Paper towns and why learning is awesome | John Green

Summary

In this engaging talk, the speaker explores the concept of 'paper towns' through the story of Agloe, New York, a fictional town created as a copyright trap that eventually became real. The narrative dives into the power of cartography, illustrating how our representations of the world can influence reality. The speaker further discusses the transformative impact of learning communities on personal growth, highlighting the importance of intellectual engagement and the metaphorical mapping of our lives.

Takeaways

• 🗺️ The map of New York State made in 1937 by General Drafting Company is renowned among cartographers for its unique feature of a 'paper town' called Agloe, New York.
• 🔒 Agloe, New York, was a 'copyright trap' or a fake place created by mapmakers Ernest Alpers and Otto G. Lindberg to protect their map's copyright.
• 🏠 The fictional town of Agloe became real when people, expecting a place there, built a gas station, general store, and houses at the location indicated on the map.
• 📚 The speaker's third book, 'Paper Towns,' is inspired by the idea that what we write can change the world, akin to the transformation of Agloe from fiction to reality.
• 🌐 The way we map the world actually changes the world, suggesting that our perceptions and representations have tangible impacts on reality.
• 🧭 The concept of cartography is used metaphorically to describe how our personal 'maps' or life plans shape our lives and the futures we might have.
• 📉 The speaker's early disengagement with education changed when he joined a community of learners at Indian Springs School, emphasizing the importance of environment in learning.
• 🤓 Learning became 'cool' for the speaker due to the influence of a learning community that valued intellectualism and engagement.
• 🎓 The speaker's academic transformation was not solely due to classroom learning but also life experiences and interactions with others that broadened his knowledge.
• 🌐 The Internet has become a new space for learning communities to form, offering platforms for intellectual engagement outside of traditional educational settings.
• 📹 YouTube, in particular, has emerged as a powerful tool for learning, with channels like 'Minute Physics' and 'Crash Course' providing educational content to a wide audience.
• 💬 YouTube comments sections, despite their reputation, can be vibrant communities of learners engaging with the material and each other in meaningful discussions.

Q & A

What is the significance of the map made by the General Drafting Company in 1937?

The map is significant among cartography enthusiasts because it contains a 'paper town' named Agloe, New York, which was a copyright trap inserted by the mapmakers to protect their work from being copied.

What is a 'paper town' and why was Agloe considered one?

A 'paper town' is a fictional place that mapmakers sometimes include on their maps to protect their copyright. Agloe was considered a paper town because it was a made-up location by Ernest Alpers and Otto G. Lindberg, who used the initialism of their names for the town's name.

How did the town of Agloe, New York, come to exist in reality?

Agloe became real because people kept going to the intersection of two dirt roads marked as Agloe on maps, expecting to find a place by that name. Eventually, someone built a place called Agloe there, complete with a gas station, a general store, and houses.

What is the metaphorical significance of Agloe, New York, to a novelist?

Agloe represents the idea that the written word can have a tangible impact on the world, inspiring the novelist to believe that their creations can influence reality, which is why the speaker's third book is titled 'Paper Towns'.

How does the speaker describe the impact of maps on the world?

The speaker suggests that maps not only reflect the world but also shape it. The way we map the world changes our perception and understanding of it, and this in turn can affect the way the world is organized and functions.

What was the speaker's initial attitude towards education and why?

The speaker initially viewed education as a series of arbitrary hurdles to be overcome for the sake of adulthood. This was because they felt the educational system was not personally meaningful or engaging.

What changed the speaker's perspective on learning when they attended Indian Springs School?

At Indian Springs School, the speaker became part of a community of learners who celebrated intellectualism and engagement. This environment encouraged the speaker to become a learner because they found learning to be cool and meaningful.

How did the speaker's personal map of life expand through learning?

The speaker's personal map expanded as they learned new things and engaged with different ideas and communities. This made their life map bigger, containing more places and possibilities for the future.

What role did the community play in the speaker's learning journey after high school?

