James Drogan

Today, from Arts & Letters Daily comes an article by John Naughton from The Observer that adds to this string regarding the the changing of the mind.

As I read it, I turned to look behind me to see 12 inches of unread books, then to the right of me to see another 18 inches of unread books.  I don't think this would ever have happened pre-Internet and I believe it a phenomenon that has developed only in the last four to five years.

Evidence, I think, that the trend noted by Turkle, and underscored by Carr and Naughton is indeed, at least in my little world, true.

The fundamentals of communication and the SIDAL loop are radically changing.  Am I keeping up?  I'm not sure as I can't seem to take the time to think about it.

On Friday, June 13, from Smart Mobs, comes a post by Howard Reingold, "Attention, Multitasking, Learning," that fits quite well with Carr's piece quoted in The Mind Changes.  And it is disturbing.

"Over the course of a riveting 75-minute discussion of the birth of Gandhian non-violent activism, I found myself becoming increasingly distressed as I watched students cruising Facebook, checking out the NY Times, editing photo collections, texting, reading People Magazine, shopping for jeans, dresses, sweaters, and shoes on Ebay, Urban Outfitters and J. Crew, reorganizing their social calendars, emailing on Gmail and AOL, playing solitaire, doing homework for other classes, chatting on AIM, and buying tickets on Expedia (I made a list because of my disbelief). From my perspective in the back of the room, while Dalton vividly described desperate Indian mothers throwing their children into a deep well to escape the barrage of bullets, I noticed that a girl in front of me was putting her credit card information into Urban Outfitters.com. She had finally found her shoes!"

This cited a post by Josh Waitzkin referred to by Reingold; " this post on “Multitasking and the End of Learning,”

I find myself sketching the following in my diary.

The task teachers have always had is to capture the attention of the student.  Some do it better than other.  With all that is going on in the world, and with all that is available almost instantaneously and almost anywhere and at almost any time, this task of capturing attention has become more critical and more difficult.

I noted to one of my teaching colleagues:

"Bill, summer, in my experience, brings on increasing waves of ennui.  I'm noticing it in my graduate class.  It's hot.  The beach and the beer call.  The course is intense.  It takes the strong-minded to keep in step."

The World is Lumpy is from Paul Krugman and in regards to global transportation.  He also makes mention of a paper, "The Trade Reducing Effects of Market Power in International Shipping," that may also be of interest.

Krugman is a good addition to your news reader.

Given all the needs of the world and the present socio-economic-political situations is this really an appropriate thing to do?  Isn't there a better use for $700M?

This morning, Wired News: Top Stories brought The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.

The argument seems to be that with enormous amounts of data and computational power one can discern patterns.  That patterns predict other patterns and that this is enough.  Causalities are no longer required.

I find this troubling on two counts.  The first, is that I am long steeped in the scientific method.  Determinism is important.  I try not to let this experience close my mind to new ideas.

The second is that in connection with building a new graduate class, System Design and Control, I have deeply immersed myself in business dynamics (Forrester, Sterman, Senge) which is very much about causality.

I'm troubled by the notion that the why behind the what (the pattern) may no longer matter.  If that is true, then how can I reproduce the pattern?  How can I be proactive?

Why?

Like so much of what proposes to pass as journalism, this article gives no information on the root causes of the problem. 

Perhaps this occurs because, as the article implies, there is little encouragement in primary and secondary education. 

I would offer two other hypotheses.

1. It's hard work and the American  culture increasingly argues against hard work.  This is something that Dave and I have discussed at some length (search on "Conversations with Dave" in this site for excerpts from these conversations.)
2. More money can be made elsewhere.  Finance, despite its recent travails,  is an example.

I'm convinced that economic growth and all it underpins depends upon innovation.  Innovation, in turn, depends on the disciplines that are part of the computer-related degree course of study.

I'll add that the request by business for more H1-B visas is not so that we can attract more construction workers to America, but so we can get the computer-related skills we need. 

In a 2003 presentation, How to Use Computers and Internet in Daily Transactions, I quoted Sherry Turkle of MIT;  "We know that technology changes our lives -- but could it be changing our selves as well?"  I blogged about Turkle's observation in Turkle + Technology = Something to Think About and Is Privacy Passé?

My morning browse through the blogs (see blogroll if you are interested in my grazing habits) brought me to Nick Carr's (yes, the " IT Doesn't Matter" Nick Carr) Atlantic Monthly article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, by way of Jon Udell's blog post.

It seems to me that Carr is arguing in the Atlantic Monthly that IT does matter and matters in a very profound way. 

I urge a read of Carr's article and some thinking about what he has to say.  What does Carr's perspectives portend for the Homo sapiens species?  I particularly urge this on my students,  those who teach (especially my friends at the  The Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute at Baruch College), and anyone who as been following the portions of "Conversations with Dave" that have appeared in this blog.

Bob Sutton, another of my favorites, puts 15 things he believes on the left side of his blog.

This is another recommended read for my students (and others) as they find their way through life. 

I pass along this piece because I feel it represents the sort of thinking we need to do as we move into a world of education where technology will play an increasingly dominant role in quality learning.

The millennials with the new technology are, as discussed in the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute 7th Annual Symposium on Communication and Communication Intensive Instruction, driving new rules, and convention and change in communication.  We need to find a way to ride, if not manage, these forces of change.

Change is rampant.  It may wait for those of us from the preceding generations; it may tolerate our clinging to potentially outmoded ideas.  Or it may not. 

“Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot.”