The “Information Highway”, a conclusion…

[amicus]

In the Winter of my life, permit me a speculation; an observation, if you will.

I wish to present a phenomenon that I have witnessed. I am certainly not the first nor the most literate to make such an observation, nonetheless, it crossed my mind and I thought to share it.

I am going to approach it obtusely, in literary fashion, somewhat like a seduction of the mind.

I was a little late in life to pursue the young man’s journey of discovery. I had already served in the military, done the University thing, married, fathered a child, lost a love to a career, before I set off on an cross country epic, an European tour and then a sailboat odyssey of my own for another personal discovery.

I learned fear, for the first time in my life while grounding on a reef in the Bahama’s during a storm. I screamed in naked, drunken rage on a hotel balcony in Miami Beach during a hurricane and foolishly challenged a tornado in Kentucky just for the hell of it.

But then, as God did not strike me dead, as I challenged the deity in final exasperation, I gathered my skirts about me and proceeded with life.

The first ‘computer’ I discovered, wasn’t a computer at all, well, not really, it was a word processor with a green screen and white characters. It was in a newspaper office where I was being interviewed during my campaign for public office in the mid 1970’s (Hi, Ogg).

Well…I lost that election, but I had to have a computer.

And I did and the journey from then to now, over thirty years later, has been an eventful voyage.

I choose to confine this discussion to the ‘hard’ sciences, to preclude, inasmuch as possible, the opinion and ideology information highway and concentrate on demonstrable information.

Each generation of people in all times and places, I think, wish to conclude that their ‘time’ was a special time, a ‘special’ generation. That is understandable; and I may have fallen victim to the same desire…then again, as I present my theme, you may judge.

As I surf the channels of my Dish Network Satellite programming and follow it up on my high speed DSL internet with searches for both specific and general, ‘information’, I am reminded of my early days in the library and the Dewey Decimal Code for categorizing books. Then of my school days of library searches for information and films like, “The Paper Chase”, and the ‘stacks’ in the library and the research tools available then, including such arcane things as ‘microfiche’ and card files.

My conclusion is an already forgone one that you have probably surmised: this generation, not ‘my’ generation, but this one, of the last thirty-five years, is, in my opinion, totally unique and special in a way the entire history of the world has never known before.

I give only passing notice to cell phones, and Blackberry’s and Bluetooth’s and Ipod’s, as that is the ’next’ generation, but confine myself to the information highway revolution of television and the internet.

I can gain, in the space of a few moments, information on any subject, that just a generation ago, was not even dreamed about. Information that took hours and days and weeks of research to accumulate, if at all.

But it is more than that, much more. This is the difficult part to put into words and is the reason I chose to limit it to the ’hard sciences’, that for the most part are not subjective opinions but empirical data that can be confirmed by scientific method. Not that there are not opposing theorem, there certainly are.

I think the combination of the live broadcast today of the space shuttle Endeavor’s launch, the sophistication of NASA’s technology to broadcast a running, real time explanation, with adjunct material from dozens of sources, and a Science Channel program, ‘The Universe’, dealing with the formation and evolution of Galaxies and dark matter and energy, keyed this thought and this post.

In programs like that one, the past, present and future theories and discoveries are presented as a whole, giving one, I think, a perspective never before available to the public at large.

I am not quite sure what to do with this realization other than share it here as I, by choice, am not disciplined sufficiently to craft a scholarly work with psychological or sociological import to impress the academic world, but it is quite amazing what the 21st Century has brought us.

Doncha think?


Amicus

 

[Liar]

Here's another perspective that confirms that we do indeed live in interresting times. The world population has more than tripled this century, and is currently growing faster than ever.

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e394/mi_liar/pop.gif

At the same time, travelling is many times cheaper (inflation counted) and many times faster than just twenty years ago, and sending and recieving information from the far side of the planet is not ten times faster, it's a thousand times faster and a hundred times cheaper. We have infonintely more scources of information (and disinformation) than one or two generations ago. Geographic distances are irrelevant (that I'm talking to you here is a clear example of that). What is left is cultural (language, for instance) and economic (although it's cheaper than ever, many people can't quite afford the tools) distances. And those are becoming fewer every day.

A hundred years ago, the average working person needed skills. Swing a hammer, weld a beam, bake a cake. Over the last century we started to shift to a world where the average person needed more and more knowledge instead of skills. The jobs requiring skills could be done by fewer with the help of machines, and the population grew.

And these days, we're back to skills. Since all the information in the world is ours at the push of a button, we don't need as much of it crammed into our heads.
So skills. But different skills. knowledge skills, if you wish. Where you in Klondyke got rich if you knew how to sift gold from the river, you can get rich today of you know how to sift information from another river.

 

[amicus]

Thank you Liar....that growth in numbers chart is very interesting, I will remind myself to search and try to discover a rationale for the decline as time goes by. I thought it might level off but I guess reproduction is at less than replacement rate and thus the decline.

regards...


amicus....