After high school, the speaker found themselves in various learning communities, such as college, working at a magazine, and later through online platforms. These communities provided a space for continuous learning and engagement.

How does the speaker view the role of online platforms like YouTube in fostering learning communities?

The speaker sees online platforms, particularly YouTube, as modern classrooms that facilitate learning communities. These platforms allow people to learn and engage with subject matter in a participatory manner, with the opportunity to ask and answer questions in a communal setting.

What is the importance of the YouTube comment section in these learning communities?

The YouTube comment section is important because it allows for active participation in the conversation around the educational content. It provides a space for viewers to ask questions, discuss ideas, and engage with the material and each other in a meaningful way.

Outlines

00:00

🗺️ The Birth of Agloe, New York: A Cartographic Mystery

This paragraph introduces a historical map of New York State from 1937 by the General Drafting Company, which is famous among cartographers for a unique reason. The map features a fictional town called Agloe, New York, which was a 'paper town' or 'copyright trap' created by mapmakers Ernest Alpers and Otto G. Lindberg. The purpose was to protect their map's copyright by inserting a fake place that, if found on another map, would prove plagiarism. Interestingly, Agloe eventually became a real place with a gas station and a few houses, named after people who mistakenly believed the map's depiction. The speaker uses this story as a metaphor for the power of written words to shape reality, and how our personal 'maps' of life can influence the direction we take.

05:01

🌟 The Transformative Power of Learning Communities

The speaker recounts his transformation from a disengaged student to an eager learner when he joined Indian Springs School, a community of intellectualism and engagement. This environment challenged his previous perceptions and led him to appreciate learning for its own sake, not just for career advancement. He discovered the joy of learning about various subjects, from infinite sets to iambic pentameter, which enriched his life daily. The speaker emphasizes the importance of cartography in learning, not just as a metaphor for exploration, but as a way to expand one's life map, opening up new possibilities and futures.

10:03

🌐 The Internet as a Modern Cartographic Community

The speaker discusses the role of the internet in fostering learning communities, starting with his experience with Ze Frank's 'The Show', which re-engaged him in collaborative learning. He highlights various online platforms, such as Tumblr, Reddit, and YouTube, where people gather to learn and discuss topics of interest. The speaker points out that YouTube, in particular, has become a hub for educational content, with channels like 'Minute Physics' and 'Crash Course' offering accessible lessons on complex subjects. These communities are not just about entertainment but about intellectual engagement, where people of all ages can participate in the 'cartographic enterprise' of understanding the world.

15:05

🚀 The Impact of Online Learning on Personal Growth

In the final paragraph, the speaker reflects on the impact of online learning communities on his personal growth. He contrasts the traditional classroom setting with the interactive nature of YouTube, where viewers can engage in real-time discussions in the comments section. The speaker argues that these online spaces are the modern equivalent of historical intellectual gatherings, offering opportunities for continuous learning beyond formal education. He encourages the audience to embrace these digital communities as places for intellectual exploration and to continue learning throughout their lives.

Keywords

💡Cartography

Cartography is the study and practice of making maps and charts. In the context of the video, it is used metaphorically to discuss how the way we map the world and our lives shapes our understanding and experiences. The script mentions 'personal cartographic enterprise' to illustrate the idea that our personal choices and perspectives can influence our life paths, as seen when the speaker discusses the impact of his educational journey and the concept of 'paper towns'.

💡Paper Town

A 'paper town' refers to a fictional place that cartographers would insert into maps as a copyright trap to catch copyright infringers. In the video, the concept of 'Agloe, New York' serves as a real-life example of a paper town that eventually became a real place due to people's belief in its existence. This story is used to highlight the power of collective belief and the idea that our creations, like those on paper, can manifest in the real world.

💡Copyright Trap

A copyright trap, also known as a 'paper town,' is a fictitious location included on a map to protect the mapmaker's intellectual property. If another map includes the same fake location, it serves as evidence of copyright infringement. The video uses the story of Agloe, New York, to demonstrate how such traps can inadvertently lead to the creation of real-world places.

