Technological Relativism

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber sums up what is likely a widely shared response to the flurry of recent commentary on what effect the internet is having on the ways we think about the world.

 I can’t help imagining some grouchy old-timer saying something like “Damn cave paintings. In my day, we told stories about the sacred mammoth hunt, and you really had to use your imagination. Kids these days just want to stare at a wall all night. No wonder they can’t throw a spear straight”.

The NY Times is asking what technology is doing to us, especially all these gadgets.

It isn't new.  Last year Wired made the bold claim that Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains.  What really got this ball rolling seems to be credited to Nick Carr's 2008 piece in the Atlantic, in which he asked, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore.

To those familiar with the historical development of just about any new technology, fears about what each new step might be bringing are nothing new.  As Quiggin notes, new technology brings with it new ways of doing things - and this inevitably means losing old ones.  The trick is in assessing the cost/benefit ratio.  However, because there is no way of knowing what the future really holds, attempts to prognosticate will always suffer - whether resulting in pessimism or optimism; we just don't know.

I'm reminded of James Burke's classic television series Connections.  Here's the implications of the thermos flask:


So, obviously this doesn't mean we can't make informed predictions, or notice changes in society that are occurring around us.  It simply suggests that there are often unforeseen consequences of technological innovation, and that we ought to be very careful not to get ahead of ourselves.

A commenter at Crooked Timber writes:

Socrates also IIRC was cranky about those young whippersnappers who think they can understand something by reading it, instead of memorizing it and actually holding in their heads where understanding happens. And if you base your knowledge on what you read, then of course you can flit from book to book, without the true discipline and concentration needed to study in an oral tradition.

Socrates was right, of course. If wisdom is based on what is in your head, then reading is pseudo-wisdom, a cheat. I prefer to think of it as off-site storage, and that reading is a way to access lots of information and ideas without having to keep them on-site. The Internet does the exact same thing, but it pumps the process up another couple of orders of magnitude.

I used to say that Aristotle was undoubtably smarter than I, but I plus the Columbia Encyclopedia know more than Aristotle. Today, I plus Wikipedia know way more than that, but the essential process is the same.
If you want to talk about how the Internet is changing the way we think, first look at how literacy changed the way people think.

I think that is well-put.  I’d also add that when reading a book you’re also stuck in that author’s head. Now, this may be a marvelous place to be. But it can also be insidious. I’m thinking of the Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages develop false feelings of fealty towards their captors. One of the most marvelous aspects of reading the classics is the availability of annotation.


I’ve yet to read a book on one of these new-fangled e-readers, but the addition of subtle hyper-linking might be interesting. But then of course, if they’re created by the author you’re still in his grip. Maybe one day we’ll have open-sourced editions, whereby anyone can publish their own hyper-link annotations for a particular work.

In the meantime, having the computer handy is often just a brilliant reference tool. For instance, right now I’m reading Donald Worster’s biography of John Muir (which is excellent, by the way... and come to think of it, quite ironic) and I’ve popped over to Wikipedia more than once.  I won't try to argue that the internet hasn't had a profound impact on the way we engage with media.  But I think it is still much too early to say whether the bad outweighs the good, or that shifting attention spans is necessarily a bad thing.

Finally, and I feel guilty for waiting until the end to say this, but I'm afraid that, in the interest of full-disclosure, I must admit to having always had a horrifically short attention span.  When Carr describes the uncomfortable feeling he gets as he realizes that becoming immersed in a novel is no longer as easy at is might have once been, my first thought is, "Welcome to Super Vidoqo's world."  I realize that my own anecdotal experience may actually be clinical.  But I know I've never been alone.  And for those of us out here in la-la land, the internet presents a way to engage with media in a way that is certainly more satisfying, if not a net gain in intellectual development.  Maybe it will turn out for the worse.  But I, for one, am enjoying the ride.

Skyping the Past

Via Matt Yglesias: Chris Bertram ponders what is lost in the move from film to digital photography.

