The Paper Town Academy | John Green | TEDxIndianapolis
-
0:09 - 0:11So, this is a map
of New York State -
0:11 - 0:14that was made in 1937 by the
General Drafting Company. -
0:14 - 0:18It's an extremely famous map
among cartography nerds, -
0:18 - 0:21because down here at the bottom
of the Catskill Mountains -
0:21 - 0:23there is a little town called Roscoe
-
0:23 - 0:26--actually, this will go easier
if I just put it up here-- -
0:27 - 0:31There's Roscoe, and then, right above Roscoe,
is Rockland, New York, -
0:31 - 0:35and then right above that
is the tiny town of Agloe, New York. -
0:35 - 0:38Agloe, New York,
is very famous to cartographers, -
0:38 - 0:43because it's a paper town.
It's also known as a copyright trap. -
0:43 - 0:46Map makers -- because my map of New York
and your map of New York -
0:46 - 0:49are going to look very similar,
on account of the shape of New York. -
0:49 - 0:54Often, map makers will insert
fake places onto their maps, -
0:54 - 1:00in order to protect their copyright, because then,
if my fake place shows up on your map, -
1:00 - 1:03I can be well and truly sure
that you have robbed me. -
1:03 - 1:08Agloe is a scrabblization of the initials
of the two guys who made this map -
1:08 - 1:11Ernest G. Alpers and Otto Lindberg,
-
1:11 - 1:13and they released this map in 1937.
-
1:13 - 1:17Decades later, Rand McNally releases a map
-
1:17 - 1:22with Agloe, New York, on it,
at the same exact intersection -
1:22 - 1:25of two dirt roads in the middle of nowhere.
-
1:25 - 1:28Well, you can imagine the delight
over at General Drafting. -
1:28 - 1:31They immediately called
Rand McNally, and they say: -
1:31 - 1:35"We've caught you!
We made Agloe, New York, up. -
1:35 - 1:39It is a fake place. It's a paper town.
We're gonna sue your pants off!" -
1:39 - 1:45And Rand McNally says:
"N-n-no, no, no, Agloe is real." -
1:45 - 1:50Because people kept going to that intersection
of two dirt roads (Laughter), -
1:50 - 1:52in the middle of nowhere,
-
1:52 - 1:56expecting there to be a place called Agloe,
-
1:56 - 2:00someone built a place
called Agloe, New York. -
2:00 - 2:05It had a gas station, a general store,
two houses at its peak. (Laughter) -
2:05 - 2:11And this is of course a completely
irresistible metaphor to a novelist, -
2:11 - 2:15because we would all like to believe
that the stuff that we write down on paper -
2:15 - 2:18can change the actual world
in which we're actually living -- -
2:18 - 2:20which is why my third book
is called "Paper Towns". -
2:20 - 2:24But what interests me ultimately more
than the medium in which this happened -
2:24 - 2:28is the phenomenon itself.
-
2:28 - 2:32It's easy enough to say that the world
shapes our maps of the world, right? -
2:32 - 2:37Like the overall shape of the world
is obviously going to affect our maps. -
2:37 - 2:41But what I find a lot
more interesting is the way -
2:41 - 2:44that the manner in which we map
the world changes the world. -
2:44 - 2:49Because the world would truly be
a different place if North were down. -
2:49 - 2:52And the world would be a truly
different place if Alaska and Russia -
2:52 - 2:54weren't on opposite sides of the map.
-
2:54 - 3:01And the world would be a different place
if we projected Europe to show it in its actual size. -
3:01 - 3:05The world is changed by our maps of the world.
-
3:05 - 3:10The way that we choose to, sort of,
our personal cartographic enterprise -
3:10 - 3:15also shapes the map of our lives,
and that in turn shapes our lives. -
3:15 - 3:20I believe that what we map
changes the life we lead. -
3:20 - 3:24And I don't mean that in some, like,
secrecy Oprah's Angels network, like, -
3:24 - 3:27you-can-think-your-way-out-of-cancer sense.
-
3:27 - 3:33But I do believe that while maps don't show you
where you will go in your life, -
3:33 - 3:35they show you where you might go.
