The Dangers Of Externalizing Knowledge
Devin Coldewey
Dec 14, 2010

Contemplating the shortcomings of the younger generation has ever been a hobby of the elder. As I start to transition to the latter population (perhaps a bit early for my age), I’ve found myself worrying more and more about the kids, and how little they seem to appreciate things. That kind of complaint is neither constructive or original. But the fact is that the kids are growing up pretty weird these days, because of the way technology has outpaced our institutions of learning and standards of knowledge. The short attention span and reliance on non-text media are to be expected in an age where attention is indulged by on-demand information, and the effects of these things will continue to be written about, rightly and wrongly. There is a more subtle and insidious trend, however, that may prove to be more damaging than tech-born changes in learning modality. It’s a process that has been going on for a long time, but that recent developments may push to the breaking point. The problem, as I see it, is that we have stopped valuing the accumulation of information within ourselves.

Externalization
The fact that virtually all of the world’s knowledge is only a few taps away is truly mind-blowing. No matter who indexes it, who serves it, who edits it — the knowledge is there, and the knowledge is with you, always. This is one of the most important developments in history, and its repercussions can’t be underestimated. But to consider it an unmixed good would be premature and naive. Think of that habit which I and likely everyone reading this succumb to now and then. You are talking with a friend, and can’t remember who that guy was in that movie. Without thinking, you pull out your phone and search. Mystery solved, it was Patrick Swayze. Harmless enough, right? The web in our pocket allows us to settle bar bets and track down trivia with ease. A tiny load off everyone’s mind. The problem lies with the trend. We’re looking up more things, more often, and not because we’re more curious. It’s because we can’t be bothered to retain even the data that matter to us. The GPS in cars is an advance party of this trend: every couple months we hear of some driver who has followed the GPS to the bottom of a lake, or used a highway as a walking path because it was labeled as such on their phone’s map. My dad, who has driven to visit my brother in Vancouver, B.C., a dozen times, still uses the GPS despite my brother living in the same neighborhood for several years now. When I went up with him a month ago, the GPS route was slightly different, and my dad nearly had a panic attack. I convinced him to take the correct exit, but he was this close to doing something he knew was wrong simply because the map indicated he should. Now, I don’t mean to rest my case on these anecdotes. But there is truth in them, and you likely recognize yourself in them to some extent. Because of this reliance, do people know their cities, roads, and neighborhoods better? Not as well? Or simply in a different way? After all, services like Foursquare and Urban Spoon encourage serendipitous discovery of restaurants and locations. I think it is a strange paradox, that these technologies expose us to new things while at the same time clapping blinders on us. To return to the thesis, however: general knowledge seems to be following the path of location knowledge, and the consequences are similar, but more dire. While consulting the GPS means you don’t build an internal map of your neighborhood, consulting the external knowledge engine of the internet means you don’t build a map of your entire intellectual world. And unlike your neighborhood, Google doesn’t have an easy analog for you to peruse. They may be working on that, but is that really a function you want to outsource?

Internalization
It sounds a bit alarmist, I admit — I’m more old-fashioned than most people in this regard. I’m afraid of what will happen if this trend continues, because I feel the externalizing of information to this extent (that is, the extent to which I fear it will reach in the coming years) erodes some of the core facets of personality and individuality. I know that’s raising the stakes somewhat, and I do that just to feel I’m saying something important, but I do think it’s true. If you think about the way we are each of us constructed, mentally, we are to a great extent a collection of data and experiences. Consciousness and personality emerges from the soup of people, places, and things we’ve experienced in our lives. The connected world we now live can vastly increase the number of these elements, ideally, and it’s already done a huge amount towards keeping people in touch. But the volume of these elements is becoming so great that it overwhelms our capacity to internalize. Luckily, many of us have blowoff valves, like our blogs (I’m paid to open my valve, to my everlasting wonder), our Facebook accounts, and so on. And we’ve gotten so much in the habit of deflecting this tsunami of things and experiences that we are becoming less and less likely to actually retain and internalize any of them. Try this experiment: if you have a blog, a Posterous or Tumblr or what have you, try to remember as many items you’ve posted as you can, right now, without checking. Write them down or something. I have a “blowoff valve” blog myself, and I’ve posted hundreds of quotes, images, and such to it — but I have trouble picturing more than a few dozen. That terrifies me, and although it may not terrify you, you at least sense there’s something to it. If these things you’ve collected are important to you, or you found them interesting, why aren’t they inside you? Why aren’t they becoming part of the sea of experiences that makes up your unique intelligence and personality? If you fail to integrate an experience, it was, for all intents and purposes, no better than a dream. We’ve gone from being intellectual predators to intellectual filter feeders, and soon I wonder whether we’ll even deserve that title.

Volition
The counter to this is that, freed from the necessity of remembering every little thing, we are better able to focus on what we think is important. Another paradox, in that as the internet and connectivity expands our world exponentially, we find ourselves putting finer and finer a point on our role in it. No more renaissance men — I suppose Leonardo himself might have been frustrated by the sheer amount of info he’d have to command. So it’s become far easier to acquire expertise — at the cost of insight. There’s a reason, after all, why it’s called insight. Because insight is the result of recombination, hybridizing ideas, internal accidents, emergent properties of ideas we never even knew were related. The trend isn’t exactly reversible; it’s simply the shadow cast by the towering, profound benefits of the internet and portable communication. And of course internalization can be taken to extremes as well — imagine the oral poets of the bronze age, with little room in their heads for anything but tales and epithets. But we mustn’t let the externalization exceed our ability to recognize and accommodate it. It’s our responsibility now to diversify our intellectual landscapes; the world won’t always require it, but we should require it of ourselves.

