[KaiserJeep]

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/open-david-price/1117347829?ean=9781909979024&itm=1&usri=9781909979024&cm_mmc=AFFILIATES-_-Linkshare-_-TnL5HPStwNw-_-10:1&r=1

OPEN: How we'll work, live and learn in the future
by David Price

Simply the best summary I have yet read of how this interconnected world of PCs, Smart Phones, and Tablets enables a new culture of both learning and working. David is English, an ex-civil servant and present musician and educational consultant.

'Open' will cause you to question all of your learning paradigms - from the need for examinations in this world of powerful search engines, to how we should share information socially. David does it with a charming wit and with a clear conviction that makes it a joy to read as well. It casts an illuminating light on how we'll work, live and learn in the future.

It's also a ray of hope for all you PO "Doomers". I found that it inspired optimism for the future in unanticipated ways.

Reccommended.

[GHung]

David Price is a dreamer. Nothing wrong with that as long as you realize these are freaking pipe dreams. Our future is already playing out and looks more like this: http://www.economic-undertow.com/2015/0 ... -the-road/

Excerpt:

Government => Technocracy => Zero Government

The process is easy to remember for even simple- minded business tycoons and their agents, also easy enough to set into motion particularly when the thermodynamic headwinds are blowing in the world’s face.

In Russia, the Soviets made up the last, functioning government, what followed was the relatively long technocracy that was born as Perestroika and ‘Shock Therapy’ that continues under Putin. The ordinary citizens’ collective wealth was swindled away- or hyperinflated into worthlessness. Entire industries and resources were stolen- or handed off to well-positioned opportunists. Russia itself is a gigantic country with massive resources, it has taken a lot of time to steal it all, the thefts are ongoing. To fill the vacuum left by the vanished wealth there is bread and circuses: demonstrations of Russian ‘power’ and evanescent ‘personal mobility’. What comes next is economic and political breakdown — already underway — then dissipation when there is nothing left to steal = zero government.

The zero-government dynamic is not necessarily political, rather it is a component of decline in energy throughput. Governments and ideological ‘operating systems’ are nothing more than mechanisms to allocate- and manage the costs associated with energy surpluses; as the costs multiply the ideologies are stranded. Conventional wasting regimes are unable to adapt to straitened conditions where waste cannot be easily financed: zero-government is a manifestation of ‘Conservation by Other Means ™.

Appologies to those who've lead safe, protected lives and still believe humanity will have some collective Kum Bah Ya moment. The very processes that permit what Davis posits will be a new revolution in human cooperation will ensure that'll never happen. The mad, sociopathic scramble to control what's left is well underway in the west as well.

[Keith_McClary]

Overview
What makes a global corporation give away its prized intellectual property? Why are Ivy League universities allowing anyone to take their courses for free? What drives a farmer in rural Africa to share his secrets with his competitors?

Read all about it for only $7.49 .

[KaiserJeep]

David Price is a dreamer. Nothing wrong with that as long as you realize these are freaking pipe dreams. Our future is already playing out and looks more like this: http://www.economic-undertow.com/2015/0 ... -the-road/

-snip-

Appologies to those who've lead safe, protected lives and still believe humanity will have some collective Kum Bah Ya moment. The very processes that permit what Davis posits will be a new revolution in human cooperation will ensure that'll never happen. The mad, sociopathic scramble to control what's left is well underway in the west as well.

Hardly fair. I work at what is now the fourth largest tech firm, HP. (IBM, Siemens, and Hitachi are larger.) We practice some of the principles that David Price talks about in product design, those are not pipe dreams.

In fact, if you want a look at the current world's most powerful supercomputer, HP just designed it using "OPEN" engineering principles. Parts of the HP Apollo 8000 design (announced November 2014) were contracted to Indian firms, specifically the hydronic engineering and the 3-phase power supply design. We had little in-house talent in these areas, since this was the first HP supercomputer design with liquid cooling, and the first to tie directly into a commercial building's 480-volt, 3-phase busbars. (Other computers such as the early CRAYs were liquid Freon cooled, far less efficient and a nightmare to maintain - and water condensed on the chilled parts then dripped down.)

