I guess the important thing to keep in mind is that much of what happens in technology has little to do with scientific or engineering reality, it is in response to market forces and purely arbitrary requirements externally imposed on us. This is why most techies today are hired not because they can do a job better, but because they are the only ones who know how to debug the tools.

Our technology has become inbred and convulted, and no longer serves us, at least, not effectively. Natural selection, whether in biology or sociology, can produce some marvelous adaptions. But you also get exaggerated and decadent manifestations, too, like the extravgant plumages and baroque mating rituals of New Guinea birds of paradise.

What I’m saying is, it’s ridiculous and unhealthy for us as individuals and a species, to rely on software and machines in order to understand things (or manage an illusion of such understanding) rather than just learning the stuff itself. If you ask me, the whole thing seems like something out of a Karl Schroeder novel. It’s also ridiculous we go through tech so quickly, but that’s another story.

I’ve talked to you about this before. When I started in my field, the boss would say, “I like your background in math and science, I can train you in air photo mapping”. Or later another might say, “I like your science/math/airphoto background, I can easily teach you image processing/remote sensing”. And my next boss might say, “Wow, you’ve got a great background in science and mapping, you can learn GIS and manage my shop full of GIS experts.”

Now the bosses are thinking “I’ve got a shop full of idle workstations running ArcView 9.2 and I don’t care what these new grads know as long as they can log on today and start generating product, because I haven’t a clue what these guys do or what they need to know to do it”.

We don’t hire people and teach them a technology any more, we’ve reduced the technology to software that can be learned by rote, like touch typing. Andd they tech has a short shelf life, so only those people who know how to pick up new packages and versions quickly can survive.

Meanwhile, the maps come out of the plotters, they are gorgeous and have an air of efficiency about them, but no one in the office knows how to go out and field check them.

I built a great career because I had enough of a general background I could go easily from one related technology to another, building on the previous one. Nowadays we need specialists in software and databases, they don’t need expertise in remote sensing or cartography. A guy can come in from accounting IT and quickly learn the mapping software. He really doesn’t need to know latitude from longitude, that’s “geek stuff”.

It’s not right that the newer generations learn less than their predecessors, it’s not right that essential knowledge of the workings behind most things are swept to the side in favor of programs and machines that can do it for you. It’s not right that those who actually know the math and science behind the workings of different industries and fields have to compete with those who get by with what essentially are calculators (You know what they called that in my schools? CHEATING); and that those who have rely on their machine assistants get positions they do not deserve. And let me tell you, it’s not healthy either. Not for society, not for individuals, and not for the arts of knowledge.

As for TB, the “one-size-fits-all” plan for education doesn’t seem right either. I see something very similar (If not the same) in the California educational system, and in other parts of the US as well. Each person should learn what they wish, to accomplish whatever path they want to follow in life. Yes, there are the basics that everyone must learn, but by the time you finish middle school, you usually finish learning those. After that, it’s time to specialise.
While we can guess and hope on what the future might be and bring, noone really knows for sure. It’s nice to be prepared, but to think that you can prepare them for all possible industries and/or arts is ridiculous and impossible. What will be, will be, Que sera and all that. Besides, there’s nothign saying people can’t change their paths in life if they wish to follow a different one after all. We can make the choice.

Personally, I see no reason why arts and industry can’t coincide, but that’s for another thread (or blog).

In biological evolution, it’s very hard to predict which traits will be the useful ones when something hits the fan. This is why most successful complex organisms have a nice backlog of traits just waiting to switch on or off. That genetic storage shelf can come in very handy.

In agriculture, it’s cool that one farmer can use advanced techniques to feed ten times more people than he used to, but it’s also reassuring that people are using other methods too, and archiving old plant seeds and varieties, keeping that genetic shelf nice and full.

Same for lots of other things, including education. You don’t always know which new skills will be the most useful, and you don’t know which old ones might come in handy again. Did anyone twenty years ago guess that a valuable skill today would be typing text rapidly on a frigging touchtone phone pad? The only thing I ever used that text for was phone numbers that went “dial 555-AUTO.”

It’s one reason a “one size fits all” education system is a bad idea. It’s like having every farmer in the country growing the same specialized crop.

Instead of preserving the knowledge of the past, the new man was to be engaged in creating new knowledge. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but the emphasis changes.

One of the founding fathers once said (I quote from memory, so I may not have it exactly right):

“I study politics and war so my children can study commerce and husbandry, and their children can study art and science”.

But as it turns out, you don’t need Latin to do international trade. You need English. And you don’t need to be a mathematician to use a computer, or know how to write effectively to work a word processor. The process continues today.

In my own profession, automated cartography, many of the computational skills I was expected to know are now done in software, to make maps today you need to program in scripts, understand databases, master user interfaces. You don’t need to know squat about the mathematics of map projections or spherical trigonometry. When I started, a bit of college physics and math was all you needed to work in “High tech”. Those skills are still needed, but only by a few upper level designers at the PhD level. Operating a workstation is what technicians do any more.

I used to be able to start a new job and I was confident I had the general STEM background to easily pick up the specific skills I might need. If my boss knew I had a background in air photo or remote sensing or computer graphics he knew I could easily learn Geographic Information Systems from scratch. Nowadays, they expect you to know ArcView 9.2, and I have to compete with college kids who have MS degrees in GIS but don’t know the difference between latitude and longitude.

I’m lucky I was able to retire when I did, most of what I know how to do is either obsolete or it’s all done by the software now. If I ever have to go back to work, I’m going for a job in something totally different from tech, like sales; the skills I’ve spent a lifetime mastering are no longer that important. I get the same reports from my colleagues…their skills are totally useless, all they can do any more is management, and those positions are now starting to get scarce.

We have professional managers now, they don’t know any particular industry or business, but they are trained in the science and principles of management. God help us all.

I sat there with my dictionary and plotted out what I was going to say, made notes, then spoke.

He got quite angry and everyone else just glared at me. The meeting was over in about 5 more minutes, and I was avoided except for dirty looks afterward.

I fled, and wonder to this day what it was they heard. I learned a lesson from that.

To hear someone butcher their way throughout language is a painful thing indeed, which is why most other countries don’t take a kind look on visitors who do so.

This, of course, makes you wonder how we can botch the english language, and I suppose the answer is when the other person gets fed up with it.

“Y’know, I, like, y’know, don’t like know what I’m going to, y’know, say.”

Well shut your damned mouth.

Also, how did the Industrial Revolution exactly render Latin obsolete? It seems like if anything, it would render it even more necessary, what with the rise in globalisation in that era and all.