HELP - Heave Earth for Longing Peace

HELP - Heave Earth for Longing Peace

Let the drops of water glide on taste buds pulling thirst back to dust. Primitive days where human beings ran behind monkey to identify the source of water might just prove that we are nothing more than a parasite living on this earth. Let me step back a bit here, let’s start by asking some questions. Would identifying a resource be considered a crime? Not at all but not using the sixth sense in the way it was meant to be, to ignore the knowledge that resources are not abundant and to continue to ignore the inner mind when in yells not to deplete natural resources .

Maybe we would evolve to become adapted to live off a single pill that can burst our thirst for several days. But what it takes to reach there. How many lives will it takes to be there? Is the answer Science? That’s the obvious reason as we knew only one dimension that explains what nature is! In today's world a human needs help from people in the form of scientist who can unravel mysteries and hope to find greatest discovery which will relish human kind. I’m missing something here. Ah! How can I miss those giant machines plotting graphs, sketching maps, even a few that can check if the pen is filled with ink or not. For Humans, time is so precious that they cannot afford to waste time in lifting a pen and check if it’s filled or not, so they waste enough time in building a machine which can do this. Simple isn't it? Applauds! A genius is born. Now monkey is replaced by a machine!

Science taught me one thing that "Every action has equal and opposite reaction". Building machines to save time has created catastrophic events which made humans to counter attack by thinking in the ways of improving those machines to avoid such effects. What about those which are already sold in market and still in use. Earth is a big place to hunt down every sales and destroy them (We know only to Bomb, got to invent few bombs to destroy these!) and replace with latest technology (counter attack! a time when drawbacks of this technology is not realized yet! ). Gold depreciates with every polish it needs to check its authenticity. So does the human mind that’s powered by curiosity.

Inventing machines a mistake? I bet no, I could not have held time in my wrist (No pun intended!) had humans didn't invent watch, I could not have communicated to a person within seconds who is located miles away, had humans didn't invent telecommunication. I am not good at making tea; I let my machine do that. They are very handy and so many such inventions which can be termed eco friendly, but where did humans really cross the line and what makes me think that exploring machines has produced catastrophe events by which we are close to witness or probably witnessing a major climatic change which we curse every day. Who's to be blamed? We are humans;after all we are the masters of evading blame Don't we? If there's someone to be blamed then it’s the mirror we may have to seek to know the culprit. But what did I do to be blamed?

Human mind is so lethal and powerful that its thirst cannot be resolved. Make a discovery; it becomes the base for looking for next one and so on. Where so we mark the horizon? When does this stop? Any philosopher would say "Sky is limit". No one wishes to abide by red lights at signal. We Cross them, to meet with an accident and then realize that line has been crossed. Why should human live a life out of trial and error? Why do we not heed to the inner voice that screams caution?

Money! I forgot this, only precious glass every human wishes to wear. Engraved by darkness, I can smell the reason why humans get blind. Gone are those days where we acknowledge our peers by trading kindness, a hand in need, trust and love. Today's world needs just money to trade everything. Carrying so many good qualities was difficult for humans and to rest their shoulders from this burden, they came up with money which eventually brought misery and created boundary within humans even though they call Earth their "Mother". Humans started becoming slaves to one another instead of leveling shoulders to share care. More money means much higher ranking. Greediness prevailed, so did the need to protect the wealth came into picture. What's point in cursing money? Who am I to curse?

Our so called "Mother" today is drawn with boundaries, ravaged by weapons. Point about protection propelled in air. With every strike of weapon we forget that the sadness we bring upon not just ourselves but also on mother earth that bears our burdens. It is earth that has to digest the chemical. Killing "Mother" gradually is what we call winning over land! Glass is too thick to blind us from kindness to rule over. Series of inventions ensured Human Beings to realize that they can eventually invent anything and everything! Laziness became a mode of lifestyle for the higher ranking Humans who own money. Now they have the ticket to buy anything they want as they have bunch of Humans who can come up with anything for money.

Lifestyle today is nothing more than the disclaimer we see in a Cigarette box, "Smoking is injurious to health" (Smokers, Nothing offensive!). We don't bother as we know that every day we are guaranteed to wake up to the next. The heat taken inside gradually kills. Since the outcome is not instant we humans avoid them as they are not visible to us. So is Global warming, the days are now where we keep poking at earth for our own selfishness. Colossal vision shall crush thy sin! As soon as we see a snake, we take guard to protect us, no matter if snake gets killed in the process (We know how to kill, don’t be shy to accept, remember the mosquito!). Why would we protect? We know its instant death if bitten by snake. Should we need Earth to be more a snake to make instant reactions for us to ponder over our mistakes? Humans today boast about being "the Snake (Earth) charmer" (can't stop making a sarcastic smile for this foolishness) and consider Earth being well under control. In that case why to look into space beyond earth finding life in other planets? By the time even the technology can build a space shuttle to evacuate people, earth will be dusted and so will be human race.

It's very sad to see what we are today because of the lifestyle we make. Money makes us dependent on machines. One example is manpower getting replaced by machines for productiveness (=MONEY). How much will it take for planting a tree instead of building a machine that can cut down the tree in minutes!

Thinking is left to Humans; same mind that can create destruction path in so many years needs only little time to construct a world that can reclaim the lost peace. Unity beyond boundary is required and I would be enthralled to see a dream come true in a country. Don’t search for a reason to be kind. Dreams have no limits but life does have one. It is time to reclaim life with a cup of tea. I've got mine filled, your cup may or may not be.

HELP !