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January 03, 2006
Are We Really Getting Smarter?
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While I was working as an apprentice sheet metal worker in the summer of 1987, an almost-retired journeyman remarked to me, "I've already forgotten more about this trade than you'll ever learn". We laughed at his joke at the time, but that sentence stayed in my head for years to come. And now, years later, I think that we was right - although on a larger scale than we was imagining. ---- I went back to that same business many years later and watched some of the sheet metal workers on the shop floor. What they used to do by hand was now automated: instead of looking up formulas in a trade manual, they dialed up shapes on a computer; instead of cutting lines and arcs by hand, they watched a plasma cutter rapidly burn through the desired shape; instead of assembling metal panels into final pieces, they watched power brakes and seamers assemble pieces rapidly and without worker injury. Yes, the whole trade was becoming more automated and required less actual brain power from the individual worker (leave the thinking to the computer). As I watched all of the above, standing on the shop floor with my Dad beside me, I commented on the increased automation. He agreed, but then he also related a story: recently, he had to dig out some of the old trade manuals, and show a journeyman sheet metal worker how to construct a complex piece that the computer wasn't programmed to cut out or assemble. The journeyman was quite astounded, as he thought that if the computer couldn't make it, then it couldn't be made. I thought about his short story, and thought back to the old journeyman giving me a lecture about lost knowledge. Yes, there it was right in front of me: one small example that as we improved processes and streamlined the business of sheet metal manufacturing, the individual tradesperson wasn't getting any smarter. A few years later, in 2004, I would read Robotic Nation and find that Marshall greatly expanded on this "dumbing down of the individual worker" concept. It's a good read, but quite long. Grab a snack first if you're going to dive into that. Then just today I read something related from David Gelernter: What are people well-informed about in the Information Age? Let's date the Information Age to 1982, when the Internet went into operation and the PC had just been born. What if people have been growing less well-informed ever since? What if people have been growing steadily more ignorant ever since the so-called Information Age began? Suppose an average US voter, college teacher, 5th-grade teacher, 5th-grade student are each less well-informed today than they were in '95, and were less well-informed then than in '85? Suppose, for that matter, they were less well-informed in '85 than in '65? If this is indeed the "information age," what exactly are people well-informed about? Video games? Clearly history, literature, philosophy, scholarship in general are not our specialities. This is some sort of technology age — are people better informed about science? Not that I can tell. In previous technology ages, there was interest across the population in the era's leading technology. In the 1960s, for example, all sorts of people were interested in the space program and rocket technology. Lots of people learned a little about the basics — what a "service module" or "trans-lunar injection" was, why a Redstone-Mercury vehicle was different from an Atlas-Mercury — all sorts of grade-school students, lawyers, housewives, English profs were up on these topics. Today there is no comparable interest in computers & the internet, and no comparable knowledge. "TCP/IP," "Routers," "Ethernet protocol," "cache hits" — these are topics of no interest whatsoever outside the technical community. The contrast is striking. DAVID GELERNTER Computer Scientist, Yale University; Chief Scientist, Mirror Worlds Technologies; Author, Drawing Life
So where does that leave us? What's my point? Only that we must continually challenge ourselves, stretching our knowledge in ways that we hadn't even intended or desired some times. Learn for the sake of learning, and don't stop. I know, that sounded a little trite - but sometimes these silly expressions are overused only for the mere fact that they're actually true. Last night my wife paid my the biggest compliment I've heard from anyone in a very long time. I was talking with her about an idea that I have for a new method of wireless video transmission. She looked at me, smiled, and said, "your brain is always working, isn't it?" Yes, yes it is. Posted by Hammer at January 3, 2006 11:52 PM |
I've been wondering this for a while. Even though it's apparent that our body of knowledge is expanding rapidly in certain directions (generally "high tech" directions), how much knowledge are we losing each year? And although society as a whole is gaining this knowledge, how much of that filters down to the individual?If you enjoyed this article, you may want to read more in the Current Thoughts category.