SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” American Library Association.
[Author’s note: This may sound irrelevant to most of you out there (No libraries? Who cares!); but bear in mind that no libraries implies medieval primitivism and/or social chaos – good luck amassing ethical wealth under those circumstances! And, as all you hippies out there know, this motto once referred to smoking good old weed, Cannabis called Sativa: a Sanskrit honorific reserved for rice and itself alone, if I’m not mistaken.]
Wreathed in
classical obsolescence, librarianship is neither an art nor a science. Outmoded routines are commonplace in
libraries—not because they're particularly valid but because funding for better
systems outstrips the pittance libraries are reluctantly authorized. Our libraries are hopelessly
underfunded.
Books are difficult to digitize; it is a chore to scan them after they've been printed on paper. It’d be better if they were distributed in a cheaper, digitized format to begin with.
We could have
invented a comfortable set of digital reading glasses—reading glasses similar
to sunglasses, that would display pages of easy to read text as
beautiful as if inscribed on the finest vellum, font optional, controllably
lit, paged-through, indexed and magnified.
Those digital
sunglasses would display a virtual keyboard and screen, and a pair of
virtual typing hands wire-guided from ring-fingered or gloved-hand input
leads. A belt-mounted CPU controller
with docks for portable memory and other hardware connections; an EEG helmet,
the fingers, the glasses and their CPU connected by optical cable or by
infrared.
Finally! One could read in bed without holding a book
overhead or sitting up in discomfort.
Couldn’t these sunglass images be projected onto the darkened ceiling of
a room or its wall? These sunglasses
could turn transparent and perhaps even magnify the outside world, or
register different frequencies of invisible light, or helmeted EEG readings
projected in three dimensions. The
possibilities are endless.
We have none of
it. Instead, I invite you to admire our
genius at aiming long-range weapons through the murkiest combat and
darkest of nights. In Vietnam in 1969,
the average infantry squad was equipped with infrared night vision goggles; in
2011, most firemen still don’t have them to help find survivors in a fire. What warped priorities!
Libraries would
work best on a subsidized and cooperative basis (as would other public
utilities and many functions not yet defined as public utilities―like
healthcare.) Instead, they are expected
to generate entrepreneurial profits—as if they were peddling soda pop,
private automobiles, strip mining, runaway genetic engineering or some other
corporate compulsion.
Altruistic servants
rather than gladiatorial power brokers, most librarians would rather provide
excellent service than accumulate wealth and power. Given the vampire inclinations of weapon
bureaucracies, information managers get at best afterthought
consideration. The first to bare their
necks to the economizing ax, they are the last to benefit from budget
windfalls.
We can confirm
this vulnerability in the Library of Congress.
Supposed to house one of the largest book collections in the world; in
reality, it is a Swiss cheese of lost and stolen books. As each term of Congress expired, losing
incumbents and their families took their favorite books home: a consolation
prize for having legislated the rat race.
Worse yet, global book fanatics paid huge sums to bribe clerical staff
and make off with irreplaceable titles.
Let’s turn from
the Masters of Greed to their apprentices.
College students were assigned reading lists for their courses. The most ambitious ones lost key university
texts set aside in library reserve, so that their grade-point competitors
couldn’t consult them. Nowadays,
computerized book tracking foils their petty schemes. But back then, crooked over-achievers carved
up the competition, received better grades and graduated to become
life-and-death decision-makers. By this
means, a glut of snickering reactionaries took over our judgeships,
legislatures, universities, corporate and media boards.
A superfund of
sociopathic reactionaries: the direct result of this unsupervised academic
tolerance. Thereafter, these
ne'er-do-wells have recruited morality-crippled subordinates as protégés and
replacements. Plus their bad
example, advice and career “guidance” corrupted run-of-the-mill ethical fence
sitters: majorities within those professional communities. Honest people were fired out of hand. This bad practice has sapped orthodox
leadership.
Masters of Business Administration consider information gathering a secondary, service function. When crunch time comes, corporate libraries and research facilities are the first to suffer funding cuts.
Librarians aren’t competitive to begin with, they tend to be encyclopedic Learners. Their ‘service’ mind-set simplifies weapon management’s assault on their resources.