Such as what? you might ask. Well here’s one trivial example: ISO. In the digital age ISO is something that you rack up to get a sufficiently fast shutter speed at the aperture you want, subject to the constraint that you don’t want the image too noisy. So faced with a dark interior: no problem, just make the sensor more sensitive. With a roll of film things are quite different. Your ISO is fixed for the next 12 or 36 exposures and it may significantly constrain your choices. So, shooting in the sunshine with an old camera (fastest shutter speed 1/300) and 400 ISO film, I realised that there was exactly one aperture I could choose. (And old cameras are lovely and fascinating, btw.) More significant, perhaps, is the way that film trains your head and where the sheer flexibility of digital gets in the way to learning to see things in the right way. If I load a film camera with Velvia, I quickly become aware of vivid colours and blocks of colour. If I’ve got a roll of black and white film, then I quickly become more attuned to line, light and shadow.

This perpetual spinning up of technology is often as much about loss as it is about gain.  If suddenly everything is everywhere, then where is anything?  If I could download exact replicas from the Whitney they would be everything they are – except museum pieces. Would they be as interesting?

I think it is a great discussion to have. I’m certainly no relativist. But as with most things, in giving up something you also gain. For instance my wife complains about the iPod being so impersonal. I can’t recall the author but there was a piece recently spotlighted in The Week which mourned the loss of that special something one got from buying an old vinyl record and listening to it all the way through.

I completely agree. But at the same time a lot else was gained. Having access to your entire library at once, for one. The untethering of old distribution models for another: I spend as much money as I ever did on music, but it’s so much easier to find new bands and support the ones I really like instead of blowing $14 on a CD that I wasn’t that into.

This argument has always been around, and it has been a legitimate one. We love life, and become attached to experiences. Telephones degraded personal conversations. Automobiles degraded the smell of stables. Yet there have obviously been enormous benefits from both.

The trouble is in quantifying the cost/benefit ratio. How does having thousands of digital family photos compare to having hundreds from film? How does being able to watch many movies in HD at home compare to watching a few at the multiplex? All of it swirls in and out of experience. There may be one right answer, or there may be many in many different ways.

Personally, there are some things I miss about my old Pentax. One of these days I may dust it off (if I can find a roll of 35mm). I still have my record player. And I’ll still enjoy playing Wish You Were Here on it. But I’m looking forward to taking, then editing movies and pictures on my iPad-whats-it and posting them to the internet within days. I’m glad my kids can Skype with grandma – even if it means taking the 8 hour trip to see her seems just that little bit less urgent.

iPad in the Classroom

Woomba jokes aside, Apple's iPad is tantalizing from an education IT standpoint.

I think a class set for $13,500 (30 x $450) would be an amazing opportunity.  That's still a steep price tag, but gradually rolling them out, at district volume prices might get you down to 1 cart/3 classrooms pretty quickly.  Sure, a lot of teachers might not be the best fit.  But the sort of closed-environment apps you could do on here would be amazing.  I've generally taught in lower income schools, everything from K to 12 and I could use these with every grade.  You usually can't count on kids having easy access to high speed internet outside class and so just the ability for targeted instruction ramps up dramatically.

The ability to set up custom content that targets ability would be incredible.  As you go up in grades, the ability spread gets worse and worse.  With an interactive textbooks the sky is really the limit.  You could do variable reading levels in science or history textbooks.  Assessment, both formative and cumulative could be in realtime, linked to parent emails.  Classwork could be tracked.  Rewards/incentives could be offered.  The possibilities for student-centered/driven instruction are really opened up.

The big difference between the tablet and the desktop/laptop is input.  Not only are they mobile, meaning they could be used in group-settings or field-work.  But they'd offer a broader range of tactile accessibility options.  Students are notoriously disorganized and the ability to save a notefile might be a real benefit to many students.  Being able to incorporate the tablet into instruction on a daily basis just frees up a whole range of options that wouldn't be practical when limited to shared lab use.

Cost and theft are definitely concerns.  But textbooks aren't really cheap either.  Weighed against the benefits, not the least of which might be teacher time spent waiting at the copy machine, I think less than $500 is pretty awesome.

But this is the kind of thing that requires real leadership on.  The more you put into it, the more it's going to work for your school.  With some bright IT folks, in touch with a good team of tech savvy teachers and administrators and there are a lot of really neat opportunities for even the most tech-resistant teacher.

