The whole process of ideas, either crazy or brilliant, begins with getting them out there. From there they can be examined and molded, shaped and found viable or not. For people who write, that big delete button could be a saving grace or a destruction of some great work, I am feeling like gambling a bit today.
One thing you get to see when you go from site to site online are issues. Stories, news, life, even shopping is about issues. People don't like the way something is, do not want that price on something, do not accept some facet of this person and that one. In watching this and breaking it down, seeing the political and idealistic divides deepen I look for causes, base causes. Because I don't like to rebuild an engine when the car just needed some gas added. The ultimate point of efficiency, laziness.
As I watch the patterns and try to call out the bad actors, the intolerance and hate, the media and just us humans in general I saw something else. We do not learn, or teach or retain knowledge the same way anymore. At this point in our history we are becoming hostages to zeroes and ones and along the way raising a generation of digital drunks, while diluting a valuable bridge to these era's of us.
More and more the construct of a thought or idea begins in some digital form. Either a search of Google or the opening of a program, the information is readily at hand and off it goes. If it needs more information then you just look for the right link, the work, and more notably the thinking itself is laid out in a sense. Templates for life and everything in it. That permeates a great deal of what we do.
Math is being taught today in a formulaic version, everything is aimed at this digital sugar daddy. Cursive writing is frowned upon and there are even points to be had for choosing just the right font. This is not just the get it now millennials and the kids that I am talking about either. Grandma and Grandpa and Mom and Dad enjoy the perks too, Sudoku has nothing on them. It's easy and it's entertaining and fun and.....
In tribal times of hunter gatherers the knowledge base was bigger than what is assumed by many today. They had an encyclopedic knowledge of their environment, its history and the plants and animals that lived there. It was and in many cases still is beyond that of which we know today. I won't even go into the Astronomy and building areas. It was passed along in stories and songs and traditions and dance. That was replaced by the writing and idolatry, as the agriculture era's changed us once again. There began a separation, if you could not read or know someone who could then you could not hear the story, or know the traditions. Learning was meant to be a whole people process, not a selected one. Of course there would be issues, just like today's, not everyone was selected.
For centuries we have been floundering about with the literary era's of learning. The writing of books and the passing it down for as long as we can until it just doesn't bite anymore. We shoved the ideas and concepts and ways to do things into the minds of the pliable. Created a system that values the ability to make a dollar to pay for that education and then values that dollar ability more than the education itself. Even then though, the thinking process and learning process still relied on intuitive and deductive, and retention of information much differently than I see it being done today. In the past if you wanted to be a blacksmith you had to put in the work, not simply put on a Virtual Realty headset and claim that you possess knowledge about it. I am finding that more and more there are many that are only as smart as Google allows them to be. Some of the most basic functions in society are never taught, replaced with a need for ones and zeroes. Click-bait the mantra and meta-filters the cry.
This ultra plastic digital form of learning is not working on a portion of our youth and it shows. This formulaic math that even baffles a parent is just not hitting home. Teaching our children sound bites of information and calling it knowledge is not going to work going forward. I hope that people can see at least a little of that now. As much as technology will be with us for eternity so will our human nature. That nature did not start out learning this way and maybe we aren't supposed to? Being digital drunks and relying on that binary Budweiser to ease the pains of life will backfire to some degree on us primates. Let's point it out while we see it this time around so the stench doesn't get ingrained for long. Being able to solve problems involves some pretty basic and at the same time complicated thinking. If we loose that ability through this exercise in learning again. I would hope that I could hit the delete key on it like I can with this post. But I can't, so I won't.
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