Seen and heard: January 2013

Goodbye to Canterbury - inspirational meditation by Rowan Williams, the out-going Archbishop of Canterbury, in the form of a tour of Canterbury Cathedral. He should do lots more telly.
A New Beginning - saving-the-world-from-environmental-disaster adventure game in a comic book style, which lives up to its glowing reviews.
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, by Sherry Turkle, 2005 edition, originally published 1984 - ground-breaking (for its time) anthropological investigation of the human-technology relationship, from kids arguing whether their new computer toys are live to the peculiarities of hacker culture. (Interesting to compare to a more recent anthropological study of hacker culture, see here)
OLDS-MOOC - the Open Learning Design Studio Massive Open Online Course.
It's Complicated - 2009 film, now seen on TV, with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin as a divorced couple starting an extra-marital affair with each other.
Rachel Cusk, article in Guardian Review, original title "The Book of Self" - especially interesting on what drives people to creative writings courses: "Very often a desire to write is a desire to live more honestly through language; the student feels the need to assert a 'true' self through the language system, perhaps for the reason that this same system, so intrinsic to every social and personal network, has given rise to a 'false' self."
Theatre of the Ayre - counter-tenor, lute and viol band, playing at The Stables, playing Dowland and other late-Elizabethan music. Extraordinary perception-heightening effect of listening to this intimate kind of music for an extended period.
Howard Goodall's Story of Music - proof that didactic television isn't dead, as long as you've got something to say and something to show. (Also that you don't need location shooting to tell a historical story; it's all done through studio and concert hall filming, supplemented by archive and stock library footage.)