💡Scrabblization

Scrabblization is a playful term used in the video to describe the process of creating a word by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase, in this case, the initials of the mapmakers' names. 'Agloe' is a scrabblization of the initials of Ernest Alpers and Otto G. Lindberg, emphasizing the creativity and personal touch that can be involved in mapmaking.

💡Infinite Sets

Infinite sets are sets with an unlimited number of elements. The video mentions the concept of different sizes of infinity, which is a fundamental idea in set theory and mathematics. The speaker uses this concept to illustrate the boundless potential for learning and the expansion of one's 'map' of knowledge, as he discovered in his educational journey.

💡Iambic Pentameter

Iambic pentameter is a type of metrical line used in poetry, consisting of five 'iambs,' where an iamb is a metrical foot with one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. The video uses this term to exemplify the kind of literary knowledge the speaker acquired during his time at Indian Springs School, which contributed to his broader understanding of literature and language.

💡Opportunity Cost

Opportunity cost is an economic concept that represents the value of the next best alternative that is foregone when making a decision. In the video, the speaker recounts a personal anecdote involving playing Super Mario Kart, which led to a discussion about the concept of opportunity cost, illustrating how everyday experiences can lead to learning and a deeper understanding of economic principles.

💡Learning Community

A learning community refers to a group of individuals who engage in shared learning experiences and intellectual pursuits. Throughout the video, the speaker emphasizes the importance of being part of such communities, both in his educational journey and in his adult life, as they foster an environment that encourages continuous learning and growth.

💡Ze Frank

Ze Frank is an Internet personality known for his educational and entertaining content. In the video, the speaker mentions Ze Frank as an example of a community builder and a source of intellectual engagement, highlighting the role of online platforms in facilitating learning communities and the democratization of knowledge.

💡YouTube as a Classroom

The video likens YouTube to a classroom, where educators and learners interact through video content and comments. This metaphor is used to describe the modern, accessible way in which people can engage with educational material outside of traditional classroom settings, emphasizing the active participation and community aspect of learning on the platform.

💡Conservation of Angular Momentum

The conservation of angular momentum is a principle in physics that states the total angular momentum of a system remains constant unless acted upon by an external torque. The video uses a 'Smarter Every Day' video about cats landing on their feet as an example of how complex scientific concepts can be explored and explained in an engaging way on YouTube, making learning more accessible and interesting.

Highlights

The map of New York State from 1937 by the General Drafting Company is renowned among cartography enthusiasts for its inclusion of a 'paper town' called Agloe.

Agloe, New York, was a fictitious place created as a copyright trap by mapmakers Ernest Alpers and Otto G. Lindberg.

The phenomenon of Agloe becoming a real place due to people's expectation and subsequent establishment of a gas station and store illustrates the power of collective belief.

The speaker's third book, 'Paper Towns,' is inspired by the metaphor of the power of written ideas to shape reality.

The concept that our maps of the world not only reflect but also influence the world is discussed, highlighting the idea that cartography is a two-way street.

The speaker's personal journey from being a disengaged student to becoming an active learner is shared, emphasizing the impact of a learning community.

The transformative experience of attending Indian Springs School and its role in fostering a love for learning is described.

Learning is presented as an exploration, akin to cartography, where the learner is encouraged to venture beyond known territories.

The importance of learning communities in shaping one's intellectual growth and the dangers of learning in isolation are discussed.

The speaker's experience of losing a learning community after quitting his job and the subsequent feeling of misery is shared.

The discovery of Ze Frank's 'The Show' and its role in re-engaging the speaker with a learning community is highlighted.

Examples of online learning communities, such as those found on YouTube, are given to demonstrate the modern forms of intellectual engagement.

The role of YouTube as a modern classroom, where educators and learners interact in real-time through comments, is explored.

