Conversation 1

Listen to a conversation between a student and his business professor.

Student

I thought collective intelligence was the same as something I studied in

my biology class, something called swarm intelligence, but then after the

example you gave, I mean, according to this biology article we read,

swarm intelligence is how all the ants in an ant colony work together,

know what to do ,like looking for food or repairing the nest.There is no

manager but the ants still figure out collectively which jobs they needed

the most.

Professor

The term collective intelligence is loosely related to what you’re talking

about. In the business world companies that use collective intelligence

can often increase their profits. So let’s talk about that example from

class,about the T-shirt company.

Student

How it invites people to create a design that you’d like to see on a T-shirt

and submitted online through the company’s website?

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Professor

Yeah. It’s one of several ways to exploit collective intelligence through

the Internet.

Student

Here's when having trouble. The people who submit designs aren’t each

of them creating their own design independently? How’s their collective?

Professor

Ah, I see what you mean. Individuals are coming up with design

independently. But look at this way. All of those independent designers

together, they are huge collective.

Student

Oh, I see.

Professor

And the next step in this, collective intelligence initiative, the designs go

on the company website and anyone in the online community can vote for

their favorite.

Student

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So the company figures out which designs are most popular, the ones

people would be most likely to buy, right?

Professor

Exactly. It's a form of market research really. So how would you say a

collective intelligence initiative like this one benefits the

company?

Student

I guess the people who voluntarily submit the designs, they're taking on

some of the workload that the company normally would have to pay

employees for?

Professor

Good! What else?

Student

Um, the voting? The company’s getting opinions guidance from potential

customers without having to pay them.

Professor

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Right.

Student

Okay. At first I thought the designers that they had to like, work

collectively, different people working on one design together over the

Internet.

Professor

Not necessarily. But actually, what you're describing is another form of

collective intelligence. Um, take a company that needs a new software

program to solve a particular problem and it doesn’t want to hire a

programmer, so it creates competition,offers a few hundred or a few

thousand dollars for the best solution. Sure, solo programmer or computer

scientists might enter the competition but software development is very

complex,so several programmers might work together online to write and

test their program. The company sponsoring the competition could even

hold back the price money if it doesn't consider any of the submissions to

be workable.

Student

So programmers invest their time for free, for just a small chance of

winning?

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Professor

Money isn't everything, like maybe you just enjoy writing computer

programs, are creating designs due to its hobby. If you're artistic, the

T-shirt company becomes a creative outlet for you and programmers

might be enticed by a challenge, a puzzle to solve.

Lecture 1

We were talking last time about the Viking age of Scandinavia which

lasted from about 700 CE to roughly 1100 CE. And in the early part of

the Viking age, it certainly wasn't what you call an urban society, but

there is evidence that quite a few towns emerged around that time. And

scholars have been trying to figure out why. What were the dynamics that

led to their existence?

One theory, for simplicity's sake, we call it the Central Place Theory, says

that these towns began as central places within different regions across

the Scandinavian landscape. In this view, the first towns were regional

centers each one type economically to the local surrounding countryside.

As a local market really, it is exercising political control over the area.

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Well, recently an archaeologist named Smith decided that there was

another way to look at the process of urbanization, how these towns

developed in the Viking age. He says that we shouldn't look at all these

early towns in the same way, that not all of them had their primary

relation with the surrounding countryside. He says fhatsome of these

early towns. What caused them to grow was their economic connections

with other towns, some of which were quite far away, in other words;

long-distance trade. He thinks we should look at some early Scandinavian

towns as a network. Now, his notion of network comes from network

theory. Network theory is a mathematical concept that's been used to

explain a lot of different processes in many different fields. Um, basically

it's the study of the structure of the relationships between the elements of

a system. Now a key aspect of network theory is the concept of nodal

points or notes. NodGl points are those viewpoints in a network that get

the most traffic. They are the most highly connected, like, like, like the

largest airports that have the most connection flights .

So Smith decided to figure out which towns in medieval Scandinavia

could be classified as nodal points for long-distance traffic in the network

of early Viking towns. He did this by analyzing artifacts that had been

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gathered from archaeological-sites from the early Viking era. So what he

did was to look not just at the quantify of artifacts that were found in

different sites, but also to classify them according to the types of artifacts

that were found. To determine whether a town had long-distance

connections, he looked at the quantity of imported goods found af the site,

as opposed to look, at available goods. One example of an important

goods he found Is a type of ceramics that wasn't produced in Scandinavia,

but in Deutschland, um, in what is now Germany. These German

ceramics are found in abundance in only seven sites in early Viking age

Scandinavia. Those same seven sites are also the only sites that contain

evidence of the production of bronzes. New making bronze required raw

materials, like copper alloy, which wasn't available locally. It would have

had to have come from d long distance away and passed to the hands of

traders. Because of this, S called these sites trading sites. It's that

long-distance connection that distinguishes a trading site from other kinds

of towns and makes it a nodal point in the network.

