18th
The Sum of All Human Knowledge… Is Not Enough
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.
