The argument about "mass popularity" is good if all you want to do is triumph
in
the consumer products business (c.f. many previous raps I've done about the
anthropological "human universals" and how and why technological amplifiers for
them have been and will be very popular).
This is because marketeers are generally interested in what people *want* and
desire to supply those wants and to get those wants to intersect with products.
Educators are more interested in what people *need*, and many of these *needs*
in my opinion are coextensive with human "non-universals" -- inventions (not
genetic built-ins) such as reading and writing, modern scientific thinking and
mathematics, deep historical perspectives, the law, equal rights, and many
other
rather difficult to learn and difficult to invent ideas.
One of the most important points here is that becoming fluently skilled in a
hard to learn area produces an odd -- but I think better -- kind of human ...
one who has not just the inborn drives -- for example, revenge and vendetta are
human universals -- but also has an overlay of other kinds of thinking that can
in many cases moderate and sometimes head off impulses that might have been
workable 200,000 years ago but are not good actions now.
As far as can be ascertained, humans had been on the planet for almost 200,000
years before any of these were invented, and modern science was created only
about 400 years ago. We are still trying to invent and teach and learn human
rights. These are not only not obvious to our genetic brains, they are
virtually
invisible!
A mass market place will have to be above high thresholds in knowledge before
it
can make good choices about these.
Societies have always had to decide how to educate children into adults (though
most have not been self-conscious about this).
If ways could be found to make the learning of the really important stuff
"popular" and "wanted", then things are easier and simpler.
But the dilemma is: what happens if this is the route and the children and
adults reject it for the much more alluring human universals? Even if almost
none of them lead to a stable, thriving, growth inducing and prosperous
civilization?
These are the issues I care about.
If we look in the small at computing, and open it to a popular culture, we will
get a few good things (as we do in pop music), but most of what is rich in most
invented and developed areas will be not even seen, will not be learned, and a
few things will be re-invented in much worse forms ("reinventing the flat
tire").
This is partly because knowledge is generally more powerful than cleverness,
and
point of view is more powerful than either.
I think education at the highest possible levels has always been the main
issues
for human beings, especially after the difficult to learn powerful inventions
started to appear.
For example, what was most important about writing was not that it could take
down oral discourse, but that it led to new ways of thinking, arguing and
discourse, and was one of the main underpinings of many other inventions.
Similarly, what is important about computing is not that it can "take down" old
media, useful as that is, or provide other conveniences through simple
scripting, but that it constitutes a new and much more powerful way to think
about, embody, argue and invent powerful ideas that can help us gain
perspective
on the dilemmas created by "being humans who are amplified by technologies". If
the legacy of the last several centuries is to "automate the Pleistocene" via
catering to and supplying great power to human universals, then monumental
disaster is not far off. As H.G. Wells pointed out "We are in a race between
Education and Catastrophe". It is hard to see that real education is ahead at
this point.
One of the great dilemmas of "equal rights" and other equalities is how to deal
with the "Tyranny of the Commons". The "American Plan" was to raise the commons
to be able to participate in the same levels of "conversations" as the best
thinkers. I think this is far from the situation at the current time.
Much of this is quite invisible to any culture that is "trying to get by" and
lacks systems and historical consciousness.
The trivial take on computing today by both the consumers and most of the
"professionals" would just be another "pop music" to wince at most of the time,
if it weren't so important for how future thinking should be done.
Best wishes,
Alan
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