Category: philosophical counseling
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Giving an honest self-inventory; or, how to be post-ironic
The literary scholar Christy Wampole has called ours an “ironic age” in which “directness has become unbearable to us,” and in “How to Live Without Irony,” her New York Times Stone essay that appeared in this Sunday’s Review, she provides some clues for how we could live in a post-ironic manner. These clues include saying what…
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Responsibility as a child of time
The Pythagoreans were the first, perhaps, to insist so doggedly that one give an account of oneself at the end of each day as if it were one’s final hour. What is responsibility for the entirety of one’s self but taking this thought to heart not at some late date but in each of one’s…
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The end of the university: Udacity’s mounting case
We’ve been considering the case of Udacity, the larger case that it is mounting. In my mind’s eye, I’ve been imagining a bee hive cracked into, with bees and flowers and unimaginable things fluttering out. Now, any serious threat to the status quo may do more than show that it presents a novel solution. More importantly,…
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The challenge posed by Udacity
I agree with the New Media writer Clay Shirky that the time is right for a massive disruption of higher education. In his blog, “Napster, Udacity, and the Academy,” Shirky explores how higher ed content is–like music after what’s been dubbed the ‘Napster moment’–set to become ‘unbundled.’ Udacity’s power play is to ‘decouple’ the course…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 