography? It's, you know, sailing upon some land, and thinking, "I think I'll draw that bit of land," and then wondering, "Maybe there's some more land to draw." And that's when learning really began for me. It's true that I had teachers that didn't give up on me, and I was very fortunate to have those teachers, because I often gave them cause to think there was no reason to invest in me. But a lot of the learning that I did in high school wasn't about what happened inside the classroom, it was about what happened outside of the classroom. For instance, I can tell you that "There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons -- That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes --" not because I memorized Emily Dickinson in school when I was in high school, but because there was a girl when I was in high school, and her name was Amanda, and I had a crush on her, and she liked Emily Dickinson poetry. The reason I can tell you what opportunity cost is, is because one day when I was playing Super Mario Kart on my couch, my friend Emmet walked in, and he said, "How long have you been playing Super Mario Kart?" And I said, "I don't know, like, six hours?" and he said, "Do you realize that if you'd worked at Baskin-Robbins those six hours, you could have made 30 dollars, so in some ways, you just paid thirty dollars to play Super Mario Kart." And I was, like, "I'll take that deal."

07:20

But I learned what opportunity cost is.

07:25

And along the way, the map of my life got better. It got bigger; it contained more places. There were more things that might happen, more futures I might have. It wasn't a formal, organized learning process, and I'm happy to admit that. It was spotty, it was inconsistent, there was a lot I didn't know. I might know, you know, Cantor's idea that some infinite sets are larger than other infinite sets, but I didn't really understand the calculus behind that idea. I might know the idea of opportunity cost, but I didn't know the law of diminishing returns. But the great thing about imagining learning as cartography, instead of imagining it as arbitrary hurdles that you have to jump over, is that you see a bit of coastline, and that makes you want to see more. And so now I do know at least some of the calculus that underlies all of that stuff.

08:11

So, I had one learning community in high school, then I went to another for college, and then I went to another, when I started working at a magazine called "Booklist," where I was an assistant, surrounded by astonishingly well-read people. And then I wrote a book. And like all authors dream of doing, I promptly quit my job.

08:30

And for the first time since high school, I found myself without a learning community, and it was miserable. I hated it. I read many, many books during this two-year period. I read books about Stalin, and books about how the Uzbek people came to identify as Muslims, and I read books about how to make atomic bombs, but it just felt like I was creating my own hurdles, and then jumping over them myself, instead of feeling the excitement of being part of a community of learners, a community of people who are engaged together in the cartographic enterprise of trying to better understand and map the world around us.

09:06

And then, in 2006, I met that guy. His name is Ze Frank. I didn't actually meet him, just on the Internet. Ze Frank was running, at the time, a show called "The Show with Ze Frank," and I discovered the show, and that was my way back into being a community learner again. Here's Ze talking about Las Vegas:

09:27

(Video) Ze Frank: Las Vegas was built in the middle of a huge, hot desert. Almost everything here was brought from somewhere else -- the sort of rocks, the trees, the waterfalls. These fish are almost as out of place as my pig that flew. Contrasted to the scorching desert that surrounds this place, so are these people. Things from all over the world have been rebuilt here, away from their histories, and away from the people that experience them differently. Sometimes improvements were made -- even the Sphinx got a nose job. Here, there's no reason to feel like you're missing anything. This New York means the same to me as it does to everyone else. Everything is out of context, and that means context allows for everything: Self Parking, Events Center, Shark Reef. This fabrication of place could be one of the world's greatest achievements, because no one belongs here; everyone does. As I walked around this morning, I noticed most of the buildings were huge mirrors reflecting the sun back into the desert. But unlike most mirrors, which present you with an outside view of yourself embedded in a place, these mirrors come back empty.

10:22

John Green: Makes me nostalgic for the days when you could see the pixels in online video.

10:27

Ze isn't just a great public intellectual, he's also a brilliant community builder, and the community of people that built up around these videos was in many ways a community of learners. So we played Ze Frank at chess collaboratively, and we beat him. We organized ourselves to take a young man on a road trip across the United States. We turned the Earth into a sandwich, by having one person hold a piece of bread at one point on the Earth, and on the exact opposite point of the Earth, have another person holding a piece of bread. I realize that these are silly ideas, but they are also "learny" ideas, and that was what was so exciting to me, and if you go online, you can find communities like this all over the place. Follow the calculus tag on Tumblr, and yes, you will see people complaining about calculus, but you'll also see people re-blogging those complaints, making the argument that calculus is interesting and beautiful, and here's a way in to thinking about the problem that you find unsolvable. You can go to places like Reddit, and find sub-Reddits, like "Ask a Historian" or "Ask Science," where you can ask people who are in these fields a wide range of questions, from very serious ones to very silly ones. But to me, the most interesting communities of learners that are growing up on the Internet right now are on YouTube, and admittedly, I am biased. But I think in a lot of ways, the YouTube page resembles a classroom. Look for instance at "Minute Physics," a guy who's teaching the world about physics:

11:50

(Video) Let's cut to the chase. As of July 4, 2012, the Higgs boson is the last fundamental piece of the standard model of particle physics to be discovered experimentally. But, you might ask, why was the Higgs boson included in the standard model, alongside well-known particles like electrons and photons and quarks, if it hadn't been discovered back then in the 1970s? Good question. There are two main reasons. First, just like the electron is an excitation in the electron field, the Higgs boson is simply a particle which is an excitation of the everywhere-permeating Higgs field. The Higgs field in turn plays an integral role in our model for the weak nuclear force. In particular, the Higgs field helps explain why it's so weak. We'll talk more about this in a later video, but even though weak nuclear theory was confirmed in the 1980s, in the equations, the Higgs field is so inextricably jumbled with the weak force, that until now we've been unable to confirm its actual and independent existence.