 

[ChilledVodkaIV]

Joe Cheese believed himself to be an efficient man. He always put the milk back in the fridge. He always had the cooking oil handy next to the stove. He always ironed his shirts and hung them on their hangers along with his coats and trousers. His shoes he kept downstairs near the door.

Joe never once even thought about changing his name. Even through his school years beginning with nicknames that were the names of cheeses, through to the sophisticated humour of his middle teens when he got the title 'smegma'. Not even then did he think about changing his name.

In a kind of reverse name of your job way when you find people whose names reflect their work; Smiths that work in an ironmongers or Chandlers that sell boating equipment Joe found his ideal occupation in a dairy. A cheese dairy. Joe was 'a nose'. He had very, very sophisticated sense of smell. He was rewarded handsomely for his work in the dairy.

Joe found himself in Panama on a two week holiday where he met, wooed and eventually married a girl by the name of Mercedes. If not happily ever after, Joe lived at least contentedly.

 

[Pure]

i certainly love the availability of information, even pictures, of just about anything. but the sifting of it, is something else. a researcher for a school paper on, say, biodiesel, or welfare reform, or pending legislation on stalking has an abundance of sources.

i wonder if, as an empirical matter, high school and college students' papers are any better (i.e. the ones not bought on the 'net). are writing or reading skills any better, for the average. i think 'no' for the second.

as to general information, it's been said that the average american is unsure about what's in the bill of rights, cannot find France on a map, and is unsure about the difference between iraq and iran. most american are convinced Saddamm sponsored the terrorists of 9-11 and was being called to account. a number believe the earth is about 5000 years old, and that God made a special project of creating 'man', above the animals.

to me it's entirely unclear if the public is better informed, *even though they have access to texts of pending bills, senators' speeches from their websites. etc.* or archaeological texts, or biologists papers.

what's left out of amicuss assessment is the pervasive role of the media and political institutions in constructing facts and selecting information.

i think that ami, like me, is from another era, where the 'hard facts' are clearer. now the 'hard facts,' e.g. about the progress of the Iraq or Afghan war are very difficult to discern. where the hard facts are known, there is paralysis: i'm thinking of the movie "supersize me." they quote from a court document filed by macdonalds in defense against a suit: it says, "everyone knows that processed food is inferior in quanity, and that too much restaurant 'fastfood is bad for you."

the implication is that people *choose* to endanger themselves and thus bear sole responsibility. this is reminiscent of the tobacco companies' defense: everyone know cigarette are bad for your health and can kill you.

but nothing changes: facts matter less than perceptions and sentiment and attitudes generated by ads.

where ami or i see abundance of facts, e.g., i can google for the number of soldiers killed in any civil war battle, or the tonnage of any WWI naval vessels.

yet there is, in fact, a flood, a deluge of simulacra of facts, whose number is a couple orders of magnitude greater than that of facts: nonfacts, pseudo facts, and images, and whatever it is that leads teens to think that a certain softdrink or brand of jeans will make them 'cool' (or 'hot'), or voters to think that one candidate is weak and indecisive and the other is strong and decisive.

 

[amicus]

"...I choose to confine this discussion to the ‘hard’ sciences, to preclude, inasmuch as possible, the opinion and ideology information highway and concentrate on demonstrable information...."

~~~

I had hoped to forestall the 'subjective' and political information available on the net by posting the above. However, I might have suspected the cynical and the skeptic minded to make something political out of it.

Yes, and there are movie magazines on supermarket checkout counters that the ladies apparently snap up, spam and even pornography on the net and tons of useless information. One can say the same about a library.

None of that is germane to the idea I wanted to share.

Some of my special interest, writing related ones, deal with Archeology, Paleontolgy, Geography, Earth Sciences, Astronomy and Astro Physics and energy related Nuclear studies.

Having sat through thousands of hours of classroom instruction and as many hours poring over the books at night, the availability of information through television and the internet has basically made college and university training obsolete, which is why I responded as I did on the 'education' thread.

Once we get the 'educational unions' and education lobbyists out of the picture, I doubt there will be a handful of campuses left in existence. Education will be online and in the privacy of your own surroundings.

In the midst of this information revolution, it is difficult to really comprehend the impact of the computer and the internet on everyday life and on the pursuit for an education.

For those of you who have hung around this life long enough to make those comparisons, I found it truly an awakening, the changes that are happening in rapid succession.

There is a danger, I sense, of collectivist, totalitarian regimes burning books once again in the form of limiting and controlling access to information, of course, for the 'greater good', of course, of course, of course.

And of course, and in conjunction with another thread of mine about Helium Three and fusion reaction, the essential ingredient for the information revolution, is affordable, abundant electrical energy. Not conservatism, not 'boutique' answers, but huge amounts of energy at every decreasing prices to encourage expansion.

Try living without electricity for a week, or even a few days and then think about it.

Take two Amicus and call me in the mourning.

ami