The family and I are headed to Anaheim, California for a hockey tournament and Disneyland as I write this. (my wife is driving, I’m blogging)
We just went through Needles, California (near my hometown of Lake Havasu City, Arizona) and my wife asked semi-rhetorically “Why would you name your town Needles?” “There’s no positive connotation. Cactus? Immunization? What’s the deal?”
Being the digital guy that I am, I whipped out the iPhone and went to Wikipedia, and discovered within 10 seconds that Needles was named for “the needles, a formation of pointy rocks on the Arizona side of the Colorado River.”
It’s important to note that I lived within one hour of Needles for 17 years. I never knew how Needles got its name – until now. I guess when I lived in the area, I didn’t care enough to go through the machinations necessary to learn the answer. These Herculean info-retrieval challenges might have included:
- Calling information. Finding a phone number for city offices in Needles. Calling them. Being transferred multiple times, hoping to find someone in the city that knew the derivation of its name.
- Going to the city library. Locating a persnickety reference librarian. Sifting through stacks of books to hopefully find one with information about Needles. Then, scanning that book to find the answer (in theory).
My estimation of best-case scenario to find out why Needles is called Needles in the past = 30 minutes. Just now, it took me longer to write this sentence than it took me to find the answer.
Everyone is a Wise Man
It strikes me as both exhilirating and terrifying that my children (currently enraptured by their Nintendo DS in the back) will live in an age when everything is knowable. No conjecture. No mysteries. No ability for parents to make up entirely fake answers to make inquisitive kids stop asking inane questions.
When everything is knowable, doesn’t it change inherently the nature of what’s valuable professionally? Doesn’t the balance of power shift from those that know stuff through study or experience, to those that don’t need to know, but know where to look?
Being a master of finding – understanding boolean search, and database structures, and the future semantic Web, is likely to be more valued than being a master of an actual discipline.
Does that scare you as much as it scares me?
(photo by Stewart)
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On one hand it scares me, on the other it makes me extremely optimistic. I’d love not to deal with the banalities of calling somewhere and for 30 minutes trying to decipher the meaning of a city’s name.
What it means is we can focus on different things and find out more information about that city. If the information is at our fingertips, we can absorb a LOT more.
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It not only changes how professionals operate and are rewarded, but I am convinced that it will change the nature of how we think. Instead of storage, our brains will be called on more for organization, depiction and judgment. No more “pro from Dover,” more analysis and intersection. Selfishly, I think it will favor graduates of Brown, who are taught to think interdisciplinarily! Here’s a new question — does it make sense to ever memorize anything anymore?
It is a compelling point: the democratization of information. Its ready availability dampens any sense of exclusivity so knowledge doesn’t necessarily impart any added value. However, in the face of information on anything available from anywhere at any time, I believe, runs into the other genuinely human trait we’ve come to understand: OVERLOAD. People have a remarkable ability to follow a path aimed at NOT taxing the brain. So is it possible that brands and businesses could develop engagement platforms and communities where citizen and credentialed experts help guide, select and wade thru the vast sea of info to search out what is helpful and useful? Just a thought. Had a post on a related subject recently: http://www.wheatleytimmons.com/blog/sacrifice-success-helps-deliver
Great article as always Jason. However, I will continue to make up fake answers to stop my kids from asking inane questions since they haven’t figured out yet how to use wikipedia.
Reading: The Answer Man – The Future of Business? http://ow.ly/2Pdh
great post.
They used to say “knowledge is power”. Not any more.
My concern is that the gap between the World’s have’s (i.e. “have internet”) and the world’s have-not’s will widen. Connection is power.
Charlie
FreshNetworks online communities
It doesn’t scare me as much as it intrigues me honestly. Although I wasn’t born into the age of computers, I was thrown into it pretty early with my uncles being into computers and robots and AI and from day one all I wanted to do was play Nintendo all the time.
Leaping forward a bit… Everything I do is on the net and involved with instant access to data whether I’m on the laptop and use google or on my phone with google or chacha.
Kids have an awesome opportunity to learn WAY more than we ever did way before we ever did. I don’t see a problem with that. Learning is good. Education has to change but, we’ve known that now for a while… but they better get on the bus – I bet you colleges are running scared with all this ‘free’ information around
@jaybaer:
You write…
“It strikes me as both exhilirating and terrifying that my children (currently enraptured by their Nintendo DS in the back) will live in an age when everything is knowable. No conjecture. No mysteries. No ability for parents to make up entirely fake answers to make inquisitive kids stop asking inane questions.”
My thoughts:
I don’t have children (yet), but was speaking about something similar to your comments above with my sister and brother-in-law this past weekend. They have 4 children – ages 3-7. Over the 48 hours I spent with them, my nephew and nieces did the following:
1. Asked “the adults” a ton of questions
2. Explored in the gully in the backyard
3. Created new games (Bunny Bunny Foo Foo?)
4. Took the cushions off the couch and created a boat
5. Asked each other a ton of questions
There will be a day when they don’t *need* to ask each other and/or the adults questions. That day is fast approaching. However, I think the key is to allow them to be children for as long as you can. Again, I don’t have children yet so this is probably easier for me to say.
*Pretty sure I went off-topic a bit on this comment, but…
DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices & Deliverability at Bronto
@djwaldow
DJ Waldow’s last blog post..djwaldow: dude. I love that @AmberCadabra wrote abt passion & opened up comments for readers to share. http://idek.net/7Z3. Kick ass.
Kind of disagree. Anytime a question has more than one answer or isn’t suited to an answer of less than 800 words, you need to fall back on knowledge and experience.
You can ask “what is social media marketing?” and get a sensible answer quickly online. But ask “How can my business best use social media marketing?” and it’s a different story.
I’m also with Abby and Robert in that analytical skills and multidisciplinary thinking are going to be ever more important.
DJ – bunny bunny foo foo? How many beers did you have while you were there?
(My comments don’t seem to make it through the spam guards so keeping fingers crossed this time)
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