On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Lars Aronsson wrote:

> On February 19, Brewster Kahle wrote:
>
> > [on a recent trip to India, Dr Om Vikas from the Ministry of
> > Information gave a presentation and one of the slides really hit me
> > hard. I have reproduced it here, with permission. This is the
> > first time I have ever heard someone question the accepted meme
> > of our knowledge explosion. Even if I disagree with the fringes,
> > it is a bold and interesting point. Maybe an analogy with the loss
> > of biological diversity stands: there are more biomass on earth, but
> > of fewer types. -brewster ]
> >
> > Is there gain in knowledge or loss of knowledge?
>
> I think of knowledge more as a vehicle than a destination, more as CPU
> cycles than as bits stored on a disk. Today, very few drivers know
> how an engine works, because they don't need to. But only forty years
> ago, almost every driver knew this in detail. Has that knowledge been
> lost? Yes, and for a good reason. The vehicle has brought us to
> where we are now, we drop the first stage of the rocket and use the
> second stage from here. A few years ago, many learned to code HTML.
> Today, they are using blogs or "web content management" tools, and
> don't need to know HTML anymore. Unlearning HTML has been a lot
> faster than unlearning the inner workings of a car engine.
>
> In the 19th century Swedish encyclopedia that I'm digitizing, there is
> a lot of detail on things that nobody needs to know today. That
> information will still be available, but very few will consider it
> essential.
>
> Knowledge, just like CPU cycles and miles driven, is increased by
> wider use. You can preserve an encyclopedia (or a language) in a
> single copy, but you cannot force people to continue to use it after
> they feel it is obsolete. In order to "preserve" a language from
> extinction, you would have to forbid some number of human individuals
> from speaking another language of their choice. This would be like
> banning hammers if they threaten screw drivers to extinction. Or
> making a carburator theory test mandatory for a drivers license.
>
>
> --
> Lars Aronsson (lars@...)
> Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/

I have long been concerned with this topic, my own visual aid is a
triangle or pyramid structure as it is often used to portray the
structure of Fortune 500 corporations and the like. . .the boss at
the top and a few divisions directly below, each with a few divisions
below that, all the way to the bottom. . .the people who deal with

"The real world". . . .

I used to call those people at the bottom "The Miners". . .those who
pulled the raw wealth of the world out of the ground. . .farmers and
everyone else who actually were the human interface with the planet
we live on. . . .

Some would call them "The Exploited". . ."The Masses". . ."Blue Collar."

Of course, in the Post-Modern Post-Industrial portions of civilization
even this bottom layer is "White Collar."

* * *

Perhaps the first thing I learned about the bosses of large corporations
was that the best bosses were those who had "Back Door Access Policies"
through which they communicated with "The Exploited Blue Collar Masses"
and thus were not at the mercy of their own "Chain of Command". . . .

This was in response to the fact that bosses often tend to get lost in
the clouds in their own skyscrapers. . .and lose touch with reality. . .
eventually they have no idea what is actually happening, and have to rely
on complex maps, equations, sampling, algorithms, experts, etc., and they
have no idea what the weather really is, and they have no way of looking
out the window to simply see what everyone down on the street already knows.

* * *

In more direct response to the questions raised initially, I recall an olde
science fiction story in which space explorers landed on a planet and found
a person they learned to talk with, but who couldn't explain anything about
the society s/he lived in, the tools s/he used, etc., etc., etc. . .and the
explorers finally decided this person was a leftover from a previously huge
and great civilization that had invented all these tools. . . .

After they left, one of the "Blue Collar" technical crewmen asked to have a
talk with the Captain, and asked the Captain for a light when he pulled out
a cigarette. . .after he got the light he asked the Captain if he knew what
processes were used in making the match he had just used, or if he new what
chemical processes made the match work. . . .

We consider fire to be one of the great tools of the human race, and yet we
can't explain how a match works. . .we would look just as foolish to a cave
dweller from Earth's past as that alien we just left looked to us. Perhaps
we should go back for another visit, eh?

But the Captain decided it would take too much time and fuel from "mission-
parameters" previously planned before they had met the alien. . . .

* * *

This week I spent a few hours lying under my car with the VERY long-handled
socket set I reserve for the heaviest work. . .and I wondered why it was SO
satisfying to me, especially when I am supposed to be moving myself into my
new higher level job description that could take me further away from bases
on which my pyramid has its foundation. . . .

Thanks for reminding me. . . .

Michael S. Hart
<hart@...>
Project Gutenberg
Principal Instigator
"*Internet User ~#100*"