The idea of academy
Crooked Timber points to an interesting speech by Robert Hughes about the Royal Academy, and by extension the idea of a professional academy in general. I think in the resurgence of open Unix (Unix as literary tradition) you can see some similar themes.
I believe it's not just desirable but culturally necessary that England should have a great institution through which the opinions of artists about artistic value can be crystallised and seen, there on the wall, unpressured by market politics: and the best existing candidate for such an institution is a revitalised Royal Academy, which always was dedicated to contemporary art.
Part of the Academy's mission was to teach. It still should be. In that regard, the Academy has to be exemplary: not a kindergarten, but a place that upholds the primacy of difficult and demanding skills that leak from a culture and are lost unless they are incessantly taught to those who want to have them. And those people are always in a minority. Necessarily. Exceptions have to be.
I'm not absolutely sure it's necessary, and I don't know who is best to do it. Who speaks about software not just as business or science, but as a culture?
posted Fri 4 Jun 2004 in /software/opensource | link
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