-
3:35 - 3:40You very rarely go to a place
that isn't on your personal map. -
3:40 - 3:44So I was a really terrible
student when I was a kid. -
3:44 - 3:46My GPA was consistently in the low 2s,
-
3:46 - 3:49and I think the reason that
I was such a terrible student is that -
3:49 - 3:55I felt like education was just a series
of hurdles that had been erected before me, -
3:55 - 3:59and I had to jump over
in order to achieve adulthood. -
3:59 - 4:01And I didn't really want
to jump over these hurdles, -
4:01 - 4:03because they seemed completely arbitrary,
so I often wouldn't, -
4:03 - 4:05and then people would
threaten me, you know, -
4:05 - 4:09they'd threaten me with
"this going on my permanent record", -
4:09 - 4:14or "you'll never get a good job".
I didn't want a good job! -
4:14 - 4:16As far as I could tell
at eleven or twelve years old, like, -
4:16 - 4:19people with good jobs woke up
very early in the morning, -
4:19 - 4:21(Laughter)
-
4:21 - 4:25and the men who had good jobs,
one of the first things they did -
4:25 - 4:30was tie a strangulation item
of clothing around their necks. -
4:30 - 4:35They literally put nooses on themselves, and then
they went off to their jobs, whatever they were. -
4:35 - 4:38That's not a recipe for a happy life.
-
4:38 - 4:42These people -- in my, like, symbol-obsessed,
twelve-year-old imagination, -
4:42 - 4:46these people who are strangling themselves
as one of the first things -
4:46 - 4:49they do each morning,
they can't possibly be happy. -
4:49 - 4:54Why would I wanna jump over all these hurdles
and have that be the end? -
4:54 - 4:56That's a terrible end!
-
4:56 - 4:59And then, when I was in tenth grade,
I went to this school, -
4:59 - 5:03Indian Springs School, a small boarding school,
outside of Birmingham, Alabama, -
5:03 - 5:07and all at once I became a learner.
-
5:07 - 5:11And I became a learner, because I found myself
in a community of learners. -
5:11 - 5:17I found myself surrounded by people who celebrated
intellectualism and engagement, -
5:17 - 5:22and who thought that my ironic oh-so-cool disengagement
wasn't clever, or funny, -
5:22 - 5:29but, like, it was a simple and unspectacular response
to very complicated and compelling problems. -
5:29 - 5:32And so I started to learn,
because learning was cool. -
5:32 - 5:35I learned that some infinite sets
are bigger than other infinite sets, -
5:35 - 5:39and I learned that iambic pentameter is
and why it sounds so good to human ears. -
5:39 - 5:43I learned that the Civil War
was a nationalizing conflict, -
5:43 - 5:47I learned some physics, I learned that correlation
shouldn't be confused with causation -- -
5:47 - 5:53all of these things, by the way,
enriched my life on a literally daily basis. -
5:53 - 5:56And it's true that I don't use
most of them for my "job", -
5:56 - 5:59but that's not what it's about for me.
-
5:59 - 6:03It's about cartography.
What is the process of cartography? -
6:03 - 6:08It's, you know, sailing upon some land, and thinking
"I think I'll draw that bit of land", -
6:08 - 6:12and then wondering
"Maybe there's some more land to draw". -
6:12 - 6:13And that's when learning really began for me.
-
6:13 - 6:19It's true that I had teachers that didn't give up on me,
and I was very fortunate to have those teachers, -
6:19 - 6:23because I often gave them cause to think
there was no reason to invest in me. -
6:23 - 6:30But a lot of the learning that I did in high school
wasn't about what happened inside the classroom, -
6:30 - 6:32it was about what happened outside of the classroom.