Quite significant design element is the warm water cooling. Other computers have used connections to the chilled water loop in a typical large building, but chilling water requires that you run an energy-intensive heat pump, causing phase changes in Freon coolants. The HP Apollo 8000 takes warm water on the input side, and makes hot water output - hot enough for space heating or human hot water consumption via an efficient water-to-water heat exchanger. The individual 2-CPU modules do not actually insert into the rack's two coolant loops, they utilize "heat pipes" from the CPU chip to the edges of the module, and heat is transferred via conductance and vapor/liquid phase change from the CPU to the coolant using water vapor in a partial vacuum (versus the ordinary heat pipe which has ozone-damaging Freon inside). This avoids the coolant leaks and water condensation that trouble all other liquid cooling designs, the coolant is pre-charged in the rack piping and in the "dry-break" precision stainless steel connectors of the coolant hoses. This innovative electronic cooling design is sure to be copied by everyone, it is an incredible 30% more efficient than all earlier liquid cooling schemes. The coolant hoses snap together like electrical cables, without any requirement for plumbing expertise.

In fact, some early teething problems with corrosion caused by the hot coolants were also solved via "OPEN" style contracting for chemical engineering expertise - with a French design firm that has also worked on the French standardized nuclear reactors - the safest conventional pressurized water reactors in the world. Now we sample the supercomputer coolant monthly and use additives to adjust the ion balance of the fluid.

The direct 3-phase power connection from the 480-volt, three phase building busbars is another innovation. It allows you to power a huge supercomputer without even having to spring for a transformer, much less a UPS. The racks are 24 inches wide, the same as raised floor tiles, an incredible convenience. The packing density is huge, 144 modules with 2 CPUs and Memory arrays per module, and an incredible 288 CPUs per rack, over FOUR TIMES as dense as our nearest competitor (which happens to be an IBM machine that goes by "Watson").

This is PEREGRINE, the HP Apollo 8000 supercomputer at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Labs.

This, the most powerful supercomputer in the world, was designed using the OPEN principles described by David Price and disparaged by you.

Disclaimer: My own group was not part of the HP Apollo 8000 team. We are strictly sustaining older designs at the current time.

http://www.hpcwire.com/2013/09/16/nrel_debuts_peregrine_supercomputer/

http://insidehpc.com/2014/03/peregrine-worlds-largest-supercomputer-dedicated-renewable-energy/

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx%2F4AA5-0069ENW.pdf

http://goparallel.sourceforge.net/peregrine-supercomputer-takes-flight-in-search-of-renewable-energy/

http://gcn.com/articles/2014/07/16/apollo-8000-water-cooled.aspx

[Withnail]

Looks great, but what will it do that will really make any difference to anything?

Modelling weather events and stuff like that?

[KaiserJeep]

Simulations, or "Modelling" as you called it, is one common application for supercomputers.

Who knows, they might create the first Climate Model that actually works. Something that when fed actual data can make accurate predictions.

The purpose of the NREL is to integrate clean energy sources into the national power grid. Simulating the results of different control actions on millions of distributed wind and solar micro-generators would be incredibly useful. We cannot even see the status of such distributed power sources today, much less control them.

[Pops]

Read all about it for only $7.49 .

LOL, nice.

Everything is free now
That's what they say
Everything I ever done
Gotta give it away.
Someone hit the big score
They figured it out
They were gonna do it anyway
Even if doesn't pay.

Gillian Welch

http://open.spotify.com/track/0H8ukN2MIW2iNvqJP1kb4O

[Paulo1]

Information access isn't learning. It is often confused.

As a past high school teacher I found the more connected students became the dumber, lazy, and more insular they became. I started teaching when computers were new. Teaching seniors to design in Auto-CAD was a big deal in the 90s and I was good at it. As new generations of connected students came up through the ranks all they wanted to do was look for short cuts in all subjects. Most of my classes were project based...electronics, etc...even my math classes whenever possible, but students preferred to text instead of complete anything; knowing if they failed their mommy would come in and go to bat for them.

