In his recent (and apparently his last before blogging retirement) article, “A Brief History of Dangerous Ideas“, Reg Braithwaite wrote about the dangers associated with technology (ideas). Reg’ article also draws a reflection on how the Internet has become a dangerous idea for corpocracy.
Web applications are dangerous. Never mind the fact that they make desktop applications obsolete. … But … web applications just might make venture capital obsolete! When you don’t need hundreds of programmers and distribution channels and all the other friction-managing elements of a company that ships old-school software, you need a lot less money to start a business.
And on to media. You know that the web is busy putting newspapers out of business. … But the web lets us choose what we want to watch (or read), when we want to watch (or read) it. The network can’t put their up-and-coming show on right after their hit to give it a boost. The new show has to compete on its own merits. That puts users in control, and that’s dangerous.
… similar thing about pricing all music at 99 cents a track: it means the labels can’t kill an artist by sticking their CD in the $3.99 crapola bin. Users choose what they want to listen to. That’s dangerous, again because users are in control.
While I agree with all such hypothesis about the Internet killing a lot of “traditional” models, including media. But I also feel that the Internet’ rippling transformations have subdued our culture. All this advancement may actually be making us stupid.
Once Einstein was on his way to deliver a speech to university students. His faithful chauffeur not only drove his car, but was always present amongst the audience during all his speeches. Einstein had delivered this particular speech so many times that his chauffeur had actually memorized it. On that day, Einstein, while on his way to the university, said aloud in his car that he felt tired. So his chauffeur suggested that they switch places, and that while he delivers the speech, Einstein could drive them back home.
Their identities wouldn’t be a problem because Einstein’s chauffeur looked somewhat like him and no one in that university would recognize him. So he agreed, but he was a little thoughtful about what his chauffeur would do if he was asked any difficult questions by the students.
However, the speech went well, but a student came up with a question. Einstein’s chauffeur said “that’s simple, even my chauffeur can answer it”, and gazed towards Einstein, who was sitting at the back of the room. Einstein stood up and answered the question, much to the amazement of the audience.
Its a funny anecdote. But it also questions the core difference between knowledge and intelligence in human psychology.
Justin Menkes wrote in his book, “Executive Intelligence”:
The distinction between knowledge and intelligence is frequently blurred. For example, most people are familiar with the popular television show Jeopardy!, on which contestants are rewarded for the amount of knowledge they possess of a wide variety of topics. Often the winners are referred to as “exceptionally smart.” But the truth is that they are exceptionally knowledgeable. Successful Jeopardy! contestants haven’t really proven anything about their intelligence. Joseph Fagan, chair of psychology at Case Western, has done research focusing on racial differences in test scores, and his experiments found that measures that required certain kinds of academic knowledge, such as vocabulary or complex math, yielded significantly different scores between racial groups. But tests focused on reasoning or processing skills, such as picture and spatial pattern recognition, showed no such differences.
Knowledge without intelligence, is as good as, intelligence without knowledge. While knowledge can stem out of books and school, real intelligence can only step out of experience, a desire to question, and an uncanny ability to take risks.
As much as I like thought provoking films, I also like thought provoking animations. Yesterday night, lying in bed, I was pondering over how the day went, and what I have for tomorrow, for the weekend, for the next few months. Caught up in the loop of thoughts, while randomly searching Vimeo, a slick video website like YouTube, I stumbled upon a short animation titled “Solar”. Solar pulled me back from my comatose. It gripped me, and left me orbiting on a different line of thought.
Solar is a tale of the sun, the moon, and two characters who inhabit a world that relies on day and night perhaps more than it would seem. It is one of the best short animations I’ve seen in the recent past. The CG work is pretty cool, but most importantly it has a subtle yet intriguing concept.
