One of the things I really love about being in Britain is the history, and the amount of public discourse. The country really does have a large amount of intellectuals, (although you would never know it around Soccer season)
Learned Societies have been around here for over 350 years with the founding of the Royal Society. These days most are on the web, and provide great resources with Libraries, pictures and videos. Many have been hosting public lectures from experts in their fields for hundreds of years. (not the same experts)
Britain was the centre of the industrial and scientific revolutions, and this means a great number of these Societies or Institutions exist in London, such as :-
The Royal Society
The Royal Society of Arts
The British Academy
Gresham College
The Royal Institution
Society of Chemical Industry
Royal Geographical Society
Royal Institute of Philosophy
Royal Asiatic Society
The Linnean Society
Royal Academy of Arts
Royal Statistical Society
Almost all of the above have useful and informative web sites.
These days we can see many of these lectures on the Web
Royal Society TV
RSA on You Tube
RiAus
I am quite pleased to see that some of these have spread around the world, and have branches or affiliates in Australian such RiAus
Intelligence Squared is a London based debating forum, where the debates are now streamed over the web for free, and people can interact via twitter in real time. It's been so popular it's spread to the US, Australia, Hong Kong, Nigeria, and the Ukraine.
London also has public debates at the Centre for Inquiry. Some of these are video recorded as well.
Many Universities have Lectures on the Web, just to point out two London ones.
London School of Economics
Imperial College London
It was on YouTube where I first came across The RSA, and from there I started to discovered the rich variety the local instutions provide.
“London is the epitome of our times, and the Rome of today.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
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