Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!imagine!pawl22.pawl.rpi.edu!jefu
From: jefu@pawl22.pawl.rpi.edu (Jeffrey Putnam)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Knowledge Gap
Message-ID: <179@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>
Date: 22 Dec 87 12:31:38 GMT
References: <8712132230.AA10889@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <518@usl-pc.UUCP>
Sender: news@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU
Reply-To: You cant get here from there.
Organization: RPI Public Access Workstation Lab - Troy, NY
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In article <518@usl-pc.UUCP>  writes:
>>	In these days it is not unusual to find people who can't read, who are
>>afraid of technology (even afraid of information), who mistrust technocrats,
>>and who resist change.  Precursors to ill-fated movements are fear and mistrust
>>and that is exactly what we have.  
>
>I think that what you have "discovered" is the large amount of
>anti-intellectualism rampant in recent Western society. In a society
>where opportunity for intellectual activity is limited (due to
>"passive" entertainments such as TV and rock music), and where, in
>many cases, intellectual activity is actively discouraged (elementary
>schools, for example, where "control" is the operative word in many
>instances), there is a large class of people who are incapable of
>deep intellectual thought. The have-nots always seem to resent the
>haves, throughout history.  ...

Im not too sure i like this characterization, though i think the
phenomenon is real.  I have been speculating on this for a while 
and have come to the conclusion that we are just faced with too
much information, and the information we have is just too complex.

In a recent Science, De Tocqueville is quoted as saying something like
"People would rather believe a simple lie than the complex truth." 
I think this is really close to the crux of the problem.  We are faced
with more information than probably ever before (ok, i know this is
disputable - i can offer good counterarguments myself, but generally
i think it is true).  The growth of information available to people
in the last few years (say 20 to 50) is enormous, and i think that
there is a good chance that we are simply approaching the limits of
the human brain to handle that information well.  If this were happening
it does not seem unreasonable to postulate that one of the effects might
be to push people into rejecting that information and seeking simple
and dogmat explanations and solutions.

One of the other possible effects of this would be that increasingly
people would tend to work in fairly narrow specialities where the 
knowledge needed to understand the specialty could be controlled.  

The problem of more concern is the first, where people would tend to 
reject complex explanations in favor of simple ones, especially those
offered by some "expert" in the field.  They would do this not because
the explanations are not closer to the real situation, but because the
complexity and information needed to understand the problem and
solution are just too much to handle.  Further, even though mathemeticians
and others are beginning to understand the behavior of complex systems
the depth of knowledge necessary to understand the models is often
great and far beyond what most of us (myself included, unhappily) can
easily understand - thus the models and processes offered tend to look
like magic to the uninitiated.

Considering things like Hypertext and other information models in this
context raises some very interesting questions:

  Will Hypertext (or other more or less holistic information models) 
improve the situation by making the large quantities of information
more accessible and comprehensible, or will it help to push people
to the limits of understanding faster?

  Will computer modeling of complex models (including graphical
representations of the models) make such models more common and useful
or will people just see them as pretty graphics and not understand the
application of the model to real processes?

Im not sure im terribly optimistic.

jeff putnam