-
6:32 - 6:33For instance, I can tell you that
-
6:33 - 6:35"There's a certain slant of light,
[On] winter afternoons, -
6:35 - 6:38That oppresses, like the heft [weight]
Of cathedral tunes", -
6:38 - 6:44not because I memorized Emily Dickinson in school,
when I was in high school, -
6:44 - 6:47but because there was a girl, when I was in high school,
and her name was Amanda, -
6:47 - 6:51and I had a crush on her,
and she liked Emily Dickinson poetry. -
6:51 - 6:54The reason I can tell you
what opportunity cost is, -
6:54 - 6:58is because one day when I was playing
Super Mario Kart on my couch, -
6:58 - 7:01my friend Emmet walked in, and he said
"How long have you been playing Super Mario Kart?", -
7:01 - 7:05and I said, "I don't know,
like, six hours?", and he said, -
7:05 - 7:08"You realize that if you'd worked
at Baskin-Robbins those six hours, -
7:08 - 7:14you could have made thirty dollars, so in some ways,
you just paid thirty dollars to play Super Mario Kart", -
7:14 - 7:18and I was, like, "I'll take that deal."
(Laughter) -
7:18 - 7:23But I learned what
opportunity cost is, -
7:23 - 7:25and along the way,
-
7:25 - 7:30the map of my life got better,
it got bigger, it contained more places. -
7:30 - 7:35There were more things that might happen,
more futures I might have. -
7:35 - 7:40It wasn't a formal organized learning process,
and I'm happy to admit that. -
7:40 - 7:43It was spotty, it was inconsistent,
there was a lot I didn't know. -
7:43 - 7:45I might know, you know,
that Cantor's idea -
7:45 - 7:48that some infinite sets are larger
than other infinite sets, -
7:48 - 7:51but I didn't really understand
the calculus behind that idea. -
7:51 - 7:52I might know the idea
of opportunity cost, -
7:52 - 7:55but I didn't know the law
of diminishing returns. -
7:55 - 7:59But the great thing about imagining
learning as cartography, -
7:59 - 8:02instead of imagining it as arbitrary hurdles
that you have to jump over -
8:02 - 8:05is that you see a bit of coast line,
and that makes you want to see more. -
8:05 - 8:10And so now I do know at least some of the calculus
that underlies all of that stuff. -
8:10 - 8:15So, I had one learning community in high school,
then I went to another for college, -
8:15 - 8:17and then I went to another, when I started working
at a magazine called "Booklist", -
8:17 - 8:22where I was an assistant
surrounded by astonishingly well-read people, -
8:22 - 8:25and then I wrote a book,
and like all authors dream of doing, -
8:25 - 8:29I promptly quit my job.
-
8:29 - 8:34And for the first time since high school,
I found myself without a learning community, -
8:34 - 8:37and it was miserable.
I hated it. -
8:37 - 8:41I read many, many books
during this two-year period. -
8:41 - 8:46I read books about Stalin, and I read books about
how the Uzbek people came to identify as Muslims, -
8:46 - 8:48and I read books about
how to make atomic bombs, -
8:48 - 8:51but it just felt like
I was creating my own hurdles, -
8:51 - 8:56and then jumping over them myself,
instead of feeling the excitement of being part -
8:56 - 8:58of a community of learners,
a community of people -
8:58 - 9:03who are engaged together in a cartographic enterprise
of trying to better understand -
9:03 - 9:08and map the world around us.
And then, in 2006, I met that guy. -
9:08 - 9:13His name is Ze Frank. I didn't actually meet him,
just on the Internet. -
9:13 - 9:18Ze Frank was running, at the time,
a show called "The Show with Ze Frank", -
9:18 - 9:23and I discovered this show, and that was my way back
into being a community learner again. -
9:23 - 9:26Here's Ze talking about Las Vegas:
-
9:26 - 9:30(Video) Ze Frank: "Las Vegas was built in the middle
of a huge hot desert, -
9:30 - 9:33almost everything here
was brought from somewhere else -- -
9:33 - 9:35the sort of rocks,
the trees, the waterfalls. -
9:35 - 9:38These fish are almost as out of place
as my pig that flew. -
9:38 - 9:41Contrasted to the scorching desert
that surrounds this place, so are these people. -
9:41 - 9:44Things from all over the world have been rebuilt here,
away from their histories, -
9:44 - 9:47and away from the people
that experience them differently. -
9:47 - 9:50Sometimes, improvements were made.
