For years revolutionary yay-sayers have piped that the internet will change everything. For precisely as long I’ve responded with scorn, feeling justified by my observation that part of being human is a bias toward thinking your own lot as ever so slightly above average. You can see this phenomenon every day. Just ask a smoker about the risks of getting cancer from smoking and he’ll give you one set of figures. Ask him then whether he honestly thinks those figures apply to him and he’ll coolly explain why he’ll beats those stats. We overestimate our lot; labeling the age we live through as revolutionary is just another symptom of that miracle of “I”. I ignored the cries of revolution and put on another bowl of pasta.
I’ve changed my mind. We are perched on the apex of a revolution – I cannot conclude otherwise. Fearing that the optimistic bias has defeated me too, my goal today is to attempt to prove this hypothesis. I’ll start with my “idea collision” theory, one tenet of my model for the creation of novel knowledge in a society :
“The probability of the formation of new knowledge is directly proportional to the number of collisions between ideas multiplied by the distance between the two colliding ideas.”
What happens when ideas collide
New ideas occur when two previously existent ideas collide for the first time. Combine the old fashioned telephone with battery technology and wireless signaling and you get the mobile phone. Combine the physics of mass, energy and electromagnetism signals and, with a lot of thought, and a stroke of genius, you get relativity. Don’t be fooled into thinking that every collision creates valuable new knowledge. The vast majority of collisions are fruitless and their results must be discarded.
Filtering out the many bad combinations from the few good ones requires testing. Here you have two choices – carry out experiments in the physical world or carry them out in your head using your own internal model of the world to test hypotheses. Carrying out experiments in the world is safer since the real world results provides feedback showing you if you are wrong or right. Carrying out experiments in your head is more efficient and sometimes necessary, given limitations of real world experimentation (such as unavailability of resources, data or time). It was through a vast network of mental experiments that Einstein discovered relativity – he imagined himself as a photon of light observing how things moved around him, eventually arriving at a theory he proved later with mathematics. Be warned, however, to carry out mental experiments you need to have a seriously accurate mental model of your domain of experimentation.
Einstein: the daddy himself
Digressions aside, every Eureka moment eventuating int the formation starts with a collision - followed then by testing. Thus more collisions are better than less for the generation of new ideas.
Moving on to the second part of his hypothesis – the multiplication of theses collisions by the “distance” between the colliding ideas. Lets start by defining distance: if ideas are “close” together this means that they are frequently thought of together by others, meaning the collisions have already occurred and most of the knowledge has already been harvested. Here, we approach a saturation point, whereby collisions no longer results in the generation of new knowledge. Contrast this with when ideas are “distant”. In this case the colliding ideas have seldom, if ever, been thought of together. It during these collisions that the most powerful new ideas are generated. Take the double helix structure of DNA, which was discovered by Crick and Watson. In their research the pair immersed themselves deeply in genetics, biochemistry, chemistry, physical chemistry, and X-ray crystallography. You might say there is little “distance” between the fields, as all are sciences - but remember that distance here is defined as the frequency with which two ideas are thought of together. Very few minds have the drive or ability to simultaneously understand so many complex scientific fields fields and so the intersection of ideas explored by Crick and Watson was at zero saturation, a field ripe for the harvest of fresh knowledge.
Crick and Watson discovered the double helix structure of these jeans
Returning to the title of this post – how is it that internet changes everything? Because it vastly increased the number of collisions occurring between ideas and the distance between the colliding ideas, in exactly the same way that urbanization did (the only comparable revolution in the past, the consequences of which were the industrial revolution).
Before mass urbanization people lived together in small communes, most staying put for the majority of their lives. These rural settlers had low numbers of idea collisions in their lives, given the small number of members in the community (and the time taken to travel to one another) and the small number of non human idea carriers (e.g. books, work practices, etc. – the medium through which an idea collides is irrelevant – what counts is that in someone’s brain the two somehow meet). The infrequent collisions during the agrarian age rarely generated new knowledge since the distance between the colliding ideas was miniscule as most members of the community had spent their entire lives together, preoccupied with the same narrow domains.
