Write Technology

Are We Learning Smarter?

Note: This is cross-posted from bub.blicio.us, where I posted it first, and then decided to share here as well.

image by Darren Hester thru Creative Commons

There's a lot of discussion happening right now about Nick Carr's controversial article in The Atlantic Monthly: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

In addition to Carr, there are other voices chiming in, including Maggie Jackson (Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age) and Rick Shenkman (Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter). I heard these two speak, in particular about how the Information Age is really an "ignorant age" on the Diane Rehm show on Tuesday.

I take issue. I think we're getting smarter.

I work a lot in instructional design and eLearning. The world of adult learning is changing. We learn faster and can take in more types of information - we have access to more types of information. It's a fascinating time to work in the industry.

There's a buzzphrase you hear now at all the eLearning conferences: informal learning. I call it watercooler learning. People have all this information about their jobs tucked away inside their heads. With Web 2.0 tools and content sharing, we can not only get people to share that information, we've got people willing to teach each other in an informal setting. It's a wonderful thing to be able to tap that previously hidden knowledge.

There is a lot of reference in the article, and in other supporting articles, to a lack of picking up a book and reading. I still read. In fact, I try to devour a new work of fiction every other weekend. It's an escape mechanism for me. I will never stop loving the feel of the traditional, paper-bound book. No Kindle for me, thanks. I want to smell musty pages and turn the crunchy paper. I love it. I can't imagine wanting to read less. I would go so far as to say that I now have easier access to things like the NY Times Book Review, as well as Amazon.com, which I wouldn't have without the Internet. Those two sites, in particular, often guide me to new books.

Is my attention span shorter? I don't know if it was ever long. Growing up, Sesame Street (you know, the TV) was my babysitter. I'm of the TV generation - I don't know life without it and it was the dominant technology of my youth. Do I now skim web pages to grab relevant information? Yes! Because I'm smart enough to be able to pull out the relevant information. If an article really grabs me, I'll read the whole thing. Do I twitter constantly? Yes! But it has actually improved my technical writing, helping me better condense relevant information into short concise sentences. Not everything you read needs to be lovely prose, after all. Not only that, Twitter has introduced me to a whole community of people, many of whom I've gone out of my way to meet in person and then carry on in-person, intelligent communication.

I don't disagree that there is now a plethora of information out there. For the last two weeks I've only managed about one post a day on this blog because I'm suffering from a bit of information overload - or maybe information fatigue. I'm almost bored with the idea that there is a new startup every day. You've got to really dazzle me now, I guess. But times like this ebb and flow. Whether my mind is a bit jaded or not does not mean that "Google" has made me stupid. It means I need to work harder at separating the signal from the noise.

I'm a big fan of Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You. I honestly believe that the strategic thinking employed in video games is a useful type of learning. I believe that honing my research skills both in a library and online is a good use of my time. And I believe that although we are learning differently now, and parsing information differently, that difference isn't a bad thing. It's evolution of information, and thinking. And I enjoy it.

I want to close with a quote from Stephen Downes on Stephen's Web, in reference to the Carr article:

Sigh. My response is very simple. I read constantly. I write constantly. I also work in images and multimedia. If Google is making me stupid, then I am forced to conclude that without Google I would have been some kind of super Einstein or something.

--
Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, or on Pownce.

 

Johnny Bunko: The Career Guide I Wish I'd Had

My little brother will soon be a junior in college, majoring in Communication and, are you ready for this? , Internet Marketing. I wish I could have majored in that.

Dan Pink keeps writing books that I want to buy for Steven. These books also tend to validate the decisions I've made in my own life, but that it took me a while to discover. I wish people had told me some things sooner.

I wish I hadn't sat in Barnes & Noble in the '90s, at the age of 22, and read What Color is Your Parachute? (I couldn't afford to buy it at that time.) It didn't help me. I skipped Who Moved My Cheese? I hated the name.
For a new generation, there is now Dan Pink's Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need.

