Documentaries for Monday

The Truth According to Wikipedia, by the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO in English on Web 2.0

The devil's advocate: "It's no coincidence that it was those hippies that built the technology that enables Wikipedia and the bloggosphere, it's no coincidence that the fathers of the Internet now in silicon valley are these pot-bellied older guys with ponytails."

He's right. The Internet will be just as human as the book. In China today, there's heavy controls on the internet and massive propaganda powers. But the Chinese aren't stupid, they themselves contribute to Internet life heartily. And here am I with a blog.

The humanity of progress is no argument against progress.

My Brilliant Brain- Make Me a Genius.

From Channel 5 in Britain brings an uplifting profile of Susan Polgar, first woman chess grandmaster. I'm always sensitive with the word genius, because in some senses it's dehumanizing, as if geniuses are calculating machines measured against such standard of perfection. Modern science, the documentary above and Ms. Susan's own father make the case that any child can grow up to be extraordinary.

The special itself is rather public, in the classy British sense. It employs CGI and a few gimmicks along with simple but generated drama.

First off, we can only hold 7 things in our heads at a time, like phone numbers. 867-5309. Ms. Polgar can recreate the 28 pieces of a chessboard from memory because she can chunk these pieces into about five or so ominous groupings in her mind. She cannot do that with randomly places pieces.

It touches on much of what Malcolm Gladwell discussed in Blink. Experts, through training and dilligence, move instictively rather than calculatingly. Firefighters are shown pwning chessmasters at fighting fires. A digression on faceblindness, standard for cable cognitive fare, features a London Times reporter who's "colorblind" to faces. We recognize faces new and old by measure the proportions of face features and comparing it with the face ratios of faces we've seen before. [Well, probably a hell of a lot more complicated than that.]

Ms. Polgar's genius is revealed at the end of the episode through brainscans. She recognizes chess patterns with the same pattern recognizing part of the Brain that recognizes face patterns and instictively reacts.

The idea that anyone can be a genius is comforting.

Oh: And this shit is hilarious. Barack Obama reading from his audiobook. NSFW. Also here.

Musical Selection.