Contrast this to the industrial age. Settlers moved from across the countryside to big cities and instead of bumping into five or ten people in a day (and similarly low numbers of other “idea transmitters”), a person might now bump into ten to one hundred times more people or idea transmitters. As these people often came from different villages and different backgrounds the set of ideas they each held differed significantly and so the distance metric increased too.
We still live in cities – and cities today are bigger than before, better connected, and draw people from a broader background that in the industrial age. These factors increase both the number of collisions which occur and the distance metric for these colliding ideas. Distance is also increased too by improvements in the standard of living which enables many in the developed world to devote themselves deeply to the world of ideas. That being said, these improvements do not have the same revolutionary quality as the move from rural to agricultural. I
Now we have the world wide web, where people’s ideas collide with an exponentially greater frequency with ideas of exponentially greater distance. Your Facebook profile puts you in touch with hundreds through it’s mini feed. An individual wiki article may have thirty or forty editors, and by reading through the page you are exposed to the sum of their collisions (remember too that each of their inputs may itself draw on a similarly huge array of past bombardments). There are a lot more collisions – things are heating up.
Idea Collisions on the Wa-Wa-Wee-Wa scale
Not only are there exponentially more collisions – but also these collisions are from disparate fields. With the web an American can communicate effortlessly with other English speakers across the world. The spread of English as a new latin means that other previous boundaries separating distant ideas are now crumbling. Powerful tools like Google Translate provide a Rosetta Stone across language barriers. The rise of links between information on the internet and the Google powered search engine makes delving into distant ideas effortless – the barriers to learning distant fields are dropping harder than a banging London beat.
We are living on the slope of a steeply rising knowledge curve – and it has not been since the rise of urbanization has this slope been so steep. This, I argue, is why we are living in the age of a revolution.
Think otherwise? Agree? Say so in the comments.
On my first day at St. Anne’s College our college principal, Tim Gardam, told us we were about to embark on a three year “study of useless knowledge”. By delving into one topic deeply enough we would develop a set of skills for thinking and arguing critically which would see us strongly through the rest of our professional and personal lives.
I was excited by the thought of developing superhero mind skills, but I didn’t exactly see the sense in the study of useless knowledge. Wanting to impress on my first day, I put up my hand and said “I see the point in developing critical thinking skills, but why must they be developed through the study of useless knowledge? Why not instead study these skills explicitly, through concerted exercise and practice?”
The principal dismissed my question. I don’t remember exactly how he did it, but I do remember feeling unconvinced. And I do remember getting approached by other students afterward who sympathized with my point.
Three years have passed and I’ve finished my degree. Was my law degree “useless knowledge” to me as a professional? Yes. Absolutely. I studied law and now I run a business. I’ll still need a lawyer.
Did I develop a set of skills for “thinking and arguing critically”? Yes. Yes, I’d say I would.
I would, however, add that whilst I learned a lot of useful skills, I could have been taught a whole lot more. The University taught me to think critically – this I can’t deny. One hundred marked essays with extensive feedback and many hours spent arguing a point with my professors and peers ensured this. But my education was still lacking. I was seldom taught effective learning techniques (like argument mapping, permutation diagrams or speed reading), IT skills or productivity skills. I had to look outside my curriculum to learn these, in bookshops, blogs and conversation. Yet, I rate such skills of equal value to the critical thinking my tutors meticulously instilled in me. Given the value of these additional students to me as a student and now as a professional, and the recognition of the pedagogical and professional value in these skills across many informed communities (like IT or personal development), I cannot understand why universities fail to include them in their curricula too, alongside all that gloriously useless knowledge.
Lets take a few examples. If you were to start researching a topic today, in the year 2010, you would start with Google. If you knew how to use the thing you would end on Google too. A well structured query, written with an understanding of how Google’s algorithms work, is exponentially more effective than a night spent in a dusty library. Student’s need to be taught search skills, for the harvest of knowledge from the Internet is the modern equivalent of the panning for gold in abundant rivers past.