The book is short and sweet, and has six succinct principles, including

#1 There is no plan, and
#4 Make excellent mistakes.

There's more to it than that. Pink quickly fills in the blanks. For example, there is no plan, so do what brings you joy.

I suppose the other thing to mention about this little career guide is that it is written in Manga style. Please don't confuse this with something like the Archie comic books. In Japan, Manga is part of the culture, used from everything from advertising to learning. Reading Manga in Japan is not just the providence of geeks and nerds. Manga is for everyone.

Dan Pink was fascinated by this and applied it to the book. For visual learners, this is fantastic, by the way. There is an image and an associated event in the book to attach to each lesson. It is learning by visuals and by storytelling, and we all know that is effective. For the video game generation, this book will make perfect sense, in form as well as function.

It's a short book, but fun. It drives home points no one shared with me. I did eventually abandon "the plan." I have to wonder - if someone had shared this with me sooner, let me know it was okay, where I would be today ...

Beside, how many books have their own trailer?!

Johnny Bunko trailer from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

Dan Pink's Blog
JohnnyBunko.com

Organized Wine

I'm leading a book club session at Learning 2007 on the book "Everything is Miscellaneous." It got me thinking about how I organize - or more appropriately, would like to organize - my wine. We don't have a wine cellar, instead, wine is in three small temperature controlled coolers and then shoved into every available spot in our house. I do, however, tag our wine. Each bottle has a hanging tag that lists the type of wine on the front. On the back it lists the drink by date, where it was purchased, and how much we paid. In addition to the haphazard physical organization of my wine, I have most of my bottles logged into CellarTracker. Like most of these online wine organization tools, it lets me view my bottles by vintage, purchase location, varietal, and so on. CellarTracker does not yet use tagging, although I read somewhere that tagging is a coming upgrade. (Don't quote me on that though.)

I started wondering how everyone else organizes their wine and it led me to Donna M's blog. Donna is an information architect and compulsive organizer. However, if I had the space, I would organize my wines exactly as Donna has - by varietal, then vintage, and then with all the other information on my hanging tags.  I don't see this as a complicated organization scheme. Where it runs into difficulty is the same place that most physical organization schemes run into difficulty - when you add a new bottle. There may not be room for that bottle between 1996 and 1998 Cabernets. Then what? Years and years ago I worked at a video store. When new releases came in, we had to move every single movie just to fit in the new one. It is the bane of the alphabetical and physical world. The advantage CellarTracker has over physicality is that it also allows me to note where I stored the wine and sort by storage location as well.

Just some thoughts as my professional world and wine world overlap yet again.

Cross-posted to My Wine Education.

Summer Reading

It's summer here at Write Technology. Oddly, it's our busiest time of year, which means little time for blog posting. Or for reading. But when we do get a moment, we've got three books at the top of our summer reading list. In the interest of a blog post, and because we like to share, we recommend you check these out:

• Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger
• Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
• A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink

Appropriations Friendly Library

A new library has opened in San Francisco. Here's information from their web site:

Why We Built This Library
The Prelinger Library is an appropriation-friendly, browsable collection of approximately 40,000 books, periodicals, printed ephemera and government documents located in San Francisco, California, USA.

Though libraries live on (and are among the least-corrupted democratic institutions), the freedom to browse serendipitously is becoming rarer. Now that many libraries have economized on space and converted print collections to microfilm and digital formats, it's become harder to wander and let the shelves themselves suggest new directions and ideas. Key research libraries are often closed to unaffiliated users, and many libraries keep the bulk of their collections in closed stacks, inhibiting the rewarding pleasures of browsing. Despite its virtues, query-based online cataloging often prevents unanticipated yet productive results from turning up on the user's screen. And finally, much of the material in our collection is difficult to find in most libraries readily accessible to the general public.

(Continue reading after the jump.)