The speaker argues that online platforms have become new salons for intellectual discourse, offering opportunities for learning outside traditional settings.

The potential of the Internet to create and sustain learning communities that can enrich individuals' intellectual lives is emphasized.

The speaker concludes by encouraging the audience to seek out and participate in these online learning communities to continue their intellectual growth.

Transcripts

This is a map of New York State

that was made in 1937 by the General Drafting Company.

It's an extremely famous map among cartography nerds,

because down here at the bottom of the Catskill Mountains,

there is a little town called Roscoe --

actually, this will go easier if I just put it up here --

There's Roscoe, and then right above Roscoe is Rockland, New York,

and then right above that is the tiny town of Agloe, New York.

Agloe, New York, is very famous to cartographers,

because it's a paper town.

It's also known as a copyright trap.

Mapmakers -- because my map of New York and your map of New York

are going to look very similar, on account of the shape of New York --

often, mapmakers will insert fake places onto their maps,

in order to protect their copyright.

Because then, if my fake place shows up on your map,

I can be well and truly sure that you have robbed me.

Agloe is a scrabblization of the initials of the two guys who made this map,

Ernest Alpers and Otto [G.] Lindberg,

and they released this map in 1937.

Decades later, Rand McNally releases a map

with Agloe, New York, on it, at the same exact intersection

of two dirt roads in the middle of nowhere.

Well, you can imagine the delight over at General Drafting.

They immediately call Rand McNally, and they say,

"We've caught you! We made Agloe, New York, up.

It is a fake place. It's a paper town.

We're going to sue your pants off!"

And Rand McNally says, "No, no, no, no, Agloe is real."

Because people kept going to that intersection of two dirt roads --

(Laughter)

in the middle of nowhere, expecting there to be a place called Agloe --

someone built a place called Agloe, New York.

(Laughter)

It had a gas station, a general store, two houses at its peak.

(Laughter)

And this is of course a completely irresistible metaphor to a novelist,

because we would all like to believe that the stuff that we write down on paper

can change the actual world in which we're actually living,

which is why my third book is called "Paper Towns".

But what interests me ultimately more than the medium in which this happened,

is the phenomenon itself.

It's easy enough to say that the world shapes our maps of the world, right?

Like the overall shape of the world is obviously going to affect our maps.

But what I find a lot more interesting is the way

that the manner in which we map the world changes the world.

Because the world would truly be a different place if North were down.

And the world would be a truly different place

if Alaska and Russia weren't on opposite sides of the map.

And the world would be a different place

if we projected Europe to show it in its actual size.

The world is changed by our maps of the world.

The way that we choose -- sort of, our personal cartographic enterprise,

also shapes the map of our lives,

and that in turn shapes our lives.

I believe that what we map changes the life we lead.

And I don't mean that in some, like, secret-y Oprah's Angels network, like,

you-can-think-your-way- out-of-cancer sense.

But I do believe that while maps don't show you where you will go in your life,

they show you where you might go.

You very rarely go to a place that isn't on your personal map.

So I was a really terrible student when I was a kid.

My GPA was consistently in the low 2s.

And I think the reason that I was such a terrible student

is that I felt like education was just a series of hurdles

that had been erected before me,

and I had to jump over in order to achieve adulthood.

And I didn't really want to jump over these hurdles,

because they seemed completely arbitrary, so I often wouldn't,

and then people would threaten me, you know,

they'd threaten me with this "going on [my] permanent record,"

or "You'll never get a good job."

I didn't want a good job!

As far as I could tell at eleven or twelve years old,

like, people with good jobs woke up very early in the morning,

(Laughter)

and the men who had good jobs, one of the first things they did

was tie a strangulation item of clothing around their necks.

They literally put nooses on themselves,

and then they went off to their jobs, whatever they were.

That's not a recipe for a happy life.

These people -- in my, symbol-obsessed, twelve year-old imagination --

these people who are strangling themselves

as one of the first things they do each morning,

they can't possibly be happy.

