Do you ever wonder about the fact that you're carrying around a tool that gives you access to all of the world's knowledge? Do you ever sit back and think _I have access to anything anyone would ever need to know about everything_ and then just like, you know, watch four hours of RU-vid videos instead?
Do you think there's a smaller, smarter Internet that only super geniuses have access to and that they use it to secretly control the rest of us? _or whatever_
Let's say Google is knowledge. At what point is any of Google's knowledge *my* knowledge? Presumably, this only happens at the point at which I make it personally meaningful, which would require some transformation of it from the form in which it resides inside Google.
I proved this fact to a friend one time he stated "There is nothing I can learn from the internet that I do not already know or can't just find some help." so to follow up on the statement. I challenged him to give me a task that I do not know how to do. He challenged me to fix his water pump on his F-150 and I challenged him to install my solar panels. 5 minutes on google and 15 minutes later my task was done. 3 weeks later he finally got online and learned how to install the panels.
Google, Netflix, etc. are all examples of a posteriori knowledge. The algorithms for suggested materials base said materials based on "experienced" events such as watching the ideas channel. I have watched the ideas channel, therefor ideas channel and similar materials are suggested to me (basic example). Even seemingly a priori knowledge such as "trending" materials are based on the experiences of others. First time commenter, long time watcher. Woot woot plz include comment :)
The problem with the "knowledge" of google is that information is too easily skewed and manipulated and it's too easy to click on a link which may or may not be 100% correct.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction - isn't that Newton's Third Law!!! Totally agree with Clayton....Took the words out of my mouth although he/she did that 10 mins ago....
knowledge is the connection of ideas as a result of application of ideas by the mind. Google can predict and connect facts/ideas but it does so without understanding it ie without applying it. Thus Google cannot be knowledge, it simply presents knowledge represented in digital data. Knowledge lives in the content of a mind and it can be represented in a digital file or book. But the file or book isnt knowledge, its a representation of knowledge ie the source material for the next person to connect and thus have knowledge.
I was just having a similar conversation with my friends the other day out at dinner. Very timely! I especially enjoyed the parallel that you drew between the internet now and a well stocked library in the past.
INT - Intelligence: The ability to reason. The higher this is, the quicker and easier it is to find a solution to a problem. KNO - Knowledge: Having information about any particular subject readily available, usually through personal memory. Most times this is lumped in with... WIS - Wisdom: The ability to apply any knowledge that one may have to a particular situation. Usually obtained through experience (not XP).
1. "Escalators didn't make stairs obsolete" 2. informal text based communication has some workarounds :) Also, "Emotifonts" sounds like a REALLY good idea /sarcasm (the previous line was just an example. Emotifonts, Good Times Roman and Sarcastica are all great names)
Science is Latin for "to have knowledge". And John Locke says that knowledge is the perception of agreements and disagreements of ideas within the brain. So if that's the case, is Science wrong?
Science is NOT latin for "to have knowledge". It's derivations are Latin based, but the word itself was coined by either England or France in the middle ages. And that Latin base only means "knowledge" or "to know". The actual definition of science is more...pragmatic? At the least more practically defined. Now, say that I in no way intend to debate John Locke's definition of knowledge, or your Latin interpretation for science, then the sum total of science and knowledge is "to have the perception of agreements and disagreements of ideas within the brain." Does that statement seem incongruous or in any way at odds with itself? I see no inherent contradiction, so based on your own premise, no, science is not wrong.
Barry Rodgers Everything is based on perception, so do WE, as humans, truly know what the universe holds and can really say what is true and what is false? My point is that Science could just be OUR interpretation of nature and the universe, NOT the universe's itself. Some of us may have greater brain power than others, but in the way I see it, we're all children. We're still learning. We're still trying to obtain knowledge that is nearly impossible to obtain because we're finding more and more evidence of something. So who knows. And judging from your lecture, you may not agree. But whatever. We all have opinions.
You refer to all scientific ideas as capital-S-Science. It's not like the millions of people who have used the scientific method and logical conclusions to literally prove things have all come together to form a Science, an idea and opinion. Your uneducated doubt claims that what we know is wrong because evidence is wrong and you are right because you are depending your ideas on evidence that might exist which no one has even found a trace of. That's BS. People made theorems and hypotheses that have been proved and reproved countless times using massive amounts of evidence. Whole lives were dedicated to these works and you are saying what they assured is wrong because the universe is not as it is observed?! As a wise man once said,"das krazy!"
