Friday, January 13, 2017

We need a TV satire of universities

Today is the last day of my vacation and so on monday I will be back to serious (?!) blogging about science. In the mean time...

On a recent long flight I enjoyed watching many episodes of Silicon Valley, a TV sitcom (?) that is a satire of start up companies. I thought it was pretty funny. [But maybe that was the long flight...]
This clip is a good sample.


The show reminded me of Utopia, an Australian TV satire of government bureaucracy.
Both shows do well at pillorying the personalities who peddle management, marketing, money, and metrics (M^4! ) and have a disproportionate influence on the direction of things. Universities are fertile for similar satire.

A starting point for ideas could be The Department, a play written in 1975 by David Williamson, one of Australia's best-known playwrights. He had been a lecturer in mechanical engineering and social psychology for a number of years before writing the play.

No comments:

Post a Comment