My mode of study of late, when not working or sleeping, is to scour Youtube and watch mostly longer format talks and lectures. People develop habits around reading, playing games, watching movies, habits that may reshape with time, sometimes simply as a function of what's available.
Growing up poor (not really), without the Internet (not invented yet), I didn't have the luxury of sifting through millions of talking heads expressing views on many subjects, nor of contributing to this growing database of video clips. Later in life, I'd fantasize more concretely about such a system, and still later these dreams would come true.
Nowadays I chronicle the Youtubes I'm watching on my Facebook timeline, with my own comments, inviting more. For example, an issue of our day in some media is the question of whether Russia has grown influential enough to tip the US presidential election, the outcome of which surprised a lot of analysts.
I'm fine with the ODNI report mentioning RT in a few places, echoing what the intelligence community itself watches for signs of the times (for money even, as a part of one's job description). I recall Defense Secretary Rumsfeld pointing to Al Jazeera as a concern. The movie Control Room came out soon after, somewhat inspiring my own blog by that name.
The main paradigm shift we need is: school pays us to learn. That's a better way of casting minimum basic income. Study is work, often hard.— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) January 30, 2017
I watch RT as well. Sure Peter Lavelle seems to spearhead one way of thinking (his guests often agree with one another), while Thom Hartmann spearheads another. Ron Paul jumps on for interviews. Jesse Ventura has his own show. Recalling Jon Stewart's criticisms of CNN, I'd say Time-Warner has been eclipsed in a lot of ways, in not having as much interesting programming. Most [Russian] hackers would never use AOL.
That Generation Y is able to start from here, watching peers (roughly same age) contribute videos, has contributed to an exultant mood. Not only is it highly possible to find like-minded, but it's even somehow possible to make a living as a Youtube producer, or at least that's the new dream. A lot of this trashing of the "legacy media" is not based in deep ideology so much as in how more participatory the new media seem. Anyone can become a #PizzaGate scholar.
I have my own relatively small stash of Youtubes, but don't have the high production value animations I lust after (yet). Disney might have the resources, but does it have the interest now that Epcot no longer means Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, and Spaceship Earth is not milked for its true meme-plex potential either? Walt was more the visionary than his successors.
I've turned to RT as well then, tweeting how we need to see a JT on RT. Of course that's super obscure as practically no one in 2017 knows what "Jitterbug Transformation" means. Even though the International Mathematical Union has woven it into their banter, nowhere in the long slog of K-16 is the JT likely to come up. Sure, it helps conceptually unify the concentric hierarchy but no one knows what that is either. Ignorance of STEM is rather high in the media.
Russian math texts always seemed clear even in translation when I was a high school math teacher. Why no Jitterbug Transformation? JT on RT!— Kirby Urner (@4DsolutionsPDX) January 24, 2017
Naturally I'm not suggesting the JT appear exclusively on RT, it's already too late for that. It's just that from a hearts and minds perspective, if you don't traffic in positive futurism, then your ideology has a short half life. RT seems more likely to share some substantive Synergetics, whereas numberphiles in the UK have been ignoring the opportunity -- why the BBC sometimes seems like "legacy media" to me as well.