Even the Sphinx got a nose job. -
9:50 - 9:54Here, what you see is what you get, and there's
no reason to feel like you're missing anything. -
9:54 - 9:57This New York means the same to me
as it does to everyone else. -
9:57 - 10:00Everything is out of context,
and that means context allows for everything. -
10:00 - 10:03Self Parking, Events Center, Shark Reef.
-
10:03 - 10:06This fabrication of place could be one
of the world's greatest achievements, -
10:06 - 10:08because no one belongs here, everyone does.
-
10:08 - 10:10As I walked around this morning,
I noticed most of the buildings -
10:10 - 10:13were huge mirrors reflecting
the sun back into the desert. -
10:13 - 10:18But unlike most mirrors, which present you
with an outside view of yourself embedded in a place, -
10:18 - 10:19these mirrors come back empty."
-
10:19 - 10:25It makes me nostalgic for the days when you could see
the pixels in online video. (Laughter) -
10:25 - 10:30Ze isn't just a great public intellectual,
he's also a brilliant community builder, -
10:30 - 10:31and the community of people that built up
-
10:31 - 10:35around these videos was in many ways
a community of learners, -
10:35 - 10:38so we played Ze Frank at chess collaboratively,
and we beat him. -
10:38 - 10:43We organized ourselves to take a young man
on a road trip across the United States. -
10:43 - 10:48We turned the Earth into a sandwich by having one person
hold a piece of bread at one point on the Earth, -
10:48 - 10:53and on the exact opposite point of the Earth
having another person holding a piece of bread. -
10:53 - 10:59I realize that these are silly ideas,
but they are also 'learny' ideas, -
10:59 - 11:02and that was what was so exciting to me,
-
11:02 - 11:05and if you go online, you can find
communities like this all over the place. -
11:05 - 11:10Follow the calculus tag on Tumblr, and yes,
you will see people complaining about calculus, -
11:10 - 11:13but you'll also see people
re-blogging those complaints, -
11:13 - 11:16making the argument that calculus
is interesting and beautiful, -
11:16 - 11:20and here's a way in to thinking about
the problem that you find unsolvable. -
11:20 - 11:25You can go to places like Reddit, and find sub-Reddits,
like 'Ask a Historian', or 'Ask Science', -
11:25 - 11:30where you can ask people who are in these fields
a wide range of questions, -
11:30 - 11:32from very serious ones
to very silly ones. -
11:32 - 11:35But to me, the most interesting
communities of learners -
11:35 - 11:38that are growing up on the Internet
right now are on YouTube, -
11:38 - 11:40and admittedly I am biased.
-
11:40 - 11:44But I think in a lot of ways,
the YouTube page resembles a classroom. -
11:44 - 11:49Look for instance at "Minute Physics",
a guy who's teaching the world about physics. -
11:49 - 11:54(Video) "Let's cut to the chase. As of July 4th, 2012,
the Higgs Boson is the last fundamental piece -
11:54 - 11:57of the standard model of particle physics
to be discovered experimentally. -
11:57 - 12:01But, you might ask, why was the Higgs Boson
included in the standard model, -
12:01 - 12:04alongside well-known particles
like electrons and photons and quarks, -
12:04 - 12:06if it hadn't been discovered
back then in the 1970s? -
12:06 - 12:08Good question.
