Category: Mechanical Sympathy

The website of T. King, technologist philosopher

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A Single Decision Could Save Our Future

I watched the first episode of BBC’s Victorian Bakers the other day and it’s still resonating with me.  They kick it off by taking modern bakers and putting them in an early Victorian bakery.  Like one of the guys in this, I have a family history of baking.  The Kings I’m named after were bakers on Drayton high street near Norwich for generations.

My uncle John has a great story of heading out for bread deliveries on a horse and cart with my great grandfather Eddie.  They left before sunrise and were dropping off loaves for miles and miles before coincidently ending up doing their last drop right next to a public house around lunch time.  Eddie went in, had two pints on an empty stomach and then got back on the cart.  The horse walked the ten miles home without direction while Eddie had a nap.  My then six year old uncle just sat next to him with his mouth hanging open.

The BBC show does a good job of situating those early Victorian bakers in a time period that is very unfamiliar to modern people.  They were performing a truly sustainable industry that had been done in much the same way since before the middle ages.  For millenia local bakeries in villages and towns across the country had made bread that provided the majority of caloric intake for everyone around them using technology and processes that were passed down from generation to generation.  Every time I take out a bag of garbage or a box of recycling and wait for a diesel monster to take them away, I’m aware that what I’m doing isn’t remotely as sustainable.  It’s a lot of hard graft, but between our fixations on ease of living and short term gain, the idea that we could hand down an industry to our children without it destroying the world is foreign to us, hard work or not.

Using brewer’s yeast from local breweries and grain from local fields, the bakery, attached to a water powered mill, would feed everyone within walking or riding distance.  In the process of mimicking this time period the modern bakers made a number of surprising observations, such as how effectively the locally sourced and unmodified brewer’s yeast raised the bread.  Modern yeast has been bred to grow as rapidly as possible in order to be distributed industrially on a massive scale.  It’s not made for taste or even health, it’s made for ease of productivity.  Most of what we do in the 21st Century is designed to feed industry.  The modern bakers who are used to this GMO’d yeast were surprised at how well the traditional brewer’s yeast worked, as well as how much taste it retained; modern yeast is bland by comparison.  One of them said that he could make this bread in his current bakery and it would sell no problem – people miss the details lost in industrialization.
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Another naturally rather than industrially sourced ingredient were the local, ancient grains used in this traditional bread making.  An archeologist turned farmer in the area was farming using traditional methods.  So, rather than industry driven monocultural crops that erode soil, he had a variety of grains that naturally grew in the region.  He couldn’t slot that in to modern expectations designed to maximize profit at the expense of everything else, but it did enable the TV production to make a surprisingly accurate traditional bread.  Those traditional grains changed from region to region depending on the local biome, so if you travelled more than two centuries ago, the bread and beer would have tasted different depending on where you were.  Modern grain is bred for rapid growth and tends to be monocultural (and trademarked) in order to maximize short term yields, so they lack that variety and the sustainability that ancient grains had.  Another surprise was the reduced amount of gluten in the ancient grains bread.  Modern monocultures are selected for maximum gluten in order to produce the biggest, fluffiest bread possible.  We genetically engineer grains so they are gluten overloaded then wonder why we’re having a reaction to gluten.
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GMOs aren’t the issue here other than how trademarked, selective breeding also fits into the industrial farming disaster.  We’ve been selectively breeding crops and animals for thousands of years to good effect.  The issue is how industrially driven economics force agriculture into unsustainable, damaging, repetitive high-yield, mono-cultural crops that are inherently dependent on diesel powered heavy machinery and heavy chemical use.  All of this is done to produce as much cheap food or fuel as possible.  The quality of that food and the fact that we can’t keep doing it this way aren’t in the equation when farmers are forced to look at short term gain year after year.  When we mess around with agriculture in order to increase profitability at the cost of our health or the health of our environment, we’re ultimately destroying the world for the short term gain of only a few people, and leaving the wreckage for the people who come after us.


The economic system that drives our industrial economy goes well beyond a lack of sustainability.  It demands sacrifices to our health and safety in order to drive short term profit.    Thanks to this myopia we have turned a staple food that we’ve eaten for thousands of years into something unsustainable and unhealthy in order to make more of it for less.  The following episode of Victorian Bakers showed how industrialization and the profit driven wealth that comes from it not only made a traditional, sustainable industry nearly impossible, but also produced products that were happy to trade health for profit.  The bakers in the show were never as unhappy as they were in the early industrial bakery.  The next time someone tells you that we need to deregulate industry, show them this:


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The red countries are already upside down. The green coutries are all trending toward red. We aren’t remotely aimed toward a viable end.


This series has me thinking about larger questions around sustainability.  Pretty much everything we do on an industrial scale is driving us toward extinction or at least a drastic correction.  We’re too selfish to make these changes ourselves, but it doesn’t matter because nature will eventually make them for us.  We think we’re forced into making these decisions because of our population, but our population is also a choice.

Current estimates have us at three times the sustainable number of people the Earth can manage.  We could resolve overpopulation in only a few generations, but it would mean radically altering an economic system designed to ignore sustainability in favour of selfishness and short term gain, as well as acting in a way that we as animals aren’t evolved to do.  Procreation is an instinctive force that most people are unwilling or unable to consider modifying.  Asking humans to voluntarily consider modifying the number of children they have raises all sorts of superstition and involuntary anger.  The vast majority of us are not able to worry about how our great grandchildren will survive no matter what horrible things we’re doing to them.