I had a mother come in to see me about her GRADE 12 child...(Yes grade 12)..and wonder what he could do to pass his applied math course. I asked her just one question, "are you looking forward to Zach living in your basement as an adult? Because, if he doesn't complete his design projects he isn't graduating and you've got him for a good long while". She wasn't happy.

The big new trend in education is for students to have their own learning plan and style based upon 'connectedness' (tablets, etc.) The problem is that the maturity of present day 18 year olds is about where we were at 12-13. I don't know about you folks, but I left home at 17. I had a family, career, and mortgage by 24.

This is just an observation, but it is first hand and based on experience. Young people raised in a world of instant communication and instant feedback, (computers), lack focus, drive, and the ability to stick to a long term plan in order to achieve a goal...for the most part. It is like a switch has been turned off. I also worked with students raised on remote islands without malls, iphones, the net, etc. Their creativity and problem solving abilities were unbelieveable. They would live away from home and 'board out' for grades 10-12. They had their phones and tablets,but they read books! They were above and beyond almost every town (connected) kid for focus and maturity. I have always attributed this to a "go out and play", childhood and the requirement to devise their own entertainment when bored.

You computer folks may not accept my POV, but like I said it is based on first hand experience. People are sitting back and watching the machines work and build everything needed. They have now moved into the realm of letting them do the thinking. Here is an example.... My last year I taught a few mechanics classes as our school had a fully equipped auto shop. One day the secretary called me up and asked if I had someone in the shop who could check her SUV tires as her 'tire pressure warning light' came on. You know, one of the ones we used to call 'idiot lights'. (Her husband, who I knew as a fellow pilot, was away working and couldn't do it). I told her to grab her (GRADE 10 son......) and have him come down and get a tire gauge and check her tires for her. She told me her boys didn't know how to do that...had never done it before. " You mean they never checked a tire before? What about their bike tires? It's the same", I said. Apparently, they had never done it by age 16. So, I grabbed the closest kid (supposedly a dumb mechanic shoppie in the school hierarchy) and sent him out with a gauge and portable tank.

Don't believe me? Next time you buy someting at a store pay cash. Watch the person at the till make change.

[KaiserJeep]

Paulo, I know you believe that, I can sense your sincerity. But that is the polar opposite of the message in the book. But for the new open methods of education and cooperation to work, both the students and the teacher have to buy into the process.

If you have doubts, we will not resolve those in this Forum. But I suggest that you would benefit from reading this book. There are some very respected schools using the new learning/teaching paradigms.

[GHung]

KJ: "There are some very respected schools using the new learning/teaching paradigms."

Any comparative studies as to outcomes vs. old-school books and paper education?

When my kids moved back in with me to finish highschool they were in the more advanced classes. When my daughter brought home her senior math book (rare occurance since they don't assign homework these days) I pulled out my last math book from 12th grade (pre-calculus; I kept it because they were going to a new addition after 5 years) my daughter was blown away. Far more advanced than what she was expected to graduate with. As I mentioned, they don't even assign homework since so many students (and their parents) simply refused to complete assignments at home. Now they use up valuable school time to do "homework" rather than instruction.

This year our system has moved to all electronic teaching; iPads.

@Paulo: Give it up. you and KJ are miles apart, perspectively. He clearly chooses to ignore the liabilities to society, and that these are all artifacts of the late industrial age made possible by extreme levels of overshoot which he either thinks isn't an issue, or thinks we'll deal with, somehow. His view from his technological ivory tower misses most of the fundamental predicaments which make this technucopian dream so very fragile. Learning, really learning to learn, comes from hard-fucking-work, not from having solutions presented on an electronic silver platter. That's why we see so few new ideas these days. So I'll ask KJ; How is this any different from the past, excepting that old ideas are being exchanged in faster, more complex ways?