There are two main reasons. -
12:08 - 12:12First, just like the electron
is an excitation in the electron field, -
12:12 - 12:16the Higgs Boson is simply a particle which is an excitation
of the everywhere-permeating Higgs field. -
12:16 - 12:21The Higgs field in turn plays an integral role
in our model for the weak nuclear force. -
12:21 - 12:24In particular, the Higgs field
helps explain why it's so weak. -
12:24 - 12:29We'll talk more about this in a later video, but even though
weak nuclear theory was confirmed in the 1980s, -
12:29 - 12:32in the equations, the Higgs field
is so inextricably jumbled with the weak force, -
12:32 - 12:37that until now we've been unable to confirm
its actual and independent existence." -
12:37 - 12:40John Green: Or here's a video
that I made as part -
12:40 - 12:42of my show "Crash Course",
talking about World War I: -
12:42 - 12:45"The immediate cause was of course
the assassination in Sarajevo -
12:45 - 12:49of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
on June 28, 1914, -
12:49 - 12:52by a Bosnian-Serb nationalist
named Gavrilo Princip. -
12:52 - 12:57Quick aside: it's worth noting that the first big war
of the twentieth century began with an act of terrorism. -
12:57 - 13:02So Franz Ferdinand wasn't particularly well-liked
by his uncle, the emperor Franz Joseph -
13:02 - 13:04-- now "that" is a moustache! --
-
13:04 - 13:07but even so, the assassination led Austria
to issue an ultimatum to Serbia, -
13:07 - 13:11whereupon Serbia accepted some,
but not all, of Austria's demands, -
13:11 - 13:13leading Austria to declare
war against Serbia. -
13:13 - 13:16And then Russia, due to its alliance
with the Serbs, mobilized its army. -
13:16 - 13:20Germany, because it had an alliance with Austria,
told Russia to stop mobilizing, -
13:20 - 13:23which Russia failed to do,
so then Germany mobilized its own army, -
13:23 - 13:26declared war on Russia,
cemented an alliance with the Ottomans, -
13:26 - 13:30and then declared war on France,
because, you know -- France!" -
13:30 - 13:34(Laughter)
-
13:34 - 13:39And it's not just physics and world history
that people are choosing to learn through YouTube. -
13:39 - 13:42Here's a video about abstract mathematics:
-
13:44 - 13:46(Video) "So you're me,
and you're in math class yet again, -
13:46 - 13:49because they make you go,
like, every single day. -
13:49 - 13:51And you're learning about, I don't know,
the sums of infinite series. -
13:51 - 13:53That's a high school topic, right?
Which is odd, because -
13:53 - 13:56it's a cool topic, but they
somehow manage to ruin it anyway. -
13:56 - 14:00So I guess that's why they allow
infinite series in the curriculum. -
14:00 - 14:03So, in a quite understandable need for distraction,
you're doodling and thinking more about -
14:03 - 14:06what the plural of "series" should be
than about the topic at hand. -
14:06 - 14:09"Serieses," "seriese,"
"seriesen," and "serii?" -
14:09 - 14:13Or is it that the singular should be changed?
One "serie," or "serus," or "serum?" -
14:13 - 14:16Just like the singular
of "sheep" should be "shoop." -
14:16 - 14:21But the whole concept of things like
1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 and so on, approaching one, -
14:21 - 14:25is useful if, say, you wanna draw a line of elephants
each holding the tail of the next one: -
14:25 - 14:29normal elephant, young elephant, baby elephant,
dog-sized elephant, puppy-sized elephant... -
14:29 - 14:32All the way down to Mr. Tusks and beyond.
Which is at least a tiny bit awesome, -
14:32 - 14:35because you can get an infinite number
of elephants in a line -
14:35 - 14:38and still have it fit across
a single notebook page." -
14:38 - 14:40JG: And lastly, here's Destin,
from "Smarter Every Day", -
14:40 - 14:45talking about the conservation of angular momentum
and, since it's YouTube, cats: -
14:45 - 14:47(Video) "Hey, it's me, Destin.
Welcome back to "Smarter Every Day". -
14:47 - 14:51So you've probably observed that cats
almost always land on their feet. -
14:51 - 14:54Today's question is why?
