The View From Down Here

May 22, 2008

You are living through a time that everyone for the next 2000 years will wish they could have seen.

Are you paying attention? Can you?

The world is changing under our feet. What will it mean that knowledge is now a cheap commodity. Go to Wikipedia and you can learn anything about anything. New online teaching material, such as Moodle or TeacherTube are laying knowledge at our feet, fast, sort of sterile. Teachers used to be able to see your face, and help you understand, but now our teachers slowly being replaced with online e-books, web-form multiple choice, assessment analytics, and other strange wisdom.

For all this knowledge, we seem dumber than ever. In Columbus, a bag of hammers actually beat a team of elementary school in a geography contest.

Maybe it's because information is so cheap. You used to have to think; now wisdom is just a click away. Don't think, someone else has already written it down. You know, in programming now, it is almost heretical to write your own tools. If you're not downloading Perl from CPAN, or Java from the java mothership there's something wrong with you.

I like to still think on my own when I can.

Go back to first principle. Beginner's mind. What the hell are we doing here, and why can't I vacation on the moon yet?

Stay tuned. We're on the cusp of something. God is withering again, and the hive mind is alive.