I discovered I really need a break from coding and debugging (found myself dreaming about haze rendering lately, and that's usually a warning sign), so I may have time for some philosophy (feel free to skip, it's not about FGFS in particular).
> I was surprised that this shift in Paradigms has such a big handicap to > be considered for future developments. And if you believe you are > "old-fashioned", how about a 70 year old guy that started in Computer > Development in 1970, and whose big boss predicted: "I think there is a > world market for maybe five computers." (Thomas Watson, president of > IBM, 1943!) You may have some more laughs on > http://www.pcworld.com/article/155984/the_7_worst_tech_predictions_of_all_time.html). Joerg mentions a paradigm shift here, and he writes similar phrases elsewhere: > -- make use of the modern art of on-line reading/studying! > e.g.: Jumping between the "books" to any given place inside and outside > the book! > As we accept that any professional can > participate in the design, we should also trust our users to generate > and maintain their manuals by themselves! FGFS, FGFS-wiki, Wikipedia, > Linux, etc. etc. -- they all proved that it works! > -- Avoid the dependency on uniquely skilled persons: > -- Use common tools. > Most kids today learn how to generate a Homepage and use "html" - while > "LaTeX" (and similar) needs some more "unique" > skills/environments/procedures. These are what I'd call 'Web 2.0 phrases' (if I am polite...) and something else (if I'm in a bad mood). The assertions made here are fairly close to what is typically asserted in Web 2.0 contexts: * there is a modern way of studying which involves hyperlinking and cross-referencing of information snippets * it is possible to avoid depending on experts (uniquely skilled or knowledgeable persons) due to the existence of something called 'wisdom of the crowd' or 'swarm intelligence' * there are 'digital natives' which practice the modern way of studying, generate content using swamr intelligence and have their own set of tools replacing 'old tools' In my experience, all three assertions are largely nonsense. Information processing is an unpleasant task for the mind if a certain complexity is reached. One can structure a text well which helps a lot, and (especially in philosophy) there is a tendency to express simple ideas in complicated words, and this can and should be avoided, but there is no way topics like Quantum Field Theory, Zen Buddhism or the development of languages from primitive roots will ever be simple and pleasant to study. Really understanding something is hard work, and the mind feels exhausted and tired afterwards - that's the way it is, and there is a good reason for it. Understanding a text involves reading it, memorizing it, making mental connections between its parts, thinking over it, making mental connections to other texts, re-reading it, making more mental connections - this is a process called 'learning', and as most people who ever tried to learn a language can certify that this is really hard work. Now, unless tempered by an unusual amount of wisdom, the human mind wants to know, but not to study hard, it wants to hold a respected position, but not to work for it and earn that respect the hard way, it wants to control, but not be held responsible. There are numerous examples for that to be found everywhere. I happen to be one of a handful of experts in the world with regard to J.R.R. Tolkien's invented Elvish languages (in fact, I wrote the standard introductory book to Sindarin). I've come across hundreds of people who wanted to speak Elvish, but at best 5% of those actually were willing to go through the pains of learning it. Any reader in the FGFS forum will have no problems finding users which know exactly what needs to be done in the Flightgear world, but 'unfortunately' are unable to step up and learn how to do it. And so on. This is where the Web 2.0 philosophy comes in - it caters to the less pleasant tendencies of the mind and states that all that somehow okay or even commendable. Hyperlinked information snippets give you the illusion of understanding something - you can replace making a mental connection by a click on a link. In the short run, it feels just the same just without effort, the information appears when you need it. In the long run, you just notice that the mental link isn't there (because you never needed to make it) and you haven't really understood anything. There is a reason why scientists write about their research not in any 'modern' way - if you really need to transmit a lot of information, then a well-structured text without any hyperlinks works best. As for swarm intelligence, I'm still waiting for any evidence of that. Take Tolkien's Elvish (because I know that case very well) - especially when the Lord of the Rings movies were popular, there were hundreds of sites advertizing Elvish phrases, tengwar writings, name translations; there was a significant backwash in Wikipedia