More fluid knowledge these days

Sometimes, people who have had plenty of education and have read many books, tend to think that life is about explanation. I have been like that most of my life.  When I was six or so, I got my first library card in the large and impressive Enoch Pratt Free Library main branch in downtown Baltimore.  Much of typical schooling involves knowing about books and written, documented explanations.  While students are in college, they tend to get the idea that the way to learn is to take a course.  

College students training to be teachers naturally have their minds on teaching activities that will increase understanding of ideas and principles that are part of necessary adult knowledge.  So, when I ask them how many credits the President has in president-ship, it sometimes takes them a second to realize the answer is "None."  

Whether it is getting elected to public office, landing a good job, having a good marriage, it is much easier to remember what happened along the way that to explain how one succeeded or failed, what the "errors" or the reasons one did all right.  Much is written these days about changes in handling knowledge, the first one being the Google search engine and related changes in knowledge construction and handling.  We used to learn that this one or that one was a great leader or thinker while those others weren't very good.  We used to learn things that we were supposed to know.  

We still do, of course, but there are changes.  It is more likely now that the first thing we do when considering Grover Cleveland or the Aztec civilization, is to look for CURRENT thinking on the subject.  New information gets uncovered, new ways of analyzing old information, new syntheses of this view and those facts emerge quickly and sometimes stand old views on their head.  

The book "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger has such a powerful and radical message that, as often happens, with totally new ideas, it is a little difficult at first to grasp what he is saying.  Still, he shows that the habit many of us learned in school when thinking and searching is often obsolete now.  Interested in Grover Cleveland?  Let's see - he was a president so look in the president section.

Nowadays, we have a search window that can look everywhere very quickly and bring back results from all the sections.  We have found that no matter how we organize our knowledge, there are other ways we could have done it.  Modern methods often enable us not only to find all mentions of Grover and his colleagues, enemies, hobbies, etc. but we get very speedy access to all the sources without moving from the keyboard.  No hauling, no elevators up and down.  We can copy relevant sections or construct a link to them on the spot. 

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety