SUMMARY OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
If civilization places too
many obstacles between its data hoard and its info proletariat's crying need to
learn from and add to it, great harm ensues.
We are all the poorer for it.
Nowadays, computer service
companies resemble private water companies during the ancient Roman Republic, or telephone companies prior to World War I. The rich may choose from a jumble of start-up
companies for expensive and sketchy service; the poor get very little (or
nothing) useful without stealing it from the rich.
Computer moguls get their
companies to peddle millions of independent computer terminals of meager
potential and instant obsolescence. They
draw enormous profit from the sale of these so-called personal computers. Every household and business requires its own
or a network thereof. Those who can
afford it pay an average monthly wage, every few years, for a personal computer
of the next generation and its marginal, over-written software. Transferring old data from obsolete hard
drives and networking incompatible systems are just additional headaches. Of course, they’re fixable for a tidy sum of
extra cash.
The software industry has
devolved into a monoculture of over-detailed, under-documented, expensive and
cantankerous dinosaurs. It takes
extravagant hardware just to store current operating systems and application
programs, much less do any serious work.
You could run a small country on the files that clumsy computers lose
every day. Even though the capacity of
computers climbs every year (which capacity sloppy software fills immediately),
their regal price tag never seems to come down.
In addition, we waste
hours every month, attempting to stem a rising tide of computer viruses that
our machines are barely capable of warding off, much less identifying at the
source and reacting against forcefully.
No one offers anything more than laughable palliatives, as expensive and
laborious as they are ultimately futile, to counter this computer plague
mass-produced by idiot savants.
Personal computer
technology is still at the ‘pre-Model T Ford’ stage of development. Computers acquire their data through
inefficient keyboards whose original layout was intended to slow manual input
to the clunky rate of the first crude typewriters. Current word processing software based on
Windows, Apple and other market-dominant software technologies, is hopelessly
complicated, clumsy and inadequate.
Thirty years ago, Wang
word processing software offered outstanding macro capabilities. With little fuss and only basic training, one
could program Wang to search keyboarded text for specific combinations
of alphanumeric and punctuation marks (including Tabs, Returns and other useful
markers Windows won't find), apply Boolean (and/or/not) logic and (</=/>)
quantifiers in automated decision trees, and carry out complicated program
sequences within any given text.
Basically, the Wang word processor incorporated an elegant
programming language easy to understand and simple to use. All its commands matched equivalent
keystrokes and their screen representations, which Wang would recognize
and incorporate into its programming.
This eliminated the need to learn another set of complicated command
keystrokes.
None but the most basic of
those capacities is offered by current word processing software, unless one
devotes time and effort studying abstruse, secondary programs like Java.
Electronic mail, cable
television and telephone database systems are prohibitively expensive,
complicated and unrewarding. Database
brokers, corporate executives and government regulators conspire to make
on-line protocols as restrictive, exclusive and costly as possible.
At enormous expense,
microfilm technologies have replaced bulky hard copy with illegible
screen-loads of text. Those, in turn,
have produced lower quality, second-hand copies. Micro-media files are bulky, expensive to
create and difficult to access and maintain.
A hundred or so daily
newspapers ‘serve’ more or less a billion readers across the globe. Each day, they cut down sterile forests of
monoculture trees for newsprint. How can
such an ecologically devastating business promote the rational debate of
environmental policy? Relentlessly,
newspapers centralize information flow and homogenize its content. If most of their columns were transcribed
onto plain paper, they could not be told apart.
Each article reads as if it had been approved by the same editorial
board with the same political bias.
Televised media run
twenty-four hours of monologue a day.
Zero return input is expected from viewers. Commercial advertisers dominate media
content; their motives, dubious at best.
Radio stations are only marginally more responsive. We subsist amidst multiple tiers of monologue
information systems that blare mostly worthless advertising. Like weeds that choke out healthy growth,
they are as useless and obstinate as they are omnipresent.
The so-called information
superhighway is an obstacle course of competing service providers and arcane
software protocols. Its search engines
are so clumsy that little information of value can be picked out from the roar
of random noise, without extraordinary effort and extra expense. Only a fully staffed corporate Information
Division, or a few devotees scattered among us computer illiterates, can hope
to negotiate it successfully. The poor
get nothing useful.
A new computer priesthood
intones complex incantations of computer jargon: the modern equivalent of
Medieval Latin. In so doing, they earn
fortunes to perform arcane computer sacraments.
Computer documentation and training are costly, time-consuming and
‘built-in’ obsolescent.
