Sunday Reality Check

That was really cool, thanks for posting.

But song is Fatboy Slim, Right Here, Right Now…

In a nutshell, this is one of the biggest challenges facing education: to help students navigate this rapidly expanding universe of information (good and band), given that it is completely new territory for most teachers. I have colleagues who flatly refuse to allow their students to use online resources for research assignments. I have students who insist on using nothing else.

I’m pretty sure that the video contradicts itself within about 10 seconds, 2:40 in. It says the the internet took 4 years to reach a market audience of 50 million, then describes the increase in “internet devices” as being 1000 (in 1984) to 1,000,000 (in 1992). Something doesn’t seem to add up there.

There devil may be in the definitions. Our home had zero internet devices in 1984, though there was probably some sort of internet access via main frame on campus, used by very few people. By 1992 our household had a single internet device (computer with dial-up modem), shared by 4 people, and the university had desktop computers with internet access for all faculty, some students where arriving with personal computers which could access campus ethernet and there were over a dozen computer labs with hundreds of computers serving about 35,000 students. Only with the advent of internet-capable cellophones and PDA’s has the # of devices begun to catch up with the number of users (which would be the market audience).
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(This would also be true of telephones, which went from being shared by a community to shared by a single household to being personal devices.)

cellophones? Sorry, not entirely here, I’m afraid. It’s Sunday and my internal editor has the weekend off.

Recently kicked off: Singularity University http://singularityu.org/

The whole thing might have more legs if Kurzweil didn’t look so much like Woody Allen

“cellophones” That’s funny–image of a cell phone wrapped to my head in saran wrap. Not that I own one mind you. One essential tool I’ve managed to escape thus far. But, yes, any of us over say the age of 30 can recall our lives pre-computer. I bought my first in ’95, only b/c I was starting grad school. My favorite part of the vid is the Google search bit. I can hardly fathom my life pre Google or Wiki, all the more in my bilingual household, where linguistic negotiations are greatly enhanced by these tools.
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Despite that, the larger question of course is whether any of this techno-paraphernalia truly enhances our lives. My overall verdict is out, but those of us who have lived pre and post history will soon be gone. I hate to reflexively side with the reactionaries, or reduce it to all-or-nothing scenarios, but I find myself leaning towards the Matrix/dystopia bent. Perhaps if more kids grew up as I did, minus cords in the neck, the better off we’d be. Those of us who actually preferred the outdoors, not merely b/c we lacked the gadgetry, but also b/c our parents allowed us to go into the woods, beyond the radius of their controlled experiments. An era before Mystic River et al crippled children’s freedoms.
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http://wilderness.org/content/can-stroll-ward-off-cancer
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See also Paul Shepard’s brilliant riffs on neoteny.

jcapan, when I saw my typo I thought of some kind of conflated string/woodwind instrument.
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The good/bad argument is always a dead end when it comes to technology. (cars, good or bad?) The best I can usually manage is to try to figure out how new technology changes our everyday actions and interactions, and eventually, our world view. It’s hard in the case of information technology and the internet because innovation has been so rapid. Even for early adopters like myself (first use of computer 1969, Apple IIe in 1983, email in 1987, teaching with the internet since 1993) there’s been little time to assess or reflect. As for journalists, I suspect it’s even wierder, since they have all the consumer stuff plus changes in production and dissemination. The last time I worked at a newspaper (summer 1968) they had a darkroom, a Linotype machine and we were just learning how to do paste up for offset printing. Once the paper went to bed, that was it for our news cycle.
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I was also struck the the stat on the number of “honors students” in India, being greater than the total number of students in the US. I truly doubt that the immense size of the population of China or India has completely sunk in for most Americans.

I think it is very funny that an 8 and a ) gets turns into a 8). But the summer if 1968 was actually sorta like that.

Sunday Reality Check.

Where does it all end? Can we breed enough people in the US to actually stay competitive with the rest of the world? When is too much information really too much information? When does education become a daily requirement instead of an age 5 to 21 experience? When will we have enough time in the day to stay educated on technological advances? When does the flow of information and technology exceed the human mind’s ability to comprehend? When do we cede techonology education to machines and just oversee them to insure our society continues to florish? When do machines take over the world? Can we stop this before it exterminates the human race?

Thanks for that link SZ. It got me thinking if local communiy papers are stuggling like big dailies or if a possible alliance between local alternate papers and patron-backed news outfits like this one are indeed the wave of the future in journalism.

Interesting article, Stuart. I can see how this new journalistic model might work from the production/dissemination end, but for me the more troubling aspect of modern contemporary discourse is the tendency for consumers to settle into intellectual/ideological ruts. What I mean by that is that whether it is tv, radio or internet, the evolving model has been towards a narrowing of viewpoint. People pick their source according to viewpoint — say on HuffPo or RedState — and once there, encounter little that challenges that viewpoint. Even here on Swampland, which is one of the more interactive, informative and engaged communities there is a tendency to push back more strongly against conservative comments or blogger posts which don’t conform.
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(Any minute now I am going to become annoyingly nostalgic for radio back when you could hear just about any genre on the same station, instead of today’s gated musical communities, which reflect the same marketing forces.)
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My, I wish I could merge these two threads that Scherer has started.

joyomama:

I’m gonna have to whistle you for a foul for bringing up the past and real radio. You saw the video we don’t have time for the past. Blink and it’s three years in the future and you suddenly don’t know why you hurried into the room.

There are ideological ruts because the Repubs came up with a communications model which stated to the lazy among us … “You don’t have to think anymore, we will tell you what to think. Just sit back in your easy chair and we will educate you.” Look how effective it has been in the House of Representatives, does anyone think for themselves?

give me a break, fewfla, I’m a historian! The past is my life!

And I thought I was conflicted trying to deal with the future!

And FWIW, I usually have no idea why I hurried into the room, technology or no technology.
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I am not sure blaming the Republicans for starting the mess will absolve the rest of the media (and us) for joining in. It would be interesting to find an expansive, inclusive, intellectual diverse community, but it’s probably not on any media exec’s to-do list. The future? It might look like my iPod playlists, arranged by mood rather than by genre. That way I can dance to Zappa, Johann Strauss, Bela Fleck, the Temptations and the B52s without changing channels.

Looks like there won’t be an auto czar, Mike. And Mitt Romney was so qualified for it.

joyomama is right. We really don’t get how huge China and India are. Great video, Michael. Something about it, though, makes me feel very small!

We are all small!

You can dance to Strauss? (That’s an inside music joke there sorry!)
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I have lots of respect for historians Joyo as I firmly believe we cannot know where we’re going without knowing where we’ve been. It’s also a big reason why we need to investigate every single aspect of the Bush administration. It is imperative that we figure out just how badly everything went wrong so we can at the very least learn the lessons of his failure. And even if no prosecutions result, every single bit of truth needs to be exposed to the light of day. It’s the only way I’m going to get that bitter taste out of my mouth.

No respect for me; I’m a cultural historian, not the political flavor.

Yutsano- Inside what? I want to know.

This is a nice thread. I think Michael might be finding his whatever.

Isn’t the new communication model implied by the video (over the intertubes, fairly unintermediated) the one by which the Obama administration (and the ones to come, I expect) will bypass the MSM? Isn’t Swampland the MSM latching on (and hanging on as best it can)?

I would like to comment on this youtube video but I live in Turkey and youtube is blocked by the government. Enuf said.

You’re gonna make me say it José…ugghhh I hate this line…but you backed me into a corner dude.
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“This one time, at band camp…”