and similar media. I can trace about 20% of that information back to my own work and another 70% to the work of a handful of people I know well. That's not swam intelligence, that's swarm copy-paste with a fair share of information loss in the process. Flightgear also isn't _really_ a crowd product - count anyone who has ever contributed a scene model, to the wiki or something like that and you end up with a huge number of contributors. But if you look at who does 80% of the work and especially the essential work, you end up with very limited number of people. All this talk about doing without experts is just feel-good talk backed up by postmodern philosophy - somehow knowledge doesn't mean anything, it's all just different opinions and everyones is equal, all works without the experts, so they don't deserve any special respect and everyone can feel a little like an expert, isn't that nice? But if you really take out the experts, then there's nothing left for the swarm... You can't really avoid the dependence on uniquely skilled persons - that's just a recipe for desaster. The Facebook 'Like' button is probably the most ingenious web 2.0 tool I've ever seen. It gives you the illusion of being placed into the center of the internet - every site competes for your attention and cares if you like it or not (in reality, it's effect is more to tell Facebook what you like so they can sell that info for advertisements). In addition, it doesn't cost you anything to click on a button, but it gives you the good feeling to have supported a site. Of course, in reality 'Like' is not a category which applies well to information or a project like Flightgear (= it doesn't really mean anything if I like information). The internet is a great place for all sorts of things. Some time ago I've come across a 40 page discussion of 'Conversation of a man with his Ba' (an ancient Egyptian text). I didn't 'like' it, I took four hours working through it very hard (since the Ba is part of a man's soul in Egyptian myth, even understanding who is talking to whom in the text is not quite easy), and afterwards I didn't feel like clicking a button, but I wrote to the author. I told him that I was very impressed by the depth of his knowledge, I asked for clarification of a few obscure points and for the original hieroglyphic writing of some phrases, offered a different opinion with regard to some points based on my interpretation of the creation myths - and what followed was a pleasant two week exchange of emails in which we ended up discussing things like the merits of Budge as an authority on Egyptian myth, the meaning of Atum carving out the world of nothing, the definition of an Ach, analogies between Hebrew and Egyptian myth and so on. That is not the web 2.0 'modern' way of studying things, that is the age-old way of scholarly correspondence. Somehow, I can't shake the impression it goes quite a bit deeper. As for the 'digital natives', I find some irony in Joerg's mention that one should use common tools like html rather than LaTeX. Indeed, my experience with digital natives is precisely that: they know how to click things, but often not how to use more powerful tools. They frown upon the thought of using a commandline or an ascii editor, and yet are helpess when their graphic card isn't recognized automatically, and amazed when an offline person like me simply edits XF86.config and makes it work. I've known a very student who certainly qualified as digital native based on his Facebook/Whatnot time - he wondered for a week why no change in the source code of a program ever led to a change in program output until someone tipped him off that there's a thing called 'compiler' which is important for the process. Naturally, LaTeX is not some click-it tool, it's a powerful and flexible tool, and so it must be learned. Which is work, and that's not well-taken in the shiny Web 2.0 world, so... the digital natives can't do it. They have learned to use the things that are easy to use and they've learned to demand easy tools and easy information snippets, but the majority of them has no real concept of what's underneath all the infrastructure. My pretty consistent experience is that the closer you get to where information is actually produced or where work is actually done, the less fancy the tools are on the outside. Case in point - we're writing on a mailing list here which is technology from 20 years ago - but it does the job well... So, I prefer to do my studies 'the old way'. Not because I would be averse to technology or unable to learn anything new (after all, I did learn to use GLSL just by reverse-engineering shaders others have written and by trial and error when I felt I needed it), but because I understand 'the new way' all too well and have concluded that replacing the somehwat uncomfortable real thing with the confortable illusion of it is not a good idea. That's my two cents to the new paradigm. * Thorsten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