12:38

JG: Or here's a video that I made as part of my show "Crash Course," talking about World War I:

12:43

(Video) The immediate cause was of course the assassination in Sarajevo of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, on June 28, 1914, by a Bosnian-Serb nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. Quick aside: It's worth noting that the first big war of the twentieth century began with an act of terrorism. So Franz Ferdinand wasn't particularly well-liked by his uncle, the emperor Franz Joseph -- now that is a mustache! But even so, the assassination led Austria to issue an ultimatum to Serbia, whereupon Serbia accepted some, but not all, of Austria's demands, leading Austria to declare war against Serbia. And then Russia, due to its alliance with the Serbs, mobilized its army. Germany, because it had an alliance with Austria, told Russia to stop mobilizing, which Russia failed to do, so then Germany mobilized its own army, declared war on Russia, cemented an alliance with the Ottomans, and then declared war on France, because, you know, France.

13:35

And it's not just physics and world history that people are choosing to learn through YouTube. Here's a video about abstract mathematics.

13:45

(Video) So you're me, and you're in math class yet again, because they make you go every single day. And you're learning about, I don't know, the sums of infinite series. That's a high school topic, right? Which is odd, because it's a cool topic, but they somehow manage to ruin it anyway. So I guess that's why they allow infinite series in the curriculum. So, in a quite understandable need for distraction, you're doodling and thinking more about what the plural of "series" should be than about the topic at hand: "serieses," "seriese," "seriesen," and "serii?" Or is it that the singular should be changed: one "serie," or "serum," just like the singular of "sheep" should be "shoop." But the whole concept of things like 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 and so on approaches one, is useful if, say, you want to draw a line of elephants, each holding the tail of the next one: normal elephant, young elephant, baby elephant, dog-sized elephant, puppy-sized elephant, all the way down to Mr. Tusks and beyond. Which is at least a tiny bit awesome, because you can get an infinite number of elephants in a line, and still have it fit across a single notebook page.

14:40

JG: And lastly, here's Destin, from "Smarter Every Day," talking about the conservation of angular momentum, and, since it's YouTube, cats:

14:46

(Video) Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to "Smarter Every Day." So you've probably observed that cats almost always land on their feet. Today's question is: why? Like most simple questions, there's a very complex answer. For instance, let me reword this question: How does a cat go from feet-up to feet-down in a falling reference frame, without violating the conservation of angular momentum?

15:09

JG: So, here's something all four of these videos have in common: They all have more than half a million views on YouTube. And those are people watching not in classrooms, but because they are part of the communities of learning that are being set up by these channels. And I said earlier that YouTube is like a classroom to me, and in many ways it is, because here is the instructor -- it's like the old-fashioned classroom: here's the instructor, and then beneath the instructor are the students, and they're all having a conversation. And I know that YouTube comments have a very bad reputation in the world of the Internet, but in fact, if you go on comments for these channels, what you'll find is people engaging the subject matter, asking difficult, complicated questions that are about the subject matter, and then other people answering those questions. And because the YouTube page is set up so that the page in which I'm talking to you is on the exact -- the place where I'm talking to you is on the exact same page as your comments, you are participating in a live and real and active way in the conversation. And because I'm in comments usually, I get to participate with you. And you find this whether it's world history, or mathematics, or science, or whatever it is.

16:22

You also see young people using the tools and the sort of genres of the Internet in order to create places for intellectual engagement, instead of the ironic detachment that maybe most of us associate with memes and other Internet conventions -- you know, "Got bored. Invented calculus." Or, here's Honey Boo Boo criticizing industrial capitalism:

16:43

["Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism."]

16:49

In case you can't see what she says ... yeah.

16:52

I really believe that these spaces, these communities, have become for a new generation of learners, the kind of communities, the kind of cartographic communities that I had when I was in high school, and then again when I was in college. And as an adult, re-finding these communities has re-introduced me to a community of learners, and has encouraged me to continue to be a learner even in my adulthood, so that I no longer feel like learning is something reserved for the young. Vi Hart and "Minute Physics" introduced me to all kinds of things that I didn't know before. And I know that we all hearken back to the days of the Parisian salon in the Enlightenment, or to the Algonquin Round Table, and wish, "Oh, I wish I could have been a part of that, I wish I could have laughed at Dorothy Parker's jokes." But I'm here to tell you that these places exist, they still exist. They exist in corners of the Internet, where old men fear to tread.

17:54

And I truly, truly believe that when we invented Agloe, New York, in the 1960s, when we made Agloe real, we were just getting started.

18:05

Thank you.

The End