That seems like a job for a superhero duo, perhaps host man and the intern? I have a feeling that, much like the original batman tv series, the sidekick is the one doing the craziest acrobatics to accomplish the specific goals, the main hero is the one that is the figurehead for the cause. (basically I'm saying that I have a pretty good feeling that mike doesn't go searching for all the visual aids in his show)
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SAYING LEGO AND NOT LEGOS! Finally this crazy Americanism can come to an end starting HERE, the PBS Ideas Channel. Well done, Mike.
With technological advances in storing, processing and disseminating data and information, the skill commonly confused for knowledge has changed from being able to recall information from memory to being able to construct a search query that yields the most accurate and relevant result. It is now becoming more important to be able to process the information which is freely available rather than simply being able to recall it in the first place. In my opinion it levels out the play field a little
I like Spanish, because it has two verbs for "to know" Saber: To know facts Conocer: To know somebody. Not quite the same, but still, I find it interesting.
One thing I always use to respond to people claiming that we are less intelligent now that we just look everything up on our phones, is that it's more that the info is organized differently: it used to be that we stored the data locally in our brains, but now we just have the pointer to it (slash hyperlink slash card catalog). We don't know the name of the guy who played Mal Reynolds, but we know where on the net to go to look it up, and what keywords to search for to get there.
That probably makes up part of it too. I think the major thing now though is since I am not in school, I am not getting tested on the things I learn so most of it doesn't make the transition from short term memory to long term. Most of the times when I use the things I know is on the internet and you have to Google things to double check anyway or else they will come after you.
Socrates said : "...for this discovery of yours [writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves." It is not a new question. Having things in your memory helps you to analyse things; if you never work on you memory, it will become less good. I think that's undeniable.
I couldn't remember the name of this channel, sonai googled "youtube interesting chanel guy answers complicated questions jurrasic park?"; and here I am.
There was a research study done in which they showed that we spend less time remembering the facts, and more time remembering how to access them the next time. Make sense, as knowing how to quickly access them gives us immediate access to far more information (knowledge when put together) than if we memorized each. "Quora," and "Less Wrong" are superb examples of people with far superior knowledge due to the internet. After all, RU-vid IS making us smarter!
The bit about the libraries filled with books with pictures of cats is so true! Being a kid in the early 90's before the internet was a widely used thing, whenever we visited the school library, most of us would just look at back issues of Cat Fancy magazine!
My wife says this brings up the old adage that you should never meet your heroes: the reality never lives up to the glorification. Just has me thinking that despite our digital age of perfect recordings of everyone, especially celebrities...even if we had hours upon hours of video footage of Tesla interviews, we'd still be in this same boat.
So I heard him mention staggering beauty and I was alone in my study late at night. And thought "Hmm what is that...". What followed was a series of events that caused me to scream out loud and jump back in my chair.
In this case the word knowledge is being used in the much more rigorous philosophical sense, where as "knowing facts" is the much more common usage that is basically a synonym for "remembering" or "having access to".
Your videos, with the quick talking, amalgam of factoids and illustrative or humorous video clips is proof the inundation of what's available at our fingertips can make us smarter...if you can keep up. Being exposed to the deluge of facts earlier in your life and not fighting this new wave should help people make use of our newly constructed world.
Well, thank goodness that Google generally provides link to articles that /will/ help you expand your knowledge further. You just have to choose to read them.
This discussion reminded me of what Socrates thought about writing (when it was new about 2300 years ago). He thought that writing was the worst thing humanity ever created since it diminished the need for memory, interaction and discussion with others since everyone would read the same thing and just agree with it. He made this argument about 2300 years ago and from what I can tell humans have benefitted from writing MUCH MORE than he thought. Same argument can be made about Google.
Easy access to so much information can confuse, but can also help to strengthen basic ideas about how things work through the ability to connect information. It's a double-edged sword.
I've found most people don't care enough. I am often the only one who is willing to take the time to answer the question. I try my best to remember it, but being an alcoholic, it's spotty.
As a father to an inquisitive 5 year old son, Google is knowledge. Anything I don't already know is just a PC or Smartphone away from becoming not only part of my own understood and connected facts, but his as well. If he asks a question, he *knows* there is an internet available to help him know about it, around it, and different aspects and thoughts about that question. Google. Is. Knowledge.