Our scattered and
defenseless computer setup is much more vulnerable to virus and worm attacks
than a centralized one would be, where personal PC’s would be mere input-output
and memory devices, and all application software would come from more easily
defended, universally used and therefore cheaper central subscription
services.
Current information trends
are zeroing in on the following grim realities:
·
Copyright
protections are easier and easier to breach.
Malefactors distort and redistribute other people’s data with growing
ease.
·
A few information
brokers monopolize computer-driven profits.
Users must pay them rent to get their personal messages across as an
expensive hobby or a commercial advertising project, while their old,
production/consumption jobs blow away.
·
Info elites
gather more and more data. They can
massage that content for cheaper, more self-serving output, but at the price of
monopolizing its use instead of handing it out for free and expecting greater
profits downstream in time, the way a public utility would.
·
Given prohibitive
user fees and hardware costs, info proletarians get less and less computer
service.
·
Independent analysts,
researchers and commentators are barred from public discourse. They are excluded, even though they generate
better ideas than the corporate mercenaries, bureaucrats and academic drones
that the hottest media consult daily.
Those sought-after pundits suffer from special interest meddling,
hierarchical thinking and blinkered profit taking.
Our main problem isn’t the
quantity of information available, but its sorry quality. After all, we are drowning in torrents of
useless information; more and more noise is produced, of less and less
significance. Even on the Internet,
where unlimited quantities of information seem to be available, a superfluity
of trivia predominates.
Deliberate Learner subsidy
will allow public information utilities to serve high quality information in
easily digestible amounts at extremely low cost. They will come to resemble well-regulated
water utilities, and not overpriced, monopoly cable
and satellite television providers. Like
20th Century waterworks, tax-driven Learner utilities will
distribute future information on a non-profit basis. They will share information of top quality at
low price.
These public info
utilities will offer user-friendly, well-documented and interactive software;
e-mail and web hosting of fail-safe simplicity; enormous government, corporate
and non-profit database services; off-line batch printing and free translation;
massive indexing and titanic memory storage; as well as gigantic collections of
digital videos. The whole will be
transmitted across optical cable or some superior medium.
Tesla’s Earth-grounded
electro-gravitic communication technology may be dusted off and adopted, once
corporate interests who profiteered from its sabotage have been marginalized.
Personal computers will
interact with these public utilities, the way personal checkbooks do with other
commercial, banking and investment services.
Complicated transactions will usually take place invisibly within these
information centers, as simply and transparently as possible for the end user.
Learners will make use of
these central repositories and traffic control centers to provide direct
service to every static and mobile receiver.
Existing libraries will become nuclei for vast new reference and
research complexes, and these info centers will benefit from enormous economies
of scale.
In addition, it will be
easier to defend them against virus sabotage and information piracy, especially
when it comes to identifying, isolating and punishing wrongdoers. As it stands, they are unidentifiable and
untouchable by existing personal computers and their naïve users most
vulnerable to such attacks. Efforts at
foisting passive virus defense software on every private computer are doomed
from the start, even though they may be very profitable for their distributors
(who are also spreading the viruses?).
Nothing is protected by standing on the defensive everywhere; it would
be better to identify, isolate and punish info aggressors actively and immediately
from central control centers perfectly equipped to do so.
Virtual reality sunglasses
will provide easy access to any film, text or piece of music digitally
recorded.
Advertising and political
disinformation functions will be quarantined to TV, radio and print media:
senior services crippled by disgraceful traditions of profit mongering,
deliberate disinformation and laughable public service. Even their inferior quality will improve, as
curious and critical audiences replace today’s brain-dead cud-chewers.
Interactive university
programming will offer free lectures, real-time seminars and research projects
on every topic. These presentations will
be available in real-time, live and played back at speeds and on schedules
controlled by the user.
MIT is just initiating
such coursework, placing its class notes and documentation online, accessible
for free. This project is coming online
as we speak. Every ivy-league school
will have to follow suit. As usual, Learners
is ahead of the pack. The Google Company
plans to index many rare book titles and place them online.
In essence, the original
intent of the Internet's first visionaries will be fulfilled by a gigantic
electronic model of the ‘silent university’ of allied researchers across every
discipline. An Intellectual Yellow Pages
will emerge, listing every Learner and topic of passion. Hours spent by Learners in interactivity
online will establish their academic certification, without other
qualifications, limitations and exorbitant fees. Referrals to specific documents will quantify
author payoffs and social prestige. Age,
origin, occupation, prior learning and other criteria should be ignored.
No longer will paperbound
journals validate research papers through peer review. The publish-or-perish, dog-eat-dog
competition of prestige science will disappear.
