OT: Sci-fi (was RE: Ultra-portable terminals)

[Fairlight]

Four score and seven years--eh, screw that!
At about Fri, Jul 28, 2006 at 10:13:35AM -0400,
John Esak blabbed on about:
> 
> Aw, c'mon... let's take it to the *really* ridiculous... How many can name
> who invented the TV?

And as someone that started in mass-comm in college, -I- can't even
remember.  :(  Now that's embarrassing.

> As far as all that goes... "in  my day"  He says, putting on that old tired
> voice...  We used to be taught who invented this and that. I will bet that
> *every* single person above the age of 40 on this list can name the inventor
> of the cotton gin.  Too strange, huh?  (by the way, I actually remember in

The -only- thing springing to mind without using Google is "Ely".  Which
may be half the name, or it may be entirely incorrect.

> what year, too. Maybe we just had better teachers?  Less drugs?  More
> discipline and respect in the classroom? Parents who cared that we learned?

More discipline and respect, more consequences for failure.  A lot less
pandering to the "needs of the student" and "oh, how hard they have it
having to compete against each other, let's remove the grading systems"
type touchy-feely crap.

And yes, parents who not only said they cared, but raised hell if you
didn't do what you were supposed to.

And despite that, I still can't bloody remember.  And my father was a
history teacher prior to starting another career!!!  Obviously not
somethign that ran in the family.

> Truly, though, content is everything and the window is changing so
> rapidly.Obviously, it is no longer "important" who invented the cotton
> gin... but, what is the answer to why no one knows who invented the TV? Why
> do very few or no people know who invented the laser? (Okay, I'll even take

Rote memorisation of facts isn't "learning" per se, though.  Even applied
to physics or math, you could know all the formulas by heart, but unless
you understand how to use them in context, it's almost useless because you
don't know the "why" part of the equation.  If you don't know the
fundamentals of "why", you're lost.  And it amazes me the amount of people
that code that have zero apparent grasp on elementary logic, but they're
living proof.

As for historical trivia, I'm kind of embarrassed that I don't remember
these, as I should.  However, it's not that it's not actually necessarily
important who invented what (although that knowledge is useless outside
certain circles in some cases, like Jeopardy contestants, maybe), it's that
taking up memory and wasting time on such minutia is relatively pointless
when reference materials exist in which you can look it up on demand.
That's always been the case, not just since the net, but back when I had a
set of hard-bound World Encyclopedias at home.  The net just makes the
search faster than grabbing the right volume and flipping pages.

You can only track so much data on demand, and "use it or lose it" starts
coming into play where you forget the things you least use.  That's where
reference materials come in.

Now if a surgeon can't remember what technique to use, and it's named after
the inventor of that technique, I'll worry!  But how many of us use cotton
gins?  See, limited usefulness, and relegated to reference lookups if ever
needed.

I agree wholeheartedly that parenting and schools both went downhill
starting in at least the 70's, by and large.  OTOH, I think they used to
stuff people's heads (and still do) with way too much data of limited
practical usefulness when they should be focusing on preparing people to
make use of math, and then onto the hard sciences that are often dependant
on it.  We'd be a lot better off.  But no, they feel that deconstructing
classical literary works for hidden meanings that were likely never
intended is more important than teaching people how the world actually
functions and how to make it better.  Go figure.  Nothing like priorities.
I'm all for literacy, but the school of deconstructionism is just an absurd
waste of time better spent on more concrete subject matter with tangible
and relevant gains.

> to kids immediately after they learn how to read? Why are we not teaching
> foreign languages at earlier ages... and I don't mean just counting to 10.

Question my best friend posed:  Why are we teaching so much Spanish?  To
be -really- effective, given the number of Chinese, and their growing
technological savvy and world presnce, not to mention their exceedingly
huge population, why aren't we teaching Mandarin?

> For that matter, why aren't we teaching basic math itself. I will bet that
> there is no 8th grader in the country who can manually figure out the square
> root of 15,237. Hell, I'm almost tempted to bet there isn't one who can
> manually divide 15,237 by 62. :-(

Unfortunately for my groan factor, I still actually can, although it almost
sends me into anaphylactic shock trying to do it longhand.  

     245.75
   ----------
62/15237
   124
   ---
    283
    248
    ---
     357
     310
     ---
      470
      434
      ---
       360
       310
       ---
        50
        yadda yadda to whatever precision

Apparently some things JUST WON'T DIE, not matter HOW much you want them
to leave your cortex!  I'll be having nightmares for a week, thanks.  :)

I'm not gonna try the square root, I'll fail or eat the rest of my day
trying to make it work.  :)  Okay, I'll say it:  That's what calculators
are for!  :) :) :)  *bows head in shame*

mark->