Jeez, many school system aren't even teaching cursive writing anymore. Their reasons are that no one writes in cursive; it's not a useful skill. This totally ignores that the process of learning cursive trains and exercises the mind in some very important and fundamental ways. My mother was a successful special ed teacher and all of her 'challenged' students had to master writing by hand in cursive. Georgia State University did a study which concluded that overall outcomes were dramatically improved when special ed students mastered these fundamental skills. Their brains learned to learn much better. They were able to formulate thoughts better and to constuct sentences better. Spelling improved, as did their understanding of whatever it was they were writing about. Teaching kids how to access information better isn't the same as teaching them to learn; no more than making a computer more powerful in terms of information processing makes said computer "think" (the first thing I was taught when majoring in AI).

I suggest folks get a copy of "Society of Mind" (Minsky, 1988). One thing it taught me is that turning over the hard chores of acquiring information cheats the brain of critical processes that it needs to develop higher thinking skills. Case-in-point: I was trained on a slide rule and can do math in my head much faster/better than kids who grew up with electronic calculators. Maybe this is purely anecdotal, or I'm wired that way, but I think that having had to do the hard work of long math supported by a slide rule trained my brain to do these things. Math was always a challenge for me, but it's clear that we have a shortage of graduates these days who could have 'made the grade' in the system I grew up in.

KJ: How many folks does HP employ (import) from countries like India? Just askin'...

[Paulo1]

Thanks Gary,

I know I am cynical about it. I appreciate your sincerity and willingness to share this information. In all probablilty there is probably some truth in both positions, some of the time, but like most teaching and learning styles not appliciable to all or in all venues.

I have always remembered what a Japanese exchange student said to me about 10 years ago. (MY GOD, was it that long ago?) "In Japan, students do the work. In Canada, teachers do all the work". I fear this is another example of 'bending over and accomodation' in order to make 'it' work, yet again. The Dutch boy of education, putting a device in the dike.

from Pink Floyd:

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! teacher! leave us kids alone!
All in all you're just a another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just a another brick in the wall.

-smooth guitar solo-

"Wrong, do it again!"
"Wrong, do it again!"
"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. how can you
Have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"
"you! yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"

I worry we are putting the pudding out and calling it learning.

I taught elementary school for three years, thinking it would be a nice change. Math was a big part of the assignment and the kid's math skills were pretty low. I made it as fun as I could but there is that magic point in grade 5 when students simply have to 'know' their times tables to 12X12. I would have been happy if it was 10X10. I called parents and home and talked to them about. "Learning the times tables is a family exercise done at home. We don't have enough hours in the day to do it at school. It has to be done at home to ensure it is learned". I taught a class of three grades in one room and it was long beyond step by step teaching practice. (I know it is old fashioned but I am sure most of you folks learned your times tables at home!! ). Anyway, in parent/teacher conferences I would reiterate this point and would supply free of charge...flash cards!!! , and recommend web sites for fun practice. Then the serious talk would happen. "You know, Julie has expressed a desire to become a nurse. Has she said this to you? Yes? Well, nursing is a 4 year science degree at university. In order to get in the program she will have to take academic math, biology, and chemistry. This requires her to be able to do fractions. If she can't do fractions, she cannot complete math 11 or 12. If she does not know her times tables, she will never understand or be able to work with fractions. In other words, if she does not leave elementary school knowing her times tables, she will not be able to complete math and will not be able to become a nurse." (parents nodded, "yes, Julie will learn her times tables this summer". )

And when I had Julie next year for grade six she continued to pull out her calculator for basic mental math operations. Guess what, Julie is graduating this year and will not go into a nursing program. I have no idea what she will do with her life and probably her mom doesn't know, either.

You know what Julie could do? She could punch in numbers on her calculator that looked like letters in order to spell dirty words.....and I have long ago forgotten what those numbers were. Maybe she had to hold the calculator upside down?

I have a couple of very simple points to make about learning, and they apply to learning anything be it Karate, piano, landing a plane, building a house, fly fishing, woodwork, painting, riding motorcycles...etc. This is a list of what I do or have done with my time. You have to learn the basics first and sometimes it is repetitive and not too much fun. (Shooting approaches and landings makes one a competent pilot, right Harrison Ford?) There are no shortcuts or easy ways to mastery.

Computer based learning won't circumvent these two facts of life.

An example of pilots learning to fly and flying by computers and automatic flight systems are those two Asiana airline pilots who landed a bit short at San Francisco Intl. Like I said, there is no substitution for practice and the 'sweat factor'.

