By Peter Cochrane, 24 May 2006 11:00
COMMENT
Written in Schaumburg and despatched to silicon.com from the wi-fi network in the Chicago O'Hare Airport
As a youngster I recall people impressing upon me the importance of getting an education. This was mostly expressed as a need to invest, or sacrifice, 'X' years at school and university in order to ensure a good and secure future working for a single company.
Much later I remember the term 'continuous education' emerging in response to a much faster world - faster in terms of physical transport and rapidly changing technology. At the same time the notion of a job for life seemed to have evaporated equally fast.
Inch by inch, the world moved on and the scene changed even further to a time of education by any means to hand. Today networking is a key element in getting any form of education and the school, college and university element has started to slide away from centre stage. Almost in the same way libraries of books have lost their significance so have many academic activities. We now have a far richer canvas of education at home, office and school, in fixed, temporary or mobile platforms. People pick up an education on the fly as they work every day.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, a lot of young people get by almost solely through exploiting their networks (ie surfing the web, exchanging emails etc). Is this the blind leading the blind? Perhaps! But I think it is a case of distributed ignorance winning over concentrated expertise.
Couple all this with a multimedia world where the best of the best have their knowledge and experience recorded for all time, where animations and simulations overtake the limitations of chalk and talk, and the sage on the stage becomes the guide at the side, and we have almost come full circle to the individual teaching methods of the ancient Greeks. And come to think of it, they used silica (sand) too!
Is there a downside to all this? I suspect that we all lust after a greater depth of understanding for ourselves and those around us, especially those younger than us.
But how many of us now know how an internal combustion engine works, or an electric motor - let alone a computer, integrated circuit, high speed weaving loom or power station? Does it really matter anyway? Well, someone obviously knows, there are just far fewer of them than 100 years ago, and hopefully we can find someone on the net when we are really in need. Already some countries are solely reliant on overseas expertise for their survival in terms of energy generation and technical support. Perhaps this is the ultimate networking - globalisation!
When I completed my PhD I felt I understood an infinite amount about nothing. Several decades and a lot of experience later, I feel I know nothing about an infinite amount! The reality is that with the equipment and networking available today I could now complete the same PhD in a fraction of the time. And this seems to be true of everything, apart from those areas where we really know nothing, that is. Then we are left to ponder and play until we discover where to apply the computing and networking power to best effect. But overall the outcome is faster than 30 years ago when some of it was an impossible task.
Overall I think this fast and fluid state works. Yes, it has its weaknesses but they are overcome by its tremendous strengths. As a species we are connected more every day, and collectively we know and understand more. If we could integrate (in the mathematical sense) understanding across all peoples, I suspect we would see a rapidly growing resource - and a far healthier picture than a few decades ago!
Comments
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1. misceng
Peter I fear you are too optimistic. At 77, as a professional mechanical and electrical engineer, I am still learning. This learning is developed from a sound basis in physics, chemistry and mathematics expressed in good English. Too often I see comments on silicon.com, CNet and ZDNet which show lack of reasoning and expressed so badly that it is hard to extract the meaning.
I fear that the poor language skills reflect a lack of fundamental knowledge on which build the capabilities needed in today's world. As a consequence "Education on the fly" will fail through lack of a secure foundation.
2. Simon
I agree with misceng, a good foundation is essential if the rest of the structure is not to collapse.
Not just the inital basics (maths, language, sciences), but through life as well. Something I've become aware of (especially since I had to start job hunting last year) is that too much of my knowledge after 20-something years in technology and IT related work is as you descibe - you have a problem, you dig around, find what you need to solve it. It's fine to a point but I realise that often I have missed the underlying foundations of the subject and that restricts my ability to make best use of the new knowledge.
For example, I've done a certain amount with Cisco kit - to the point where my colleagues refer to me as an expert. It was all self taught and I'm painfully aware that the knowledge I have would not qualify me for a job where solid Cisco knowledge is a requisite.
And that brings up a related issue - as well as skipping the foundations, there's a tendency for anyone to "learn what they've learned" and then claim to "have the knowledge". For me, professional standards mean that I won't make such claims, but I fear it means that I miss out at the first round of selection (box not ticked, reject) even though I probably have the same knowledge as many that will "tick the box".
3. Michael Fischer
I think Peter has something here, to a point. Initially I disagreed strongly, after all I have some 23 years of formal education and a 20 year career as an academic to protect.
But looking back on things, I survived formal education more than benefiting from it. What was important was having access to the people, books and resources that existed because of formal education, not courses of instruction, often taught by people less knowledgeable than I was at the time.
As an anthropologist I am aware that for the greatest part of history and beyond there were processes of education, but no formal education. Despite this people learned and controlled vast amounts of information and developed high levels of skill as individuals. This is still the case as my personal experience in developing countries has revealed.
I agree that a foundation is required ... schools largely exist because a child's parents and immediate associates cannot provide this. Beyond the foundation of maths (done better than today's schools), literacy, science, history and philosophy (not done at all in most cases) people require need, opportunity, interest and access to other people and resources.
However, to replace further and higher education new processes will have to evolve, and we are not there yet, though the internet might well represent the media upon which these processes can be transported.
If nothing else the internet may be the bridge between our current inefficient formal institutions and a situation where most people can learn what they need to learn to when they need it.