Changes in the structure of knowledge

I am writing these lines in the hope of receiving comments from community members — something that may seem obvious to everyone who reads, but upon closer inspection, the changes become extremely frightening, and, I am not afraid of this word, provoking.

Start

The amount of information in the world is constantly growing. If you believe at least research University of Southern California , it turns out that: in 1986, the ratio of digital and analog information was 2.62 to 0.02 in favor of the counterpart. Somewhere after 2001-2002, digital information became equal, and by 2007, it was already leading with a volume of 276.12 to 18.86.

And I felt this difference on myself, in much more understandable numbers. In 2000, I used the Samsung Yepp player with a memory capacity of 32 megabytes, the tracks to which I threw using the LPT cable. You could either throw a few tracks in good quality, or a couple of albums in a very bad one.

And in 2009, I used a 160 GB iPod Classic. The difference is more than 5 thousand times in 10 years.

However, the information has one important feature - it is not lost in the copying process. Therefore, the total amount of information in the world surrounds us all. And is it possible to apply the approaches of the year 2000 to the world around us? In general, it is possible. Although it only seems that way.
')

About books

Yes, let's remember the books. Back in about 1999, I gave about a book on Visual Basic (like 6.0) about 500 rubles. It was a purchase, if not years, then certainly several months. The book was read to the holes, and often remembered. Why?

The answer is, in fact, very simple - there were not so many books available. I understand that this may be my personal peculiarity, but overall, the books were much more rare. And then there was no e-book. Plainly.

So, why the books were remembered? Because they had a completely terrible index. If I remembered that something was written in a book about something, then I could not find it quickly. Of course, I could spend the next 15-20 minutes searching, but it was sad. It was necessary either to remember relatively accurately, before the chapter, or to invent other ways of indexing (sticky things for paper were also expensive).

Reading today

As a result, today I am not just the owner of a huge number of books, each of which is available to me almost instantly. Even in these books, I can easily search for something that is inaccessible for lovers of warm, lamp, sorry, paper books. Of course, they say that nothing will replace paper, but people of the computer age just are not inclined to cling to these prejudices.

As a result, in addition to the search, which gives me tremendous opportunities, I got one more thing. I read faster. In fact.

Why faster? Well, because books now have a cool index that is always with them - word search. And if I read the chapter in the book, but I don’t need it now, I just have to remember what it is about.

It’s like creating a search engine index. Or as a link to bookmark. Call it what you want, but it fully meets the challenges of the century: some psychologists say that we can keep no more than 5-7 items in our head. Perhaps the people of antiquity happily kept in mind the names of 5-7 books. And for the modern person it will soon become a problem to keep in mind the place where he threw the charger from the next gadget.

It may seem terrible, but it is logical. There is more information, so instead of a book, I load a link to my head. I hammer in a desktop with labels. "This book says what techniques can be used to speed up the site loading," okay, that's enough for me. I'll have to - come back.

But listen, didn't this happen to all of us? I have not saved the distributions of the programs I use for a long time: they are updated too often so that this distribution repository will be at least relevant. I think you are doing the same.

Knowledge

OK OK. Everything I wrote above is completely understandable to everyone. But the challenge that I want to talk about lies a little bit in a different plane.

You see, if since 1986 the situation has turned upside down, then where will the head be tomorrow? If we extend and aggravate the trend; if we are foolish enough in our delusions; if we’re lean enough, the formula will soon become apparent:

All knowledge will be available to everyone.

Do not find anything scary in this? And I find.

The fact is that then the very structure of the transfer of human knowledge, which has existed for centuries, breaks down. And here for some 15 years everything has changed dramatically. Judge for yourself.

All teachers build their knowledge control on certain limitations, often completely artificial.

“You should be able to solve quadratic equations” - well, yes, even a programmable calculator can do it.
“You must know the multiplication table” - well, yes, it can even a regular calculator.
“You should be able to write” - yes, that’s why I often forget already when I last took the pen in my hands.

Call

In short, it turns out that knowledge loses its sacred role. That is, knowledge itself does not become an end in itself; now you do not need to force a medical student to memorize a bunch of words in Latin - the iPad application will gladly show him the name of this particular bone on a three-dimensional model with a detailed description. Are you still not scared? And I already have.

What to check? What to control? The possession of knowledge ceases to be permanent. Want to bake a delicious cake? Go and download the recipe to your head. Then you forget, because there are so many of them.

But again, what to check? What measure of knowledge to choose in a society where the very possession of knowledge is no longer a problem?

I am already inclined to think that education itself should be one and a lot of laboratory work, which should show the student a lot of small segments on the big road from A to B. But I'm afraid it may become outdated before realizing it. Because…

... no one

And it already scares. Because foreign technologies (just look at the history of HTML) were created by people on open lists. Today we can go back and see how the process went and whom it led to. And we have? What, someone stenographed at the meetings of these idiots from the Ministry of Education?

And the teachers? To discuss with them what we need to change a lot, but how to discuss? Quite right, the Internet would help, but most of them do not know how to type a kilobyte of text.

Yes, for the time being, you can allow yourself to ignore what is happening, but it is already difficult for me to imagine a retired teacher who takes an exam from a student with Google Glass. Rather, it is easy to imagine, but funny. Yes, yes, of course, we will ban them from Google Glass. And much more is prohibited.

Thanks for reading. This is not a coherent story, maybe. But I will be extremely grateful if you can show this post to a teacher or person from education. And give at least some comments.