Research papers will undergo simultaneous and unlimited review across
the entire learning network, regardless of its apparent validity. The new system will accept any information
input.
If someone doesn’t want to
learn algebra, yet wants to audit a Calculus class, so be it. On-line tutors could recommend pre-canned
learning modules to under-qualified students.
If necessary, they can be referred to other mentors for preliminary
studies.
Private users will
fine-tune their personal filter programs to screen out undesired data and
attract those of particular interest to them.
The Internet was warped in
the opposite direction. As usual with
new technologies, its priority users lined up as follows:
·
military
requirements first with the most money;
·
elite academia,
second;
·
commercial
exploitation, third; and
·
individual needs,
last—replaced by spam, viruses and other infotrash.
New teaching machines will
handle repetitive training chores. Many
talented idealists will claim the honor of mentoring. This universal task may be one of the last
structured jobs in a post-industrial peace economy. The vocation of teacher will evolve from a
drudgery of rote repetition, idiot clericalism and disciplinary scutwork, into
a one-on-one exchange of inspiration and guidance—with, by and for enthusiastic
Learners.
Please take careful note
of this future Learner phenomenon.
Authoritarian professionals who may automatically hinder and punish
their clients under weapon management: judges, teachers and politicians, among
others, will turn into benevolent counselors and intimate guides instead. They will no longer retain the capacity to
inflict harm except under the guidance of an extensive group of experts. Indeed, they will find the infliction of such
punishments distasteful, superfluous and detrimental to their dignity as
professionals. As in medicine, “do no
evil” will become a mandatory marker of professional competence; its opposite,
unthinkable by honest practitioners.
Anyway, every child should
acquire by puberty an advanced degree on some topic of passion. Nearly everyone will become an expert at some
study of peace, most in several inter-related disciplines.
The under-motivated and
abuse-crippled will benefit from novel systems of remedial care; they won’t
overburden standard learning systems until both parties can profit from the
exchange. As for those afflicted with
severe disabilities, sophisticated biomechanical aids amply reinforced, will
help them reconnect with the standard Learning system. No-one need be left behind, except
voluntarily. The more challenging the
Learning scenario, the more dedicated and sophisticated the peace mentors whose
topic of passion will draw them to that task.
Special academies will serve those who require restrictive
accommodations until they can liberate themselves.
In order to accelerate
Learning, these Networks will make use of every Madison Avenue trick and
phantasm of mass religious known to mankind.
Subliminal messages will flash across ‘Recess Arcade’ Channels. Every 24/7, those special channels will offer
brain-dead video entertainment of the kind we have grown used to. However, they will also encourage immature
players to pursue literacy and number crunching, and thus discover their
ultimate topic of passion. This
entertainment will take a fraction of the enormous memory and processing power
available. Everyone’s participation or
refusal to participate will be considered just as valid.
Well-bred children grow up
in a lenient and rational society; not the coercive one we’ve become used to,
which produces many soldiers dependably.
Mothers will nurse their babies for years: a natural form of birth
control. Extended families will
cooperate to carry their infants at adult height during waking hours. This family-based and extra-familial act of
cooperation will continue for the first five or so years of each child’s
life.
Well-behaved children,
raised by a rational society, will enjoy many more freedoms than they are
permitted today. Escaping from the
burning daytime sun, Balinese children attended public entertainments until
3:00 a.m. No harm befell them from this
habit.
Much like a TV room, the
physical plant of schools should serve as a voluntary gathering place instead
of a mandatory detention center. Learner
schools will operate night and day in shifts; they will attract bored children
and adults with no better destination.
Few classes will demand regimented daily attendance. Instead, many facilities and instructors will
sponsor ongoing sports, recreation, practical craftwork and business-related
projects. Learner Networks will
coordinate, schedule and advertise a staggering array of classes and
entertainments.
Children at loose ends will be watched over
by community members just as intent on their welfare as most teachers are
today. Schools will evolve from funky
outpatient jails into obvious places for bored kids to seek entertainment. “Go out and play” will become “Go amuse
yourself at school.” As in prior Golden
Ages, avid youths will sit at the feet of brilliant mentors.
Many Learners will choose
Learning as a good in itself. For honest
pay, Learners will soak up information on any topic, at any level of expertise
they choose.
A programmed learning
cycle will teach the functions of a standard computer terminal, then
preliminary literacy, data entry and numeracy.
Thereafter, Learning networks will provide dictionary definitions,
encyclopedic essays, in-depth programmed Learning, state-of-the-art classes,
real-time graduate seminars and professional periodical and book reviews on any
given topic, as well as their full-text, digitized versions.