Also, dog people go home to walk them, so having a dog would generally mean going out more because you're forced to! A second point is because cat owners don't have to do anything and dog owners do more, dog owners tend to be more lazy and less inclined to stay stuck to the computer/internet. Out of personal experience too, I can say that having a dog actually gets you out of the house more :)
There was a study in wich a group of people was given a piece of information. Some were asked to write it on a computer and the others were not. The ones that wrote it on the computer had a tendency to not remember the information. On the other hand the ones that didn't did remember. The ones that wrote it felt no need to remember because they knew the information would be there if they ever were to need it. So it seems like it does affect us, by making it unnecessary to retain information.
He knows this. The annotations just at that point in the video says, "This should be the Third Law! Mr. Weinberger got this wrong in his text and we didn't double check. Whooooops!" You should still see it even if your annotations were off. Unless you watched this on your phone.
Pete Holmes has a bit about Google on our phones, saying that we now know everything, but it's not making us any smarter. There's no time for mystery or wonder, or to feel anything. The time between knowing and not knowing is so brief, that knowing now feels exactly like not knowing.
Right, but the internet takes it to a new level. A book can only exist in one place at a time (though there can be multiple copies), and then it can be difficult to find the page you were looking for. In contrast, you can access the same website from almost anywhere, and putting it in your favorites means you can go right to whatever it was without flipping pages. It just makes it a lot easier to access information.
I think that rather having knowledge based on specific subjects, we are building more knowledge about How to Find the Information that we are looking for on the internet.
I think what your friend meant by the "end of the age of memory", is that now we have so many devices and tools that we can outsource our memory to. We no longer need to remember things such as phone numbers, addresses, etc. So, while memory is becoming somewhat outsourced, I think it is an advantage if a human chooses to use this to his or her advantage. The mind doesn't have to worry about remembering long lines of data and instead can focus on establishing relationships and creation.
Hey Mike, thanks for the shoutout bro, indeed it did work and I appreciate your concern. As to the actual idea in this video, I think Google provides knowledge for those who look for it but isn't in itself knowledge, it's hard knowing how to use the web and not know how to Google something. The information you search for is centralized in a way that you can actually gain knowledge with the info you find. That's just my two cents.
The perfect accompaniment to Minecraft sessions with the wife, "Welcome to Nightvale." Really just audio-books, especially Lovecraft. As for the video, I have noticed my ability to retain information seems to be lessening, while my skill to research is improving. Long time viewer, first time poster (I think, hold on let me go check). Regardless keep up the great work! ^-^
I agree with you that a quick search of short answers won't teach as much, but it doesn't mean that you can't get a fuller, richer and longer understanding of a certain subject with the internet. If one really wishes to they can properly research something with the internet and achieve a similar, if not better, understanding of something. You could counter argue that some won't learn much with quick fact searching though a book or two without reaching out to the full contents and subject.
...which means that knowledge is something every individual must create. Put it this way. A math teacher can sit down all day and try to make someone understand fractals (knowledge), and it won't even make a dent in the uninterested student's mind. But the moment that student "gets" how fractals work, and feels motivated to learn more, he'll start making the connections himself, and readily receive whatever the teacher offers him.
I particularly enjoy the philosophical aspect of that question. A practical of that would be pranksters souveniring road signs. Please, let's trade definitions and discuss further. Information what you pilfer from all your senses. The one that people mainly think of is the facts and opinions you see. Knowledge is what you are able to to distill from your findings, which gets processed into what you believe is necessary to perceive the world.
This may have been mentioned before, but there is a theory which states that we our brains are so preoccupied with possessing more data of more kinds than any time in the past, there for our brains give up some of their storage space for additional possessing capacity. Thus, creating the need for "external storage devices" for our brains, this can equate to a notebook, a keep-sake, or even an entry on a Google search. Not sure where this originated, I admit, I heard about it from "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex."
HOWEVER, when information is difficult to come by, we're more likely to give up on finding the answers at all, which also results in us not gaining that knowledge. So the issue really is a double edged sword.
We can't discount the skill required to obtain knowledge from Google. It is only through knowing how to properly research a topic that we can make the most of resources like Google, and "dive as deep" as is required to form sound ideas - which then relate to our existing pool of ideas to form knowledge. Things like examining multiple viewpoints, taking into account a source's objectivity, and knowing how to phrase a search to obtain the most pertinent results can make all the difference.
I also asked Google "Knowledge is ..." which suggested: Knowledge is Power Francis Bacon. This led me to Knowledge is Power, France is Bacon (Know your meme) Then entering "Google is ... " suggested Google is Your Friend. So you can rest assured in the knowledge that Bacon is Your Friend. Which if memory serves me right is a corollary to Newton's 3rd Law.