Why is network theory a more useful approach to fhe study of

Scandinavian urbanization than the Central Place Theory? Well, unlike

the Central Place Theory, Network Theory doesn’t make uniform

assumptions about the towns, assumptions that may not be true.

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According to the Central Place Theory, towns exerted political control

over the surrounding region and that would have required military force.

But in fact, until 900s, few Scandinavian towns were fortified. Network

theory makes no assumptions about political control. The only

characteristic that a town needs in order to qualify as a node in the

network is that it would be a suitable starting off point in fhe

long-distance trade and shipment of goods.

Lecture 2

Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an astronomy class.

Professor: Many people have been fascinated about Venus for centuries

because of its thick cloud cover, this so-called

planet of mystery and all of that. Well, what's under those clouds? What's

the surface of the planet like? Some questions

about the surface are still unresolved but, but we have learned a lot about

it in the past several years.

First of all, let me talk about how we have been able to get past those

clouds. First, there were Soviet modules2 that

landed directly on the surface and sent back some images of what was

around them. Second, we did some radar imaging

from satellites from above. Radar can get through the clouds. So what

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have we learned? Yes, Karen?

Student: Well, I remember reading that there's not really a lot going on,

that the surface of Venus is just flat and smooth

in a lot of places.

Professor: Yeah, smooth in a lot of places. But that's not, um... that's not

the whole picture. In other areas, you've got

canyons, ripped valleys, meteo craters, uh, lava domes, these lava

formations that look like giant pancakes. And also

volcanoes.

Well, one of the most interesting features on the surface are in fact the

shield volcanoes. Shield volcanoes formed when

magma comes out of the ground in the same spot over and over again.

Remember, magma is hot molten rock that's

underground, and it is called lava when it reaches the surface. Uh, so the

lava builds up, and hardens, and a volcano forms.

Now, the lava on Venus is thin. It spreads out easily. So shield volcanoes

have very gentle sloping sides. They are

called shield volcanoes, because viewed from above, they kind of

resemble shields, you know, like a warrior's shield.

But what's particularly interesting about these volcanoes is that most of

the volcanoes here on Earth are not shield

volcanoes. Instead, they are other volcano types, like strata volcanoes, for

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example, which are a result of tectonic plate

movement. Remember tectonic plates?

Underneath the Earth's crust, there are a number of shifting slabs or plates

that are slowly moving. And in the zones on

the edges of the plates where different plates meet and interact, that's

where we get most of Earth's volcanoes

On Venus, however, volcanoes are not clustered in discrete zones like

they are on Earth. Instead, they are more or less

randomly scattered over Venus's surface. Well, that's significant. Venus

has mostly shield volcanoes, and they are randomly

scattered, that indicates that Venus does not have moving tectonic plates,

and that's a big difference compared to Earth. Here

on Earth, moving tectonic plates are a major geological element, just

crucial for the whole surface dynamic, right?

So why doesn't Venus have them? Well, there are a few theories. One of

them is that this has to do with the fact that

Venus has no surface water that's needed to kind of lubricate the

movement of the plates, you know, like oceans on Earth.

Yeah, I forgot to spell that out. Uh, Venus has no surface water.

Student: Wait a second. Did you say we have shield volcanoes on Earth?

Can you give an example?

331

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Professor: Sure. The volcanoes in the Hawaii islands, in the Pacific

Ocean are shield volcanoes. They are formed over

a hot spot of magma. So while on Earth we have several types of

volcanoes, on Venus there's mostly the one type. Uh, Eric?

Student: Are the volcanoes on Venus still active?

Professor: Well, that's an interesting question. There is still some

discussion on that point. But here's what we do now.

First, the level of sulfur dioxide gas above Venus's clouds shows large

and very frequent fluctuations. It is quite possible that

these fluctuations, the huge increase and decrease of sulfur dioxide,

happening again and again. It's quite possible that this is

due to volcanic eruptions, because volcanic eruptions often emit gases. If

that's the case, volcanism could very well be the

root cause of Venus's thick cloud cover. And also we have observed

bursts of radio energy from the planet's surface. These

bursts are similar to what we see when volcanoes erupt on Earth. So this

too suggests ongoing volcanic activity. But

although this is intriguing evidence, no one's actually observed a Venus

volcano erupting yet, so we can't be positive.

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Conversation 2

Listen to a conversation between a student and his creative writing

professor.

Professor

Hi, Kane. We missed you on Thursday.

Student

Sorry I couldn’t make the class, Professor Bennett. But I was out of town.

Did I miss a lot?

Professor

You’ll be fine. But I paired students so as to co-write an epistolary fiction.

You’ll be working with Brian Simpson. Since he was also absent, so get

in touch with him soon, OK? Because between the two of you, you’ll be

writing about pages total, a story. Um, you’re quick with epistolary

literary form, right?

Student

Yeah. An epistolary piece is made up of letters. I’m... last year I wrote a

paper on democracy in the United States and I used a book called Letters

of Henry Adams. He was a journalist and historian who lived in late

1800s and early 1900s, and some of his letters in that book discussed his

democratic ideals.

