On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 7:32 PM, Christoph Derndorfer <[email protected]> wrote: > thanks to Twitter I stumbled across a very interesting blog post called > "Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism?" > (http://larrysanger.org/2011/06/is-there-a-new-geek-anti-intellectualism/). > Particularly in combination with the author's replies > (http://larrysanger.org/2011/06/geek-anti-intellectualism-replies/) to > many of the comments his original story received after being widely > spread via Slashdot, Twitter, blogs, etc. this make for fascinating > weekend read. > I definitely haven't managed to wrap my head around all of it but as a > geek-dominated community working on education projects I feel some the > things being discussed there potentially also apply to our own efforts.
Hm, about six paragraphs in it seems the author is already getting a number of concepts hopelessly muddled, which doesn't bode well for the discussion to come. The internet is making *some* forms of knowledge obsolete. It is true that mundane arithmetic ability can often be substituted with a computer, and memorization of tables is in many cases unnecessary. We have largely lost the ability of the ancient Greeks to memorize histories, preferring to read/write them instead. I am largely unable to use my phone unaided, because I no longer memorize phone numbers. I don't think this is a portent of the fall of mankind. I think jumping from "some forms of knowledge aren't as useful" to "all academia should be overthrown" is a step too far... even if some sloppy or lazy thinkers may be tempted to jump there. And then the argument jumps from fact to fiction. Are "great works of art" worth experiencing (reading, viewing, listening, seeing)? Do they become less great as eras pass? Ought "Great Expectations" be on a modern school curriculum? Or should we substitute Neal Stephenson for Dickens today? You can have arguments on these topics, but they are not new arguments. To the extent the discussion is informed by technological advances, it is merely continuing a conversation predating the printing press. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net ) _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