Anyway, off to enjoy the spring day and looking forward to hearing about your new house in Wisconsin.

Ghung, just read your post as I tried to post this so will add this on. If kids at school listen and work hard in class, there should not be too much homework until latter high school. My best friend teaches Calculus and Math 12. Math 12 in BC is apparently at 2nd year university level in most States to give this context. Unless you have the sharp math mind, (which I do NOT, I always had to work very hard at math), students usually have to do an extra 1-2 hours per day homework...every day. My buddy arrives to school at 6:30 am and is available every lunch hour for students requiring extra help. But for those kids that do not work and ask to re-do assignments and tests he always says, "sure, no problem, same time next year". Yes, they use graphing calculators and he instructs with a projection tablet, etc....but they know the basics or they cannot succeed. They get weeded out pretty fast.

Here is a pretty good story. I used to be the Union rep at our school. Did it for years. One day another math teacher friend came to me pretty upset. She had a parent going after her for the following. (complaints to principal, school board office, etc) They were going on a family trip to Hawaii...a winter vacation. The mother (of a grade 10 child) came in to inform the teacher of this and asked her what she was going to do to help her child 'catch up' when they returned? Of course she told the mom going to Hawaii in the middle of term is a choice with consequences, and that her child might fail because of it. You know what I told her to say if she came back? You guessed it, "re-do it same time next year". It is a different world out there, let me tell you.

regards Paul

[Keith_McClary]

Don't believe me? Next time you buy someting at a store pay cash. Watch the person at the till make change.

They just have to enter "amount tendered" and the machine does the arithmetic. One (older) guy asked me to explain why I would give him $11 for a $5.50 purchase.

[Keith_McClary]

This, the most powerful supercomputer in the world, was designed using the OPEN principles described by David Price and disparaged by you.

Does this mean no patents or copyrights?

[jesus_of_suburbia]

The big new trend in education is for students to have their own learning plan and style based upon 'connectedness' (tablets, etc.) The problem is that the maturity of present day 18 year olds is about where we were at 12-13. I don't know about you folks, but I left home at 17. I had a family, career, and mortgage by 24.

Oh god...

[KaiserJeep]

This is nothing new, folks. Every generation seems to decry the declining educational standards. Here is a famous E-mail example from the last decade, the 8th grade examination from Salina, Kansas. (I confirmed it was genuine at snopes.com before reposting.)

Could you have passed the Eight Grade in 1895?
Probably not . . . take a look:

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, KS. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS and reprinted by the Salina Journal.


8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS - 1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.

2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.

3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.

4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal parts of do, lie, lay and run.

5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.

6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.

7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.


Arithmetic
(Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.

2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?

3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu., deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?

4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?

5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.

6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.

7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20.00 per in?

8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.

9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?

10.Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.


U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.

2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.

3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.

4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.

5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.

6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.

7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?

8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?


Orthography
(Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?

2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?

3. What are the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?

4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.

5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.

6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.

7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.

8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.

9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain vein, raze, raise, rays.

10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.


Geography
(Time, one hour)

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?

2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?

3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?

4. Describe the mountains of N.A.

5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwolf and Orinoco.

6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.

7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.

8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?

9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.

10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.

Three things I will say:

1) Clearly educational standards do decline as teacher/student ratios decline. The decline in teacher/student ratios is STILL a theme in OPEN.

2) Most of the skills tested in the above exam are of NO USE to me as the leader of a design engineering group. Basic arithmetic I can use, basic rules of grammar do enhance communications, otherwise, not so much.

3) I would also fail this 8th grade exam. I would probably score higher than many of my younger engineers, but that does not mean their careers will be inferior to mine - only that educational standards must continually evolve.

Lastly, if you ever begin a conversation with "In my day, ..." - sorry, but YOU are obsolete, and impeding progress. Being obsolete is not the same as being useless, it only means that younger folks will possibly outperform you, other factors being equal. Whether or not they actually do so depends upon whether the evaluation criteria are also under constant revision.