-
14:54 - 14:56Like most simple questions,
there's a very complex answer. -
14:56 - 14:58For instance, let me
reword this question: -
14:58 - 15:04"How does a cat go from feet up
to feet down in a falling reference frame -
15:04 - 15:07without violating the conservation
of angular momentum?" -
15:08 - 15:12JG: So, here's something all
of these videos have in common: -
15:12 - 15:15they all have more than
half a million views on YouTube. -
15:15 - 15:18And those are people
watching not in classrooms, -
15:18 - 15:21but because they are part
of the communities of learning -
15:21 - 15:24that are being set up
by these channels. -
15:24 - 15:26And I said earlier that YouTube
is like a classroom to me, -
15:26 - 15:28and in many ways it is,
because here is the instructor -
15:28 - 15:31-- it's like the old-fashioned classroom --
here's the instructor, -
15:31 - 15:34and then beneath the instructor
is the students, -
15:34 - 15:37and they're all having
a conversation. -
15:37 - 15:39And I know that
YouTube Comments have -
15:39 - 15:42a very bad reputation
in the world of the Internet, -
15:42 - 15:45but in fact, if you go
on Comments for these channels, -
15:45 - 15:48what you'll find is people
engaging the subject matter, -
15:48 - 15:53asking difficult, complicated questions
that are about the subject matter, -
15:53 - 15:55and then other people
answering those questions. -
15:55 - 15:58And because the YouTube page is set up
-
15:58 - 16:04so that the page in which I'm talking to you
is on the exact same page -
16:04 - 16:11as your comments, you are participating in a live
and real and active way in the conversation. -
16:11 - 16:15And because I'm in Comments usually,
I get to participate with you, -
16:15 - 16:21and you find this whether it's world history,
or mathematics, or science, or whatever it is. -
16:21 - 16:24You also see young people using the tools
-
16:24 - 16:28and the sort of genres of the Internet
in order to create places -
16:28 - 16:31for intellectual engagement
instead of the ironic detachment -
16:31 - 16:35that maybe most of us associate
with memes and other Internet conventions, -
16:35 - 16:38you know "Got bored -- Invented calculus",
-
16:38 - 16:41or here's Honey Boo Boo
criticizing industrial capitalism -
16:41 - 16:44["Liberal capitalism is not at all
the Good of humanity. -
16:44 - 16:46Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle
of savage destructive nihilism"]. -
16:46 - 16:48In case you can't see
what she says... Yeah. -
16:50 - 16:55I really believe that
these spaces, these communities -
16:55 - 16:59have become, for a new
generation of learners, -
16:59 - 17:04the kind of communities,
the kind of cartographic communities -
17:04 - 17:08that I had when I was in high school,
and then again when I was in college. -
17:08 - 17:15And as an adult, re-finding these communities
has re-introduced me to a community of learners, -
17:15 - 17:20and has encouraged me to continue
to be a learner even in my adulthood, -
17:20 - 17:24so that I no longer feel like learning
is something reserved for the young. -
17:24 - 17:30Vi Hart and "Minute Physics" introduced me
to all kinds of things that I didn't know before. -
17:30 - 17:35And I know that we all hearken back to the days
of the Parisian salon in the Enlightenment, -
17:35 - 17:39or to the Algonquin Round Table, and wish
"Oh, I wish I could have been a part of that, -
17:39 - 17:42I wish I could have laughed
at Dorothy Parker's jokes". -
17:42 - 17:47But I'm here to tell you that
these places exist, they still exist. -
17:47 - 17:53They exist in corners of the Internet,
where old men fear to tread. (Laughter) -
17:53 - 17:59And I truly, truly believe that when
we invented Agloe, New York, in the 1960s, -
17:59 - 18:04when we made Agloe real,
we were just getting started. -
18:04 - 18:05Thank you.
-
18:05 - 18:08(Applause)
- Title:
- The Paper Town Academy | John Green | TEDxIndianapolis
- Description:
-
When we think of education as a school-based phenomenon, we do a disservice both to students and to the rest of us. Green argues that we should imagine education as a kind of cartography, and discuss how online communities are helping to build learning maps that will encourage students. The youth of today are quietly becoming the best-informed, most intellectually engaged generation in world history.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 18:10
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for The Paper Town Academy | John Green | TEDxIndianapolis | ||
TED Translators admin edited English subtitles for The Paper Town Academy | John Green | TEDxIndianapolis | ||
Retired user commented on English subtitles for The Paper Town Academy | John Green | TEDxIndianapolis | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for The Paper Town Academy | John Green | TEDxIndianapolis | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for The Paper Town Academy | John Green | TEDxIndianapolis | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for The Paper Town Academy | John Green | TEDxIndianapolis | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for The Paper Town Academy | John Green | TEDxIndianapolis | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for The Paper Town Academy | John Green | TEDxIndianapolis |
Retired user
A tiny typo at 5:35:
and I learned that iambic pentameter is => and I learned what iambic pentameter is