Another vital yet untaught skill is familiarity with the concepts underlying the commonly used computer programs. Things like knowing the functions (and their corresponding buttons) on word processors and email clients, knowing how RSS readers work for keeping up to date in areas of interest, or knowing how to properly navigate a website (even at Oxford many couldn’t set up a Facebook event). These things aren’t taught at University, yet students find this knowledge incredibly useful. Every time I spent even half an hour showing classmates how to do things like set up an email client instead of web-mail (so that getting an email rings an alarm bell and doesn’t require logging in and typing username/password combos) or use Google Desktop search (a localized Google search through all the files and folders on your computer helping, for example, all the documents referencing the case Donoghue v. Stevenson), those I’ve taught invariably return to me weeks later thanking me for revolutionizing their lives, in absolute awe at how they survived before without these skills.
An IT savvy student can use his computer to effectively store, edit, organize, find, collaborate and share. This is the essence of the information worker’s duties – that, and answering email. Some of the brightest students today (although limited largely to Americans) keep expansive online notebooks with services like Evernote, where they hold hundreds or even thousand of pages of thoughts and notes, tagged by topic and date, where their ideas grow and evolve throughout their lives. Their information is sorted, organized electronically, ubiquitously available through the cloud, and, most importantly of all, instantly searchable. Computers help us to deal with the growing information jungle and those without the IT skills aren’t going to see the surface.
Productivity techniques and personal organization techniques make a big difference to student’s lives too. Students should be explicitly taught (rather than merely urged), to use electronic calendar systems to co-ordinate and track their working time. Besides Calendars, the usage of prioritized to do lists should be integrated into the education system helping students to keep track of tasks, reduce stress, and get more done. Drafting should be taught as a method to get writing finished. Anti procrastination techniques should be shared. These skills count today – especially as we enter an age of micro specialization where one worker may have a tiny role to fill in a large number of projects – here techniques to become organized become incredibly important. Graduates equipped with such a set of skills would be set up for an organized and productive working life and have the self discipline, and ultimately confidence to go it alone and set up business themselves on day, giving back to society.
Many university lecturers continue to waste student’s time by dictating notes for students to scribble on wasted paper. These professors might argue that writing out notes helps students memorize them. This may be true but there are far more effective memory aids available, like flash cards and mind maps to name a few. If the goal of transcription is memory why not get students to make mind maps instead? Time would be saved (as students could make mind maps at home with their electronic notes), and students would be equipped with a brilliant memory technique to help them throughout their lives.
If students spent their academic life using Google effectively, building personal databases of notes on topics that interest them, collaborating using online tools, organizing their lives with to do lists and electronic calenders,making mind maps and being taught how to use the most common software, then we’d have the perfect workforce for an information age.
Today’s school and college graduates will have Internet access everywhere. They’ll have desktops at work, iPhones in their pockets, and laptops in their homes. It will only be on rare occasions (such as in certain fast paced situations like emergency medicine) where the skill of retaining a huge litany of facts is more important that the ability to quickly find and understand reliable information online.
To clarify I am not arguing here that facts should no longer be taught; clearly many subjects have steep learning curves and the foundation necessary to understand them takes many years to build. Instead, my point is that educational institutions need to place more emphasis on search skills, so as to equip students with the skills they need to prosper in a world where nearly all knowledge is available online, provided you can find it. Furthermore, information now moves quicker than ever before and a huge part of being a modern professional involves staying up to date, something good search skills greatly help with.
Although the choice of search skills to be taught can be debated and will, of course, change with time, I would suggest the following six skills as a starting point:
- To intelligently construct search queries using operators and an understanding of how search works
- To get an intuitive feel for how information is structured on websites (such as being able to understand how Google results are structured and colour coordinated to help surfer learn more about each individual result)
- To gauge the reliability of the content of a page based on a set of common sense heuristics
- To know where”good places” to find information online are (such as a set of respected sites in different domains and also some social bookmarking sites)
- To be taught skills for keeping up to date with new developments (such as using RSS)
Once search skills are widely taught in educational institutions, exams should also emphasize this angle. It is no longer sufficient just to test what a student knows; we must also test what they can find out, and how quickly they can do so. A student with a poor memory but excellent search skills is far more valuable today that one with a good memory and poor search skills, yet the ubiquitous closed book exam fails to pick up this important distinction.
Let’s put it right.