One of the reasons I am doing sustaining engineering (i.e. keeping older computers alive, versus designing new ones) is that my technical education is dated. My engineering training pre-dates the silicon microprocessor and Windows - the earliest computers I trained on were less powerful than a $100 tablet is today, and cost a million dollars.

On the balance, if any of this conversation made you uncomfortable, you would benefit from reading OPEN. (No, I have no commercial interest in it, but I do believe the concepts between the covers.)

Before anyone replies, consider for one moment the difference between a work ethic and an education. I can hire educated people at any time - the trick is identifying those with a real work ethic.

[americandream]

Appologies to those who've lead safe, protected lives and still believe humanity will have some collective Kum Bah Ya moment.

Speaking as an objectivist, the issue is less one of mankind having any Hollywoodesque moments but more whether we have the capacity. Nature has endowed us with the unique tool of consciousness which enables us to rise up above our hardware, our instincts. Whether we do so is anothe matter. A sound analysis of the means to achieve that is to be found in Capital.

However, if instincts trump consciousness, evolution will remove us. I personally would rather my species did not go the way of the dinosaur for obvious reasons related to having children.

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . KaiserJeep. I find it interesting that your posts continue to support my belief that human intelligence (on an individual level) would be much higher if computers had not been made available to the masses.

In other words the brave new world is dumbing down humanity and a proportion of the population are barely able to maintain a conversation, develop a creative thought, or engage in logical thinking.

Cheers

[Outcast_Searcher]

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/open-david-price/1117347829?ean=9781909979024&itm=1&usri=9781909979024&cm_mmc=AFFILIATES-_-Linkshare-_-TnL5HPStwNw-_-10:1&r=1
'Open' will cause you to question all of your learning paradigms - from the need for examinations in this world of powerful search engines, to how we should share information socially.

(Red font above mine, for emphasis)

As a guy who had a career in computers and loved the geek work, I'm all for this stuff. Search engines and things like Khan Acadamy are fantastic references.

Somehow though, these ideas seem to go overboard and assume a step forward means global nirvana. So we won't need tests since everyone will have access to search engines, huh?

So why go to school at all? Any question on any job interview can be answered by consulting a search engine. Oh, and any problem can be solved by any unskilled person, since they have access to search engines, right? (I can just hear some idiot corporate manager in a drug company (for one example) now: "You. New hire there. Quick -- cure all cancer! What, you're not DONE yet? Why? You have a search engine!")

First of all, obviously NOT. Why even bother to say such things? Oh yes, overpromotion and lack of common sense. What, that search engine doesn't imbue everyone with common sense? Unfotunately, when such grandiose and idiotic claims/comments are made, it tends to reflect badly on the whole idea.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Yair . . . KaiserJeep. I find it interesting that your posts continue to support my belief that human intelligence (on an individual level) would be much higher if computers had not been made available to the masses.

In other words the brave new world is dumbing down humanity and a proportion of the population are barely able to maintain a conversation, develop a creative thought, or engage in logical thinking.

Cheers

Oh come now. I sit here as perhaps the last American who may ever have a smart phone and find it baffling and depressing that the smart phone and idiocy like Facebook are causing so many people to, for example, cause traffic accidents through inattention. (And no, I'm no Luddite, but I get all the internet time I want while I'm at home. Now I often carry a Kindle instead of a book, but better reading light and more fonts for my aging eyes are more a motivation than "technology/toys".)

OTOH, a computer is a TOOL. I believe that in my career and much of my thinking about many things, the spreadsheet (just one program) is an INCREDIBLY powerful tool that has made me a lot more insightful and productive -- not less.

A screwdriver is a tool. I can use it (as I did when I was a kid) to cheaply maintain my bicycle, or to stab people in the eye. One thing is good, one not so much. Now, should we run around worrying about screwdrivers?

This too will pass (IMO). People will calm down and put things like smartphones in perspective once the novelty and perception of being a "status symbol" wears off. Then maybe people can show off the mods on their driverless cars!

[ralfy]

Related:

http://opensourceecology.org/

However, given a lack of material resources and energy, communities will have to focus on earlier forms of technology, localization, etc.