Open Culture

3 weeks ago | openculture.com | Colin Marshall

World War II officially ended on September 2, 1945. It followed, by less than three weeks, an equally momentous event, at least in the eyes of cinephiles: the birth of Wim Wenders. Though soon to turn 80 years old, Wenders has remained both productive and capable of drawing great critical acclaim. Witness, for example, his Tokyo-set 2023 film Perfect Days, which made it to the running for both the Palme d’Or and a Best International Feature Film Academy Award.

4 weeks ago | openculture.com | Colin Marshall

Image by Rizka, via Wikimedia CommonsIn South Korea, where I live, there may be no brand as respected as Habodeu. Children dream of it; adults seemingly do anything to play up their own connections to it, however tenuous those connections may be. But what is Habodeu? An electronics company? A line of clothing? Some kind of luxury car? Not at all: it is, in fact, the Korean pronunciation of Harvard, the American university.

1 month ago | openculture.com | Colin Marshall

Though its answer has grown more complicated in recent years, the question of whether computers will ever truly think has been around for quite some time. Richard Feynman was being asked about it 40 years ago, as evidenced by the lecture clip above. As his fans would expect, he approaches the matter of artificial intelligence with his characteristic incisiveness and humor — as well as his tendency to re-frame the conversation in his own terms.

1 month ago | openculture.com | Colin Marshall

“In the future, e‑mail will make the written word a thing of the past,” declares the narration of a 1999 television commercial for Orange, the French telecom giant. “In the future, we won’t have to travel; we’ll meet on video. In the future, we won’t need to play in the wind and rain; computer games will provide all the fun we need.

1 month ago | openculture.com | Colin Marshall

Homework has lately become unfashionable, at least according to what I’ve heard from teachers in certain parts of the United States. That may complicate various fairly long-standing educational practices, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect an absolute drop in standards and expectations.