Why would I want to jump over all of these hurdles

and have that be the end?

That's a terrible end!

And then, when I was in tenth grade, I went to this school,

Indian Springs School, a small boarding school,

outside of Birmingham, Alabama.

And all at once I became a learner.

And I became a learner, because I found myself

in a community of learners.

I found myself surrounded by people

who celebrated intellectualism and engagement,

and who thought that my ironic oh-so-cool disengagement

wasn't clever, or funny,

but, like, it was a simple and unspectacular response

to very complicated and compelling problems.

And so I started to learn, because learning was cool.

I learned that some infinite sets are bigger than other infinite sets,

and I learned that iambic pentameter is and why it sounds so good to human ears.

I learned that the Civil War was a nationalizing conflict,

I learned some physics,

I learned that correlation shouldn't be confused with causation --

all of these things, by the way,

enriched my life on a literally daily basis.

And it's true that I don't use most of them for my "job,"

but that's not what it's about for me.

It's about cartography.

What is the process of cartography?

It's, you know, sailing upon some land, and thinking,

"I think I'll draw that bit of land,"

and then wondering, "Maybe there's some more land to draw."

And that's when learning really began for me.

It's true that I had teachers that didn't give up on me,

and I was very fortunate to have those teachers,

because I often gave them cause to think there was no reason to invest in me.

But a lot of the learning that I did in high school

wasn't about what happened inside the classroom,

it was about what happened outside of the classroom.

For instance, I can tell you

that "There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons --

That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes --"

not because I memorized Emily Dickinson in school

when I was in high school,

but because there was a girl when I was in high school,

and her name was Amanda, and I had a crush on her,

and she liked Emily Dickinson poetry.

The reason I can tell you what opportunity cost is,

is because one day when I was playing Super Mario Kart on my couch,

my friend Emmet walked in, and he said,

"How long have you been playing Super Mario Kart?"

And I said, "I don't know, like, six hours?" and he said,

"Do you realize that if you'd worked at Baskin-Robbins those six hours,

you could have made 30 dollars, so in some ways,

you just paid thirty dollars to play Super Mario Kart."

And I was, like, "I'll take that deal."

(Laughter)

But I learned what opportunity cost is.

And along the way, the map of my life got better.

It got bigger; it contained more places.

There were more things that might happen,

more futures I might have.

It wasn't a formal, organized learning process,

and I'm happy to admit that.

It was spotty, it was inconsistent, there was a lot I didn't know.

I might know, you know, Cantor's idea

that some infinite sets are larger than other infinite sets,

but I didn't really understand the calculus behind that idea.

I might know the idea of opportunity cost,

but I didn't know the law of diminishing returns.

But the great thing about imagining learning as cartography,

instead of imagining it as arbitrary hurdles

that you have to jump over,

is that you see a bit of coastline, and that makes you want to see more.

And so now I do know at least some of the calculus

that underlies all of that stuff.

So, I had one learning community

in high school, then I went to another for college,

and then I went to another,

when I started working at a magazine called "Booklist,"

where I was an assistant, surrounded by astonishingly well-read people.

And then I wrote a book.

And like all authors dream of doing,

I promptly quit my job.

(Laughter)

And for the first time since high school,

I found myself without a learning community, and it was miserable.

I hated it.

I read many, many books during this two-year period.

I read books about Stalin,

and books about how the Uzbek people came to identify as Muslims,

and I read books about how to make atomic bombs,

but it just felt like I was creating my own hurdles,

and then jumping over them myself, instead of feeling the excitement

of being part of a community of learners, a community of people

who are engaged together in the cartographic enterprise

of trying to better understand and map the world around us.

And then, in 2006, I met that guy.

His name is Ze Frank.

I didn't actually meet him, just on the Internet.

Ze Frank was running, at the time, a show called "The Show with Ze Frank,"

and I discovered the show,

and that was my way back into being a community learner again.

Here's Ze talking about Las Vegas:

(Video) Ze Frank: Las Vegas was built in the middle of a huge, hot desert.