Professor

Letters of Henry Adams. But remember that book is nonfiction. Those

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were actual letters written by only one writer, Henry Adams. Your

assignment for my class is to write a story through exchange of letters

between two fictional characters. So fist you and Brian will have to

decide what relationship your characters will have, best friends, brothers,

whatever. And then develop a story. Now your classmates, Debbie and

Maria. Debbie’s gonna play the role of a rock and roll singer and Maria

her agent, um back in the 1950s. Those characters could be a good choice

for them since Debbie and Maria are both big fans of early rock and roll

and know a lot about it.

Student

Oh, I see. Okay. What about coworkers? Like my character can work

part-time in the student employment office, like I do, and maybe he could

exchange emails with his officemate or something, like Kane could email

to Brian. Could i borrow your pencil and they’re sitting in desks right

next to each other. That could be funny.

Professor

Okay. But you know I’ve recently read an epistolary novel consisting

only of emails. It’s called Fast Office.

Student

Fast Office.

Professor

Yeah. It’s said in an accounting firm and it’s filled with office politics,

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comments about technology. Anyway the concept of Fast Office actually

had potential, but ultimately it was more like an endless stream of

disjointed remarks. I mean talk about its thin plot.

Student

Huh.

Professor

But that doesn’t mean you and Brian couldn’t make an email exchange

work. There is another epistolary novel called Life on the Refrigerator

Door and it comprises just notes that a mother and daughter leave for

each other, attached to their refrigerator door. And what isn’t expecting

much but through these short notes, the characters manage to tell us a

good story and convey their love and concern for each other in a really

powerful way.

Lecture 3

Narrator: Listen to part of a discussion in an art history class.

Professor: All right, let’s continue our discussion of portrait

artists(portraitist) and portraiture. Who remembers any of

the important points we made last time? Sandra?

Student: Well, artists have done portraits of people for centuries, of

famous people and regular people, and most

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portraits convey the artists’ personal vision, like their feelings and

insights about a person.

Professor: Great, that’s a crucial point, and I’d like to explore that a little

today. A great example of that, that vision in

portraiture, is Cecilia Beaux. Cecilia Beaux was born in 1854, and after

learning to paint and studying with several

important artists of the time, Beaux became known as one of the best

portrait painters in the United States. She was very

successful. She even had portraits of the wife and children of Theodore

Roosevelt, while he was president. Some did not get

much more prestige than that. Now, those portraits also reflect the kind of

subjects that Beaux tended to use, which were

mostly women and children. For example, in her first major work, her

subjects were ..., the painting featured her sister and

her nephew. Yes, Mark?

Student

Yeah, it just seems interesting. I was wondering if that was unusual to

have a portrait artist who is a woman become so

well-known and successful in the 19th century.

Professor

Great question. Yeah, she really stood out back in the 1800s. And today,

she is still considered one of the greatest

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portrait painters of her time, male or female. In fact, she was the first

full-time female instructor at the Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine Arts, and she was a full member of the National

Academy of Design. These are pretty important

institutions, so, yeah, she definitely made headway for women artists. Ok,

so let’s look at one of her portraits now, this

painting is called The Dreamer. It is one of my favorites. And I think it is

especially characteristic of Beaux’s work. So what

you see here is a portrait of a close friend of Cecilia Beaux. So tell me

what’s the first thing that draws you to this painting?

What catches your eye first.

Student

Well, for me, it is her face and hands, I think they are really expressive,

and also, they make the woman seem very

comtemplative, seems like she is thinking pretty seriously about

something.

Student

Yeah, her eyes kind of draw you in. But what strikes me is the contrasting

colors, the white dress and the dark

background. It kind of reminds me of that painting we discussed a few

weeks ago, by ...eh... John Singer Sargent. I think it

was called MadameX?

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Professor

I agree, good point. Yes, Beaux had high regard for Sargent’s work. And

this is something, a technique you will find in

both of their work. Ok, but the painting is called The Dreamer. What do

you see is dreamlike about it?

Student

Well, the background behind the woman is pretty vague. Like, maybe

there is no real context, like no definite

surroundings, expecially compared to the woman herself, since she is so

clear and well-defined.

Professor

Yes, the unclear background definitely contributes to that dreaminess. It

is meant to show a sense of isolation I think.

With the woman is deep in a daydream and not really aware of anything

eale. This painting shows how insightful Cecilia

Beaux was as a portrait artist. Besides her excellent technical skills, like

her use of brush strokes and color to make an

impression, both respectives come through. Her portraits reveal her own

interpretation of her subject’s state of mind. This is

what it is all about, not just likenesses

Now, the undefined background also shows how Cecilia Beaux was

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influenced by the French Impressionists, who

believed, like Beaux, in a personal rather than conventional approach to

their subject matter. Beaux used some impressionist

techniques and share much of their phylosophy, but her style, it was all

her own.

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