Their studies are restricted to one ‘major’ topic
(another crippling constraint of weapons education) only because their
employers demand this sacrifice. While
libraries attract less competitive (though no less competent) professionals,
weapon managers sponsor the best-paid research for military applications. Weapon technology has become the intellectual
Super Bowl, if you will, and creative intellect, the stuff of giveaway hobbies.
Learners’ natural
curiosity draws them to libraries.
In this thinker’s beehive, pollen of potential insight is turned,
through pure anarchy, into the honey of kinetic wealth. This seedbed of new ideas suffers from
blatant neglect, shortsighted exploitation and disregard for true value despite
the desperate optimism of frontline librarians.
If weapon science is the prince of modern resources, library science is
its pauper.
Institutional degeneracy has a lot to do with the law of diminishing returns. In most cases, first efforts produce the most end-results. Marginally better results require much greater effort.
Libraries get by with less than a thousandth of the
funding they would require in a peaceful civilization, and are thus nowhere
near fulfilling their full potential. On
the other hand, over-funded weapon technologies have catapulted themselves
beyond the twilight zone of diminishing returns into insatiable limbo. Obsessively, compulsively, repetitively and
endlessly: we have polished our killing
systems at the expense of learning systems and optimized the threat formula at
the expense of the armchair formula.
Learner Networks
could confirm or deny every hypothesis much more quickly. Learners will use them to amplify their topics of passion and share them with like-minded
enthusiasts. Small-scale production
facilities and labs will proliferate. There,
inventors will design working experiments, prototypes and models of their
newest inventions, assisted by those whose topics of passion would be their
manufacture.
We will get only
one chance to summon this incredible wealth.
Current institutions are locked in their own incompetence. Short of bloody revolution, they profit from
the stability of official monopoly, no matter how squalid their output (whether in terms of pure ethics and practical
outcomes). Newcomer Learner Networks
will have to prove infinitely superior right away. Otherwise, they’ll perish at the hands of
wastrel ‘conservatives.’
Solutions to our
worst problems won’t emerge until talented contributors rally to Learner Networks. First priority: the Network itself, how to
handle this avalanche of new data.
Commencing at the earliest possible age, most Learners will earn a doctoral degree or several equivalents by puberty. Then again, there will be no timed “race” to achieve these personal goals in a fixed timespan. Late bloomers (like me) will be granted all the time they need; faster Learners, less. It will take most of them a third the time it takes members of our tiny info elites today.
‘Doctoral degree’ is a crude yardstick of cultural
achievement. Seniority and faculty
tenure will be irrelevant to this system; peer privilege and senior approval
will become honorary ornaments.
Arbitrary performance criteria won’t dictate financial security, nor
will they restrict access to the Network.
Everyone will merit accelerated Learning and flight from their misery,
regardless of provenance, productivity and credentials.
Every city should
broadcast a complete video collection of local drama, music and art. There would be guided video tours of every
local museum, convention and store.
Detailed instruction should cover every regional craft, hobby and
industry. Complete university curricula
(from elementary topics to post-grad coursework) should be available in
realtime, locally, on-call for private review at any hour. Other cities’ equivalents should take only
moments longer to access. All this would
be free, free, free! Indirect
profits generated therefrom would be exponential.
Instead, it is
illegal to audit, record and broadcast most classes and performances! Total content control emanates from a few
toney skyscrapers instead of every living room and study cubicle. A handful of centralized TV networks, movie
studios and elite universities dictate the total content of pop culture. No wonder it’s so mindless and
irrelevant!
This raucous
monologue blares on without letup.
Too little contrapuntal crosstalk is allowed to refine our public
reality. A few media moguls ‘control’
everything broadcast and in print. They
act like surveyors who’ve pointed their theodolite into the mercantile sun too
long. Their error-filled maps, published
in millions of misleading copies, do nothing but lead us astray.
“What would you do with yourself if you became extraordinarily rich? Researchers studied a sampling of the newly rich and concluded: you’d probably change jobs to learn something you’d always wanted to learn, and turn yourself into a genuine expert in your new field.” From Mike Mailway (pseudonym for LM Boyd), Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 04/6/92.
What most people
would do if rare good fortune smiled on them, society should mass-produce for
mass consumption. Learning, not empty
“entertainment.” Economies of
scale, children. In addition, every dollar spent on this costly project would generate
many more in new discoveries. We have
but to persevere down this road a little longer, for PeaceWorld to soar over
the horizon and extend us its welcome.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld