3 Responses to “The Learning Revolution ”

1. 1 mike in Jubei Apr 29th, 2007 at 8:21 am

   Hi Ken

   I wrote a long response to your podcast, posted it and it was there and now it is gone. The short version was I agree with what you say. But books are permanent and I fear Google is not The British Museum or The National Archive(US) where all of man’s written on paper thought is kept.

   Here is an example. Where did my initial response go? Gone forever?

   We also learn from not just the short term buildup of ideas and thoughts (such as web 2.0O but also from the long term build up of Man’s thoughts which normally are found in books.

   Mike in Jubei

2. 2 Ken Carroll Apr 29th, 2007 at 8:56 am

   Mike,

   I think your reply is there now.

   Ken

3. 3 chris(mandarin_student) Apr 29th, 2007 at 8:28 pm

   But what when the totality of all those books can be stored on a tiny harddrive.

   Everything will change. During the dark ages, when written knowledge had to be painfully coppied etc. Men of learning had to store huge amount of information they were working with in their own heads. Either old knowledge they were working with (so they could work with it on the move, remember that they may only have limited access to some texts) or new stuff they were developing (depressingly little sometimes).

   That was they time of prodigious memory “thought palaces etc.” Many of these techniques faded away as more written material became available (reference works stored the material that was resonably quickly available for manipulation and expansion).

   The computer revolution is leading use to the next place (eventually almost immediate access to all previous information). Computers excel at information storage, retrival and increasingly analysis and searching. We excel at mental agility (intuition etc.). Our brains are comparitivly slow but massivly parallel.

   We have always been able to move, but vehicles have helped us move faster. Computer technology is boosting our ability to work with information.

   There will always be books around, in the same way that there will always be a Model T Ford somewhere …..

   As for your example Mike think of all the written exchanges of letters that have vanished over time, also never to be seen again.
   Most comments get more eyeballs even if they are not stored for ever.

   Just my take on it.

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