This post deals with the need and importance of thinking. It asserts that, to foster thinking and tool making, society was born. Human strength relies on thinking. Urban living and modern gadgets acts as a barrier for thinking. Writing and posting socio-technical documents are given as the solution for the aforesaid problems.
Consequence of thinking
Long long ago our ancestors lived in forest. Species genetically close to us like chimpanzee and gorilla still live in forest. Our hardware i.e. body is very close to animal. What differentiates us from them is our mind. We think that is why we are human beings. The cave men slowly learned to use tools like stone, fire etc. to their advantage. They started learning the art of herding. Those who near to the river started to work in fields and thus agriculture was born. Agriculture was the incubator for all civilization. It liberated the human being from hunger and danger. It helped them to spend time on thinking. To sustain agriculture they developed a complex system called society. It protected the old and created an environment for the young to learn a lot. Society nurtured craft, trade and art. In the 18th century steam engine was developed. This invention leads to the industrial era. After the advent of electronics, digital era was born.
Post-agrarian era, people moved to towns and cities from villages. To have a comfortable life in city they were forced to work for long hours. They learned to live in small place and with scarce spare time. In olden days life was slow paced and had opportunity to ruminate (i.e. chew their thoughts) were plenty. This helped them do the necessary course correction. After industrialization life became fast paced. So, thinking became a luxury.
Human beings require both emotion and rational thinking. If they are highly emotional then their decisions go awry and if they are very unemotional they become selfish. Both extremes will spoil the family and society. The present scenario offers more opportunity to exhibit emotionally charged behaviour. Thus it becomes necessary to learn and practice rational thinking. For thinking we require information.
Out of several thousands of mammalian species prevailing in the earth, we only dominate the earth. Mammals like gorilla, elephant and tiger are physically more powerful than us. Still we dominate because we perfected the art of artifact usage and artifact making using tools. This ability only helped us to conquer the harsh environment and make our life comfortable. For example our ancestors used animal hide to protect them from cold weather. If they have not learned that, then they would have been forced to live in tropical areas only.
It becomes a necessity for us to learn the tool making techniques and to understand the man-made complex system called 'society'. The cost we pay for comfortable life is to learn these complex things. Thus it is imperative to teach our time starved future generation the importance of thinking, society and technology. Good society should foster thinking and outcome of thinking should be technology. The society should be benefited by the technology. For example, Israel does not have natural sources for water. It did not deter the Israelites and adopted the concept called 'drip irrigation' to do farming with available little amount of water. Today they teach these techniques to water starved countries.
Consequence of Schooling
As industrialization flourished the concept of schooling started penetrating into the society. Till then learning was informal. After schooling learning became very formal. To facilitate the learning the knowledge was broken down into subjects. Each subject was further divided into lessons. To evaluate the learning level of a student examination and grading system were developed. This method is used worldwide. Partitioning of knowledge had good side as well as bad side. It helped to gauge a person’s academic knowledge very quickly. But it severely hampered the understanding of a student.
Actually we have to learn to see a system as a whole rather than in parts. Later if required we have to classify the components of system into science or art. Present education teaches things in part and we never learn to see as a whole. For example a communication engineering graduate knows the science and technology involved in video. But they have shallow knowledge in art of making a video. Likewise Image processing students are capable of changing 'contrast' or modifying colours in an image. But they don't know what type of emotions it will evoke on users.
The present education scenario is very similar to the 'Four blind men and an elephant' parable. In that story each blind man will touch elephant's part of body and come with their own conclusion. A person who touched the tail will assume elephant is similar to snake and another person who touched the tusk will assume elephant is like a spear. The only solution for this problem is every student has to study every subject in a superficial way. The subject which he or she likes the most should be studied in depth.
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| Figure 1. Four blind men and an elephant image courtesy: Roberts Space Industries |
Youth and technology
Present generation youngsters are techno-savvy but techno-ignorant. They learn to access Internet and spend time in watching youTube rather than trying to figure out 'how youTube works'. Much of the information related to technology have lengthy text and intertwined with details. As youngsters are not used to long hours of reading, knowledge on technology becomes out of reach. Watching Television and accessing Internet is more gripping for them. Grooming youngsters against these distractions is a challenge. Modern gadgets are outcome of technology but the same gadgets made the youngsters incapable to know the scientific principles behind the technologies. Internet is filled with scientific articles but youngster stay away from them. This is a typical case of 'catch 22' situation.
It acts as largest repository of documents i.e. library and at the same time it is also act as social media. Internet is just a tool and by nature it is neutral. It is our responsibility to teach the youngster to use Internet in right way. Searching Google has become a child's play. But finding a right article is still an art. Lot of background knowledge is required to form proper “search keywords”. Let us hope semantic search engine or Web 3.0 will solve this problem. Most of the technical articles present in the Internet are not suited for novice.
As children are used to Internet and smartphones they have innate abilities like long attention span and concentration. We can't turn the clock back. It is our responsibility to take the knowledge on society and technology for Internet afflicted youth. The solution is to use the same Internet technology to create interest in learning about society and technology.
Solution
A socio-technical document on video will cover the science and technology behind video. It will also deal with the implications it had on the society. For example when TV was introduced, it was in hall and entire family watched the programme. Factors like the digitalization of TV signals, satellite broadcasting and fall of TV prices created new paradigm. More number of TV proliferated in each house and watching TV became a personal affair. Smartphone and video server connected to Internet broke the barrier of time and space. Now, TV programs are watched by a person at anytime and anywhere. The above content may be stretched a bit and may be peppered with few vintage photos and few anecdotes to make a perfect socio-technical article.
The written articles should be holistic (i.e. unified) and targeted towards novice audience. It should require reasonable reading time i.e. less than the attention span of the youth. It should be devoid of details and create interest to ponder over the matter. It should be available anywhere and anytime. It should possess links for further information. Thus it should be posted in the Internet. Author is not against pure technical or art articles. Author advocate socio-technical articles should be read first and if required then the youth-enthusiast should go through technical or art articles.
Note
Due to lack of time accuracy of given information is not checked. So, use this article for guidance and not for reference.