Almost everything here was brought from somewhere else --

the sort of rocks, the trees, the waterfalls.

These fish are almost as out of place as my pig that flew.

Contrasted to the scorching desert that surrounds this place,

so are these people.

Things from all over the world have been rebuilt here, away from their histories,

and away from the people that experience them differently.

Sometimes improvements were made -- even the Sphinx got a nose job.

Here, there's no reason to feel like you're missing anything.

This New York means the same to me as it does to everyone else.

Everything is out of context, and that means context allows for everything:

Self Parking, Events Center, Shark Reef.

This fabrication of place could be one of the world's greatest achievements,

because no one belongs here; everyone does.

As I walked around this morning, I noticed most of the buildings

were huge mirrors reflecting the sun back into the desert.

But unlike most mirrors,

which present you with an outside view of yourself embedded in a place,

these mirrors come back empty.

John Green: Makes me nostalgic for the days

when you could see the pixels in online video.

(Laughter)

Ze isn't just a great public intellectual, he's also a brilliant community builder,

and the community of people that built up around these videos

was in many ways a community of learners.

So we played Ze Frank at chess collaboratively, and we beat him.

We organized ourselves to take a young man on a road trip across the United States.

We turned the Earth into a sandwich,

by having one person hold a piece of bread at one point on the Earth,

and on the exact opposite point of the Earth,

have another person holding a piece of bread.

I realize that these are silly ideas, but they are also "learny" ideas,

and that was what was so exciting to me,

and if you go online, you can find communities like this all over the place.

Follow the calculus tag on Tumblr,

and yes, you will see people complaining about calculus,

but you'll also see people re-blogging those complaints,

making the argument that calculus is interesting and beautiful,

and here's a way in to thinking about the problem that you find unsolvable.

You can go to places like Reddit, and find sub-Reddits,

like "Ask a Historian" or "Ask Science,"

where you can ask people who are in these fields

a wide range of questions,

from very serious ones to very silly ones.

But to me, the most interesting communities of learners

that are growing up on the Internet right now are on YouTube,

and admittedly, I am biased.

But I think in a lot of ways, the YouTube page resembles a classroom.

Look for instance at "Minute Physics,"

a guy who's teaching the world about physics:

(Video) Let's cut to the chase.

As of July 4, 2012, the Higgs boson is the last fundamental piece

of the standard model of particle physics to be discovered experimentally.

But, you might ask, why was the Higgs boson

included in the standard model,

alongside well-known particles like electrons and photons and quarks,

if it hadn't been discovered back then in the 1970s?

Good question. There are two main reasons.

First, just like the electron is an excitation in the electron field,

the Higgs boson is simply a particle which is an excitation

of the everywhere-permeating Higgs field.

The Higgs field in turn plays an integral role

in our model for the weak nuclear force.

In particular, the Higgs field helps explain why it's so weak.

We'll talk more about this in a later video,

but even though weak nuclear theory was confirmed in the 1980s, in the equations,

the Higgs field is so inextricably jumbled with the weak force, that until now

we've been unable to confirm its actual and independent existence.

JG: Or here's a video that I made

as part of my show "Crash Course," talking about World War I:

(Video) The immediate cause was of course the assassination in Sarajevo

of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand,

on June 28, 1914, by a Bosnian-Serb nationalist named Gavrilo Princip.

Quick aside: It's worth noting

that the first big war of the twentieth century began

with an act of terrorism.

So Franz Ferdinand wasn't particularly well-liked

by his uncle, the emperor Franz Joseph -- now that is a mustache!

But even so, the assassination led Austria to issue an ultimatum to Serbia,

whereupon Serbia accepted some, but not all, of Austria's demands,

leading Austria to declare war against Serbia.

And then Russia, due to its alliance with the Serbs, mobilized its army.