I'd have to agree that google is knowledge based on the fact that if you see the internet as a giant library, google takes strings and finds the relevant material, showing a connection between concepts and the materials they are about. The metaphor of having google versus a giant library is that the latter would require you to keep your own method of indexing the information you find, whereas the first does that for you.
The difference between the internet and a library is the time involved. If you spent an hour or two researching something, you have a much greater commitment to that information and will more likely digest it into your own knowledge base. Whereas with the internet, you may invest a few seconds or a few minutes finding the information. The idea that you will need a great time investment is no longer there, so you may not prioritize putting that information into your long term memory.
Regarding the pyramid that you quote. That is a model used in the teaching of the hierarchical relationship between data, information, knowledge and wisdom.
I was born in the '70s. I used to know things. Now, when deprived of the internet, I seem to know next to nothing. Granted, could be early dementia or something, but without the internet I feel like a large part of my mind is gone. Many feel the same. What's the point of remembering anything when we can access it instantly with a few clicks? I guess it's OK that we're now replacing our internal knowledge with external; OK until it goes away or is rewritten.
I wouldn't believe that the internet is making us more forgetful and less full of facts if I didn't see it in myself. At work, without access to the internet, I try to recall interesting things that I saw, but I can't.
Holy crap. I think I wrote an essay for my college English class a few years back and more or less said what Locke did, without knowing that Locke said it first.
I completely agree - I think we mix up the terms information and knowledge (and maybe 'data' as well) all the time. My very oversimplified analogy - Data = 2 cups of flour, 3 eggs, etc Information = Name of the recipe "chocolate cake", how to assemble ingredients, etc. Knowledge = that in my oven, which runs a little hot, I have to bake it at a lower temperature a little longer, or I can substitute 1/2 the butter for applesauce, etc. Wisdom = I better only eat chocolate cake once in a while.
In my opinion, google is like a self searching library, therefore serving more like a doorway or container for the web pages which present information. A more significant difference between the internet and a very well stocked library is the existence of links. In a library, the information is sorted by topic,therefore you interact with it by topic, while on the internet, you interact with it using the relationships between ideas:N. Fillion-Canada- the British Empire- I. Newton - Physics - etc.
Google is great for learning single facts about a certain topic. But to aquire knowledge, you have to understand the connection between them. Knowledge is not about listing a few facts, but understanding the whole context.
I like the "diving" metaphor. It reminds me of when I learned that not everyone is comfortable with swimming in rivers or oceans or whatnot. It's not fundamentally different from swimming in a pool, but you don't know how deep it is, you'll get pushed off course, and there's no lifeguard to keep you from drowning. Similarly, Googling something means you may not know something thoroughly, you'll probably get distracted, and there's no tutor to keep you from getting overwhelmed.
Knowledge is according to Locke, built on information. We use an educational system that says "look for information and knowledge will form" because before, when we read books, in order to get that information we had to form connections with it and the other mass we have in our brains. But that is no longer how it works. Now we have all information at the tip of our fingers, yet we keep telling children to look for it and knowledge will magically form. We should start teaching formally how to take data online and transform it in knowledge
People are visiting Google at the library too, not just checking out books. For many, it's their primary access point to the interwebs. They are learning how to discriminate among the credibility of sources at the library as well.
Could you make a meta video about how how Idea Channel embodies the ideas of Marshall McLuhan? It just hit me how the oral narrative together with the use of memes and clips that you use seems to perfectly match what Marshall McLuhan predicted about the world of television where we communicated via images, story telling, and communal experience. Although we could argue this is all the internet, your channel seems a particularly good example.
By the end of the video, the statement changed to Google Is Information. But I think first we should backtrack. "We are past the age of memory" - YES! The open accesability of information via Google and the internet has removed the need to personally remember things. We sit on the verge of a new age of knowledge - one where the people will have all they could ever want to know and only need apply themselves to build that information into "knowledge".
I have mentioned to my students in class that we have literal worlds of information at our fingertips, and we need to navigate them with care. To relate to your AI episode, what's important is that we CAN'T rely on technology for everything: Carr warns us in "The Shallows." Our society has become an extremely dependent one; we are not thinking for ourselves, and we let others do that for us: Google, AI, &c. Here's an idea: if we don't think, then, to spin on Descartes, what will we be?