Efficacy Software, P. 2: Implementation

(part 1)
Once it is established that human achievement is a result of specific qualities in the individual that are both inherited and learned, which we may call Human Capital (HC), the challenge then becomes how to best develop social policy that facilitates its maximization across society. For if true freedom is the possibility of individual success, and individual success is the product of the sum of one's HC ( plus good fortune, which of course is an uncontrollable variable), then a society that values freedom must guarantee access to HC.

The great challenge then becomes developing a capable system of delivery. Much of this will be done organically, that is via natural human social and economic activity taking place in homes and neighborhoods. But if we are to truly endeavor to offer absolute freedom to very member of society, supplemental systems must be developed out of our common charter, which we of course call the "government".

This system will undoubtedly be multi-faceted, and composed of many different delivery subsystems and modalities. My focus here however, will be the applicability of free, internet-based training software, as it seems to present a viable, cost-effective delivery platform that is accessible, scalable, and sustainable.

To start with, here is no reason it could not be age universal; beginning with preschool, it could well extend to the elderly. Secondly, while a classroom curriculum could be developed, for use both in schools and community centers, logistic & financial challenges make this model less universally accessible. Although for many HC skills, a live and public environment would be ideal. Yet many HC skills could actually be better monitored and delivered via computer interface.

The first challenge is to properly identify the degree to which each element of HC impacts success, and then which offers the greatest possibility of delivery. Some elements will be enormously influential on success but difficult to deliver, while others easy to deliver yet of lesser value towards success. The overall challenge will be to examine the cost/benefit ratio, and determine what is the most effective use of what will always be limited resources. Into this equation must also come equitability considerations.

This chart is from a 2008 Australian study in which Socio-Economic Status correlated strongly with student test scores. On average, a 10 point increase in socioeconomic status scores is associated with a 6 percentage point increase in the pass rate.





















It seems appropriate to examine social statistics to see what patterns emerge. It is reasonable to assume that income in general be tied to personal fulfillment, as it is generally the result of HC. However a software interface should be universally applicable to all groups. Certainly its use in the K-12 public education system would be used by students of all income levels, and built-in assessment and differentiation would scale to each student's HC level. However, when offered to the adult population, group targeting addresses both issues of cost and need.

Lower income communities, having less HC to begin with, can be assumed to have more limited access to computers and internet. Just as early telephone access necessitated government intervention, high-speed data lines may be a required component to fully implement a robust HC development campaign. As technology progresses, the provision of free, or low cost wireless notebooks may be a sensible option. To discourage fraud, they might be locked to an individual's government account.

Efficacy Software, P. 1: The Context

Something occurred to me while reading an article recently on Autism Spectrum Disorders - specifically the characteristic difficulty in interpreting body language (the article was discussing the discovery that ASD was also correlated with low levels of oxytocin, a chemical linked with emotion and communication). I wondered whether or not there had been much in the way of software development using a computer interface as a form of ASD rehabilitation . It seems that as body language has to do with visual processing, there could be much to gain from developing software that allows the ASD user to interact with visual stimulus. The goal would be to address specific skills that could then be transferred to real world situations.

But it then occurred to me that this format could have much broader applications. I recalled a previous blog entry in which I tried to quantify individual modes of personal efficacy, the degree to which one possessed each would contribute to positive personal and inter-personal outcomes. I called them Human Capital (HC). We are all familiar with computer-based learning systems. Their development in early childhood education has been remarkable, especially with the advent of relatively cheap, flash-based applications widely available online. But so far much of the content has been driven by classic, knowledge-based content standards. Yet personal efficacy requires much more, for instance looking at interpersonal skills like communication & listening skills, situational awareness, social norms and psychological refection.

We know that individual success is largely dependent on the skill set of the individual, and in the event of misfortune, certain skills are key to resiliency. These skills are not always taught to the degree that they could be in the home, peer circle or neighborhood. Some individuals will come to them spontaneously via innate inheritance, others by good fortune or chance. Others will never learn them at all, but having come into good fortune in other areas, will never be forced to rely upon their attainment.