Germany, because it had an alliance with Austria,

told Russia to stop mobilizing,

which Russia failed to do, so then Germany mobilized its own army,

declared war on Russia, cemented an alliance with the Ottomans,

and then declared war on France, because, you know, France.

(Laughter)

And it's not just physics and world history

that people are choosing to learn through YouTube.

Here's a video about abstract mathematics.

(Video) So you're me, and you're in math class yet again,

because they make you go every single day.

And you're learning about, I don't know, the sums of infinite series.

That's a high school topic, right?

Which is odd, because it's a cool topic, but they somehow manage to ruin it anyway.

So I guess that's why they allow infinite series in the curriculum.

So, in a quite understandable need for distraction, you're doodling

and thinking more about what the plural of "series" should be

than about the topic at hand: "serieses," "seriese," "seriesen," and "serii?"

Or is it that the singular should be changed: one "serie," or "serum,"

just like the singular of "sheep" should be "shoop."

But the whole concept of things

like 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 and so on approaches one, is useful if, say,

you want to draw a line of elephants,

each holding the tail of the next one:

normal elephant, young elephant, baby elephant, dog-sized elephant,

puppy-sized elephant, all the way down to Mr. Tusks and beyond.

Which is at least a tiny bit awesome,

because you can get an infinite number of elephants in a line,

and still have it fit across a single notebook page.

JG: And lastly, here's Destin, from "Smarter Every Day,"

talking about the conservation of angular momentum,

and, since it's YouTube, cats:

(Video) Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to "Smarter Every Day."

So you've probably observed that cats almost always land on their feet.

Today's question is: why?

Like most simple questions, there's a very complex answer.

For instance, let me reword this question:

How does a cat go from feet-up to feet-down in a falling reference frame,

without violating the conservation of angular momentum?

(Laughter)

JG: So, here's something all four of these videos have in common:

They all have more than half a million views on YouTube.

And those are people watching not in classrooms,

but because they are part of the communities of learning

that are being set up by these channels.

And I said earlier that YouTube is like a classroom to me,

and in many ways it is, because here is the instructor --

it's like the old-fashioned classroom: here's the instructor,

and then beneath the instructor are the students,

and they're all having a conversation.

And I know that YouTube comments have a very bad reputation

in the world of the Internet,

but in fact, if you go on comments for these channels,

what you'll find is people engaging the subject matter,

asking difficult, complicated questions that are about the subject matter,

and then other people answering those questions.

And because the YouTube page is set up so that the page in which I'm talking to you

is on the exact -- the place where I'm talking to you is on the exact same page

as your comments,

you are participating in a live and real and active way in the conversation.

And because I'm in comments usually, I get to participate with you.

And you find this whether it's world history,

or mathematics, or science, or whatever it is.

You also see young people using the tools and the sort of genres of the Internet

in order to create places for intellectual engagement,

instead of the ironic detachment

that maybe most of us associate with memes and other Internet conventions --

you know, "Got bored. Invented calculus."

Or, here's Honey Boo Boo criticizing industrial capitalism:

["Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity.

Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism."]

In case you can't see what she says ... yeah.

I really believe that these spaces,

these communities, have become for a new generation of learners,

the kind of communities, the kind of cartographic communities

that I had when I was in high school, and then again when I was in college.

And as an adult, re-finding these communities

has re-introduced me to a community of learners,

and has encouraged me to continue to be a learner even in my adulthood,

so that I no longer feel like learning is something reserved for the young.

Vi Hart and "Minute Physics" introduced me

to all kinds of things that I didn't know before.

And I know that we all hearken back

to the days of the Parisian salon in the Enlightenment,

or to the Algonquin Round Table, and wish,

"Oh, I wish I could have been a part of that,

I wish I could have laughed at Dorothy Parker's jokes."

But I'm here to tell you that these places exist, they still exist.

They exist in corners of the Internet, where old men fear to tread.

(Laughter)

And I truly, truly believe that when we invented Agloe, New York, in the 1960s,

when we made Agloe real, we were just getting started.

Thank you.

(Applause)