Terribilis Este Locus Iste

I’m With You in Rockland: Losing Nostalgia

aaronwhite:

I’m calling out the techno-nostalgics: you people are luddites, counter-productive, and blind to this reality, and the coming-reality.

Get constructive, or get lost.

What is a techno-nostalgic? Here are a few ‘warning’ phrases:

• “the Kindle can’t work, it can never replicate the smell and feel of real books”.
• “The death of the Newspaper is a horrible thing”
• “The Internet is making our generation ADD, and removing wonder”

All these quips have some insight, but does anyone honestly believe we won’t replace paper with something digital? That real-time web-content untrammeled by production and distribution constraints won’t win? That the Internet is an incredible and lasting tool, obvious even during its fuzzy infancy?

I reject that even then techno-nostalgics are this short-sighted.

These and many more ‘scary’ new institutions will come to pass as the old ones die for very real reasons.

Here’s the take-away:

Drop the nostalgia, leverage yourself to first identify what we gain and lose with each change, and then get creative in suggesting even the smallest improvements to the new ways.

Or go away.

I read this and was immediately insulted.  The fact that I’m responding here means that I got over that and now I’m just disappointed.  Maybe if I presented my response in Kindle form you might have taken the time to read it, but as it is I’ll just leave it at this:

I never said, nor would I ever say, that technology is bad.  I’m sorry if you mis-read or mis-understood what I wrote; I’m sorry if I offend you when I ask you to stop and think that perhaps the way we’re using technology is leading us in a harmful direction as a species.

Accepting something just “because it exists” or even “because it’s easy” is absolutely short sighted.  Instead of blindly following the money in building massive social networks (and upcoming “lifestyle networks” if I read your web3.0 post right), could we please stop for a minute and ask how to make technology work to increase personal happiness?

Perhaps the disconnect here is that you’re OK with a future that de-emphasizes individuality.  Perhaps you’re OK with fulfillment from World of Warcraft XVII and Fifth Life.  Perhaps you’re OK with our sons learning how to be a gentlemen from some website.

Fact is, I’m not.  I wouldn’t trade learning how to be a gentleman from my father and grandfather for the world.  Once I almost traded real life for a video game — actually I did for a while — and I dearly hope that that isn’t the face of the future.  I really hope that schools backs away from the trend of teaching how to learn instead of think.  I really hope that we can organize ourselves into a culture that molds technology around itself instead of a culture that molds itself around technology.  It would be nice if society enabled the individual who works hard to stand out instead of serving as an equalizer helping everyone be generic.

I really do hope that if your view of the future comes true that you are happy in it.  That being said, I really hope your view never comes to pass.

If it does? You win.  I will go away.  I promise you that.  I’ll be out there hiking and climbing mountains, growing a little garden if the rain isn’t too acidic, and trying to watch the sunset for everyone that is too busy to see it.  I can also promise you I will go away defeated; not because my ideals didn’t win, but because my efforts won’t have been enough to save humanity from it’s own shortsightedness and stupidity.

But before you die, come visit me.  I’ll pour you a cup of tea and you can tell me about all successes and points you’ve gained on all your user accounts (or will it be Parallel-Life-Avatars by then?).  I’ll be curious on how you look back on your life - well lived or lacking.

And if you still don’t understand my concern, go substitute at a local middle or highschool.  Or go talk to Donald Knuth about it, I’m pretty sure he understands where I’m coming from.  I’d say send him an email, but he got rid of that a while ago.

“If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidty we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissaince. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars.” ~RIP Carl Sagan

The Sum of All Human Knowledge… Is Not Enough

aaronwhite:

In my left hand, a Kindle, in the right, an iPhone.

All times, in all places, I have access to experts and the world’s body of knowledge, but it is still not enough.

If you look back two years, “ubiquitous computing” (via the iPhone, for me) has definitely impacted life. Wondering when that movie will start? Ask the phone. Who’s still serving food? Ask the phone. How do I get to the playhouse, and what are the underlying themes for this play? Ask the phone.

Don’t wonder, search. Don’t think, know.

The iPhone has ruthlessly terminated an entire class of conversations between friends, generally the ones that begin with “I wonder who/when/where”, or “do you know”.

Despite this, I don’t feel any smarter.

Many startups are focused on information filtering. The assumption is that I’m not smarter because I’m burdened by abundance.

Nope, that’s not the problem. At this point, I’m well equipped for many tasks because my Google-fu has exceeded the level of black-belt. Pruning oceans of info to find the right datum doesn’t phase me.

The problem is one of synthesis. Being supremely knowledgeable doesn’t get you very far, save on trivia shows. So how do I translate my newly-found immensely-distributed knowledge-base into something that makes me more effective?

I’ll handily dismiss any answer that suggests “computers can synthesize for you!”. No they can’t, not really, or at least, not yet.

What could the internet to do catalogue and distribute effective habits, approaches, and processes? What might that be like?

Imagine that every conceivable habit/approach/process could be searched, selected, integrated into daily life, measured for effectivity, and the results fed back into the original pool. Wouldn’t that help us rapidly evolve smarter living?

My thoughts continue to evolve on this, but it’s clear to me that knowing isn’t the same as doing, and doing isn’t the same as doing-right.

I’m not exactly sure how to phrase what I’m feeling after reading your post, but the closest I can think of is something along the following:

When we knew little we had mythology and lost a little bit of wonder.
When we knew some we had philosophy and lost a little bit of mythology.
When we knew a lot we had science and lost a little bit of philosophy.

It feels like people are forgetting how to be human.  To use two synonyms in contrasting ways, I’d rather be “meta-human” than “post-human”, if that makes sense (perhaps a better phrasing is “… be neo-human than post-human”).

I really think that the people that have made brilliant strides in the arts and sciences in the past and present, even in the face of religious or social trial, were those who maintained their sense of wonder, of the fantastique, who were willing to spend time on something that might not work.

I really hope our next stage of evolution doesn’t totally devoid us of all wonder or thrill of learning.  I think there’s something to be said for reducing our need for “efficiency” and allowing “efficacy” to include a few of the things I fear we’re losing: daydreaming, imagination, and the ability to make mistakes or waste time on something impractical.



Afterthought:

Thinking about the “genius is spending ten thousand hours on something” idea, perhaps the issue with modern life is the sheer number of things we need to be experts in in order to survive.  Learning the vocabulary of every day life is hard enough, but learning the vocabulary of 2 unrelated fields is neigh impossible; spend a couple thousand hours learning a new field and you find yourself left behind in both.

Where does this leave us?  Right on the edge of data, but without the skills to wade through existing interpretations of that data other than in the one or two chosen fields we chosen to participate in.  So we spend countless cycles reading various Wikipedia-simplified explanations of a vast spectrum of concepts but never spend any time on any of them.  We’re able to learn enough to make us feel special but we quit before we do anything with any of it.

The more I think about it the more I hope Tim Berners-Lee’s view of the future of the internet comes true.  I think the free flow of un-interpreted and not-necessarily-understood data could give us the ability to wonder and wander with new thoughts and daydream up ways to use that data in new or highly individualized ways.  We just have to be willing to learn the hard way instead of expecting it to come to us in prepackaged segments.

Staying at work till 3am

isn’t as cool as it sounds.