Social statistics tell us that behind the conviction that everyone can succeed lies a fatal caveat: those who possess the skills to succeed, will succeed. Implicit in this statement is the necessity for one to possess something. Things can either be known innately, or learned. The skills we are referring to here are not what are commonly thought of as skills, per say, but the personal traits, or Human Capital, that lead one to success. In my previous post on this topic I outlined them thus:

Emotional: happiness, satisfaction, compassion, generosity, self-control, ethics, integrity, confidence, courage, self-awareness

Knowledge Skills: reading, writing, math, music, art, dance, technology, mechanics, athletics, discipline, diet, hygiene, exercise

Knowledge Information: humanities, sciences, traditions, institutions, "perspective" Social: language, protocols, empathy, self-awareness (perception of self by others)

Monetary: family income, family resources, neighborhood resources, Biological: mental, physical, health

These are rough draft estimations, and in need of revision. But the fundamental premise is the quantification of those assets which reward the individual both external and internal success and fulfillment. Some skills will be unattainable for purely physical or logistical reasons, and no one will likely ever fulfill all of them. But if HC is what success is made of, then if one is to be free to succeed in life one must be free to attain it. If our society is to truly desire freedom for each of its citizens, then it must seek to enable for them access to this capital.

Some of this is already acknowledged by the presence of our public education system. But it was never tasked with what social research has told us its purpose now serves: to provide a level playing field of personal skill-development that guarantees freedom of success for all citizens. Public schooling was thought of as a healthy benefit to a modern society - a project supplemental to the family and other social forces conspiring to shape a person's full expression, not the least of which was supposed to be the individual's own "free will" and judgment of action. Yet now, as social trends have been studied and successful outcomes have been tied to reliable indicators, education has become ever-more the final frontier of humankind's goal of social justice and freedom.

And of course it is failing. Those students who succeed do so because of two things: either good fortune or because they have at some point (including before birth) acquired sufficient levels of HC. Many children are fortunate in that they are able to acquire it outside of school. But for many children, school has become society's sole means to provide this HC. Yet the time spent at school is simply not enough to provide sufficient supply. For a variety of reasons, including funding & resources, socio-economic geographic logistics, and degree of parent HC, schools are forced to watch asthmatically as generation after generation of students is respired through their doors.

If that HC is required is not in dispute, then the problem simply becomes how to best ensure that every American achieves their maximum, and at the very least a guaranteed minimum. A corollary structure to this argument is the implication that those who have succeeded have done so due to a relative privilege of HC, and thus hold moral claim to the fruits of such success only to a degree over and above what society deems a base equitable distribution of HC resources. That is to say, only once sufficient policies have been put into place that guarantee a reasonable distribution of Human Capital may individuals be allowed to enjoy greater HC privilege benefits, being as they are circumstantially derived.

There is of course great leeway in how strictly this would be implemented. As comprehensive metrics on both how to measure individual HC attainment as well as its impact on success becomes more and more difficult moving from macro to micro level. Depending on the degree to which one is comfortable establishing arbitrary policy determinations based on certain metrics, a redistributive structure could be arranged via various progressive taxation structures, or some other methods of equitabilitization.

This has been the incision point for traditional arguments against any sort of interventionist, progressive economic policy. These have fundamentally revolved around an appeal to the concept of individual freedom of will, and that its existence renders unjust any attempt to limit the individual's right to enjoy the benefits of one's success, based as it is not on the HC model, but on the assumption of a theoretically infinite capacity for creative control over one's destiny, unencumbered by biological or social privilege. In addition - according to these arguments - any attempt to rectify an imbalance in HC by the government would only make matters worse, due to the inefficiency inherent in government action. Far better be it to allow the invisible hand of the free market to provide sufficient lubrication for individual success.

But the HC model denies such claims. Its inherent assumption is that success is created solely from HC, as is any possible definition of something one could call free will. So any society interested in the promotion of freedom must answer first to how it promotes HC. Second, many elements of HC acquisition are not only not commodities, and thus untradeable on a free market, but in cases where they might be, like any market items their purchase requires capital to begin with. And due to the nature of HC's relationship with wealth creation and success, the degree to which one lacks HC will limit one's ability to bargain! And so while government action, with its guarantee of access, may not necessarily enjoy the benefits in efficiency and innovation that come from a competitive free market, if one considers the principle of individual freedom paramount, and human freedom predicated upon the equitable attainment of HC, then it must have a significant role in its provision.