When The Bough Breaks

Not too long ago I published a post titled "Academic Inflation and New Education Paradigms", it had a cool short video featuring Ken Robinson and also referenced his book - "Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative" (I am happy to report that I have finished reading it, but a more detailed coverage will be a subject of another post, stay tuned). The basic premise of the video as well as the book - a major overhaul of our education system is urgently needed. It was designed at a different time, in a different world, and for a different purpose; thus, it can not meet the demands of today or the future.

So, while Ken Robinson takes a poke or two at our current system's bias towards academicism and science at the expense of arts and creativity, there are others who feel we are not biased enough at the time when the rate of acceleration in the field of science and technology is arguably the highest in recorded history.

A few month ago I've read a very interesting article in IEEE's Computer magazine - "Mental Discipline" by David Alan Grier of George Washington University. It talks about the following dynamic - world’s increasing complexity paired with decreasing standards of scientific education; and a general tendency towards black-boxing (an activity that hides expertise by taking a body of knowledge and incorporating some of its ideas in a machine, then hiding the inner operation of that machine behind an opaque facade). IEEE's Computer Society made the podcast of the article available online:

I hope we are not going to find ourselves in a situation that resembles many science fiction novels, being a Star Trek fan I will have to reference ST:TNG:17 - "When The Bough Breaks" (Stardate: 41509.1) and thanks to YouTube here's the visual aid:

Comments

Alan Mathison Turing

Update (11/23/2013): " Now, nearly half a century after the war hero's suicide, Queen Elizabeth II has finally granted Turing a pardon." ( http://usat.ly/19bLZET ) Long overdue!!! With academic background in applied mathematics and computer science and years of experience in Information Technology it would be incredibly surprising if I didn't know of Alan Turing, or so I thought. Sure, I knew who he was and had a good idea of what he had contributed to the fields of mathematics, logic, cryptography, and of course computer science, which he basically founded; and things like Turing Machine, Turing Test, and Enigma Code-breaking have been widely popularized. I also knew that he died relatively young, but I am ashamed to admit that I didn't know anything about the circumstances surrounding his premature death. That is until I read the following in the book titled "The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood" by James Gleick: "Turing's hom

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

" In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself. " The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick - t his was not an easy read for me, I spent more time on this book than on two before and two after (all of comparable volume) combined. And I am not exactly sure why. I guess it could be the style, the vocabulary, the depth and the breadth of the subject matter coverage , or all of these and few other things put together. But I feel like it was well worth the effort. The story flows smoothly from the talking drums of Africa to the world of oral culture; to the invention of scripts and alphabets; to evolution of languages, books, catalogs and dictionaries; to further developments of abstraction, symbolic logic, and mathematics; to the birth of computer science, communications theory , information theory, quantum theory, ... I don't think I can right a review that will do this book justice. So, I would simply s

Free to Choose

A while back I have written a post about two popular books by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Freidman . Books that had, through their undeniable logic, a profound and lasting effect on my socioeconomic and political views: Now, through the digital powers of social networking the legendary 10-part PBS TV series "Free to Choose" (1980), based on the book of the same name, is available on YouTube. Yes, one would be committing about 10 hours of one's life to watch through all of these; but, in my opinion, this would be time well spent. So, enjoy - " Free to Choose ".

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