Recommended Reading
The education/application/creation triangle paradigm:
Finding the optimum
The acquisition of knowledge and subsequent putting it into action have been a cornerstone in mankind’s continuous endeavour of development and progress throughout history. Until relatively recently, knowledge and information were generated rather selectively, edited carefully through established channels and provided in bite-size chunks, making it not too difficult for anyone interested to keep abreast of what’s new and sufficiently important in the big world out there. However, recent advances in information and communication technology have lead to ubiquitous access and explosive generation of mass information. This, inevitably, raises issue of traceability and efficiency in the processing of information and in its use for developing and enriching the human mind (education), as opposed to stifling it – i.e., finding the proverbial needle in an exponentially growing haystack of information. Could information generation become a hindrance rather than a help in achieving individual and collective progress? Will knowing less become achieving more? How would Claude Shannon have approached the topic in the present day?
On the one hand, most of us share – to a greater or lesser extent – the belief that “Knowledge is Power” and that this is indeed a positivist statement as being something to aspire to, for power in its general form leads to some degree of personal wealth, comfort, happiness and or fulfilment. On the other hand, it seems also clear that a purely selfish intake of information and knowledge, e.g., leading a hypothetical life of 'information input' as pure absorption (observation, duplication and learning as inputs) without generating any output -- although producing a warm feeling of indulgence to the information-hungry individual or group -- might become pointless as it does not lead to information output, i.e., added value and/or expression to the wider society. Learning as a hobby without any out-come seems ultimately rather wasteful of the efforts invested in it. Sound learning is good and constitutes a basis for advancement, but so are output and action.
This begs the question as to where lies the optimum point (assuming it exists at all) of abandoning the process of gathering knowledge and starting to convert the acquired knowledge into a creation or application. How long and how much should we read and learn before we start applying our knowledge, particularly in modern times with so much sophisticated knowledge around us? Do we allow sufficient room for free and unconventional thinking? Are we in danger of over-developing (through incremental technical-scientific advances, marketing, (re-)designing, etc.) the giant groundbreaking developments from the past? Has modern society reduced its ambition to merely making cosmetic changes made to past discoveries and inventions by our ancestors? This is clearly visible in many areas of science and technology, where despite the massive increases in global activity any real advances and novelties arrive at an ever slower rate. Maybe globalization and integration have stifled original thinking, endangering us of turning us all into ‘bots who will eventually be thinking an acting along identical lines because we are all exposed to the same information channels, and further accelerated by evaporating cultural differences that have stimulated our minds in the past and provided cross-fertilization.
Does this mean that we should restrict education and learning to the provision of bare essentials, in order not to cloud or preoccupy our young minds? Not at all. It will always be important to be aware of the state -of-the-art (insofar as it is relevant to current development): human history is, unfortunately, cluttered with many examples of reinvented wheels, not to mention retreating from wisdom and cultural by barbaric tribes. What is important, however, is to develop filters to prevent insignificant information and knowledge to grow as weeds suffocating real gems. Our generation is perhaps facing its greatest challenges ever: how to manage information, where to find it, and how to use it in order to survive and to maintain progress.