For brevity’s sake, let me tell you that my
childhood instruction was a blueprint on how not to teach math to
children. I speak on behalf of those
whose math skills were crushed during their first years at school. It is too late for us now, but not for the
next generation.
Here
is what I propose. Some country’s
Department (or ministry) of Education should issue a $1 billion (yes, $1
billion) bid to SEGA, Nintendo and anyone else who cares to bid for it. Project: build the best first-person shooter
arcade game ever designed (like DOOM).
Once written and paid for, it would become public freeware loaded onto
every computer platform (like Windows, UNIX and Mac) from now on. Every player with access to a computer should
use it for free.
In
this game, oncoming monsters would be tattooed with an equation. The game’s gun-sight would focus on specific
elements of this equation (toggled by the player, the gun-sight reticule would
adjust as large or small as the player needs, to target the element of the
equation he wants to simplify, and just that element). The player would have add, subtract,
multiply and divide gun keys; the way he has pistol, shotgun,
etc. keys now.
The
goal would be to ‘shoot out’ elements of the equation, until the monster was
‘killed’ (the equation simplified for X or some other variable). An equivalent game for peaceful children
would involve ‘pruning’ a wildly growing vine until it ‘flowered.’ Faulty simplification steps would register as
‘misses.’ Failure would result in the
player being ‘killed;’ failure to ‘prune’ the vine would result in its
‘strangulation.’ Advanced players could
impose time and ammunition constraints on themselves so as to maintain
interest. Get it done more quickly and
with fewer shots, or lose the game.
Deeper
levels of complexity and banks of ‘control’ keys would permit players to solve
more and more complex algebra, up to and including trigonometry, absolute
values, calculus, vector matrices, etc.
Game variants would include probability, statistics, physics,
engineering, chemistry and computer programming modules.
In advanced games, monsters could be tattooed
with a series of more and more complex equations. All the rules of mathematics would be
included as gradually revealed tutorials, hints and clues. Famous formulas would be ‘cheats.’
Except
at its own level of complexity, imaginary results would be ‘tilts.’ “Congratulations: you have just nuked the
entire dungeon!” Since advanced
mathematics are based on equations denoted ‘complex’, this fate would include
an escape hatch that led precocious Learners to “imaginary,” more complex and
rewarding levels of mathematics.
This
software would emphasize the story lines, gorgeous graphics and gameplay,
rather than didactics. Much more play,
much less drudgery.
Children
should have unlimited opportunities to learn math skills at their own pace as a
fascinating game. The resulting mass
numeracy and its technological outcome could be staggering.
Orthodox
solutions to this educational problem are bureaucratic sops doomed to fail in
the long run—however satisfying they may appear to current teaching
bureaucracies. Math classes would serve
to reinforce this primary teaching game rather than suppress it. Math classes would become supervised game
arcades.
After
more than a generation of the development of computer learning games, no such
game exists, much less one distributed universally and for free. Current math games are clunky, overly
didactic and restricted to elementary skills.
I
ask you: what bureaucracy does this
plague of innumeracy serve? Who gets
more and more funding to wind up failing to teach math as a drudgery stripped
of pleasure and spontaneity for all but a select few?
This
new math game would be my revenge on all those insufferable bores. Teaching mathematics is too serious (and fun)
a task to leave in their hands.
If
I had had access to this kind of game during my childhood, I might have become
more qualified to respond to our most pressing needs. Absent this type of game, I submitted to the
false response to my childhood proclivities in math, which denied me timely instruction,
and thus sank into passive indifference to the crawling demands of later
teachings. Here I am, unschooled in
advanced mathematics—my window of opportunity frozen shut. I am a frustrated spokesperson for future
generations of gifted Learners.
I
am too easily turned off by difficulties.
It will be up Learners to
choose the level of play/study they desire to pursue. In addition, this network could provide
names, addresses and direct video links with Learners who share the same topics of
passion. These listings will include
amateurs and authorities both distant and local. This assembly will constitute the computer
Yellow Pages of the future.
In the future, the poor
should access these services for free, for the same reason they are freely sent
to school today. They should receive
significant tax subsidies for computer purchases and Network usage. Learners will distribute remote computer
terminals across the planet for free. At
first every Third World marketplace and classroom should receive one.
In regions where youngsters’
life support services are inadequate, newly established Learner Academies
should provide survival needs, human warmth and follow-up Learning.
The combined genius of
these Third World children’s starving minds, properly nurtured, can provide every
technological breakthrough, theoretical insight and societal novelty we
require.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld