Itunes U
The most amazing thing about Apple to me hasn't been its Ipod, Ipad or any other I-product. It's not Steve Jobs. And it's definitely not the almost cult-like devotion Apple fans seem to be imbued with leading to near insufferable proselytising of Apple's perceived superiority over everything else on the planet. No, the best thing about Apple is Itunes, its media management software. Specifically, I'm talking about access to Itunes U (found under the Library section on the left navigation column). Itunes U is an Apple supported initiative bringing together courseware such as lectures, podcasts, vidcasts and seminars from the world's top universities and making it democratically accessible to one and all.
Just imagine, you can take a course on Morality and Justice from Harvard taught by world famous Michael Sandel from the comfort of your home together with supporting lecture notes and material. Or you could go to MIT's site on Itunes U and download full courses on physics, math, science. You could learn anthropology and sociology should you choose to. You could take up a course on international law from Yale Law School. Listen to lectures on Darwin's theories of evolution by world leading thinkers on the Cambridge micro-site. The world's knowledge at your fingertips taught by leading lecturers, thinkers and luminaries. The list of courses are mind-boggling both in content and quantity. So here's a quick and easy list of some of my favourite streams that I've subscribed to and from which I've learnt so much.
- If you have to start with just one course, start with this one : Justice with Michael Sandel. It's a very popular Harvard course on morality, justice and philosophy taught in an entertaining and thoughtful manner.
- Yale Law - Select Lectures : This is a series of lectures across a wide variety of subjects and topic that obviously center around the issues of law and its application in today's society. Listen especially to the lecture by Albie Sachs and a World of Law - Now and Then by Theodore Sorenson
- Game Theory - MIT : A world famous game theory thinker, Ben Polak, teaches an introduction to this fascinating subject that affects all of us in our daily lives. Absolutely riveting stuff!
- Fundamentals of Physics - Yale University : I've always been fascinated by logic and physics and this is a tremendously easy entry point into physics without all that math that bogs down one's personal enjoyment of the subject
- Philosophy for beginners - Marianne Talbot - Oxford University.
To me, the constant expansion of one's intellectual boundaries makes life that much sweeter as it clears the fog before us.
Thank you, Apple and Steve Jobs.