 

Pledge to look after your great grandchildren by signing here

If, over the next four generations, we volunteered to follow a one child per family policy, we’d have corrected human overpopulation by 2100.  By 2200 we could stabilize the human population under that two billion mark while still being able to develop our science and technology towards less invasive and more sustainable goals.  What we wouldn’t be able to do is continue our short sighted economic system that really only works to convert future misery into today’s profits for a decreasing number of people.  Our economic system is only considered successful if it’s always growing.  The only other thing in nature that works that way is cancer, and a cancer is exactly what free-market driven human beings who think they can procreate at will and ignore the natural consequences are.

It’s possible for us to resolve the mess we’re in.  There is a way forward, but I fear it’ll never happen voluntarily.  I’ll never meet my son’s grandchildren, but I hope he can leave them a world where they don’t find humanity to be a selfish, ignorant, overpowering cancer on the biosphere.  It would be a world where human beings take responsibility for the science and technology that have allowed them to medicine themselves past many of the natural mechanisms that would have otherwise limited their growth.  If we’re going to spend billions ensuring children aren’t dying of disease, then we need to produce less children, or forgo the benefits of that medical science.  The choice is one made by a technologically mature species, but that’s not us.

There could be a future where the reduced human population load on Earth would allow us to continue to develop our science and technology and eventually move our heavy industry out of the only habitable ecosystem we have.  The solar system would be able to provide raw materials for our off-world heavy industry while our home world would became a carefully managed, bio-diverse and sustainable home.  It won’t be groaning under the weight of unsustainable agricultural monocultures we developed to feed an overpopulated planet.  Our biodiverse world would contain self sustaining settlements.  Cities would evaporate and small towns and villages would proliferate, though they would all be able to communicate with each other.  We would benefit from that biodiversity both in terms of sustainability and research.  We can’t make ground breaking discoveries from the massive variety of life around us if we reduce that variety to monocultures designed to feed as many humans as we can stuff onto the planet.

 

Power generation would be regional, small scale and renewable and consumption would be efficient and light.  Settlement size would be dictated by the biome it was located in and how much food and energy could be produced to look after the people in it.  Cellular regional governments would make decisions for their local needs and larger decisions would be made by combined groups on whatever scale was required, right up to world wide decisions on world wide consequences.  High power production for heavy industry would still happen, off world.  The people who wanted to work in heavy industry would work in space and come back to a green and blue home when they wished.  Imagine a world like that pre-Victorian bakery where the benefits of local life are emphasized and enhanced, but with the efficiencies of advanced communications and micro-manufacturing available to improve health, wellness and quality of life.

Space based energy production could be microwaved to the surface when needed.  Heavy equipment built on the Moon from mines throughout the inner solar system would mean access to raw materials without having to upset the Earth’s biosphere.  Saturn is a near infinite source of Helium3 energy.  Once we build the processes to mine the helium there, we have an energy rich, sustainable civilization for the indefinite future.  Advances in nano-technology, gene editing, chemistry and micro-manufacturing would make our current technology look as inefficient and awkward as steam trains do to us.

From that energy rich space based industry we could eventually drop space ladders down to the surface, making the transfer of people and materials to and from space even more ecologically viable and efficient.  There would come a time where there are more people scattered through the solar system than there are on Earth, but it would always be there ready to welcome us home.  Maybe at some point we would build generational ships and head to the stars, looking for other homes.

A future where we are able to hand down our way of life to our descendents without it killing them is only a single personal choice away.  It’s a shame the vast majority of humanity don’t have it in them to do it.  What my son will be telling his grandchildren is that he’s sorry it has all gone so wrong.  As vital resources like water become scarce under the crushing weight of billions we’ll do what we’ve always done when resources get scarce and go to war with each other.  At that point our science and technology will actually be put to the task of reducing human populations radically quickly.  Perhaps in the aftermath of that we’ll find a way forward, but we’re too stupid and self-righteous to make a decision that will avoid that misery now.

I’m a big fan of artificial intelligence.  As I get older I’m starting to think it’s one of the only places I’m seeing any kind of intelligence.  We seem to be regressing politically and culturally.  Given an opportunity to light up a SkyNet that would manage us better than we’re willing to manage ourselves, I wouldn’t hesitate to flip the switch.  It might be the only way we have a future.

 

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Research Links:

The other thing that got me thinking in this direction was Starfarers by Poul Anderson.  The characters in the novel are travelling between stars at relativistic rates, so when they return to Earth over ten thousand years have passed.  Anderson uses that as an opportunity to look at how human society could become a long term, sustainable process.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428120658.htm

https://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&series=EN.ATM.CO2E.PC&country=#

https://phys.org/news/2012-08-earth-absorbing-carbon-dioxide-emissions.html

https://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/3_times_sustainable
“If we allow overpopulation and overconsumption to continue, the evidence is mounting that billions will suffer and that we will leave future generations a much harder, bleaker life.”
“Taking these non-renewable resources into account suggests 2 billion people living at a European standard of living may be the upper limit of a sustainable global population”

https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/ecological-footprint/#worldfootprint 

http://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/

https://youtu.be/ANPaAHhfNck

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/nature-destruction-climate-change-world-biodiversity_n_5c49e78ce4b06ba6d3bb2d44

The rapid decline of the natural world.

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Bird Photography, because it’s hard

It takes patience and a lot of photos, but catching a bird just right never gets old.

A low light shot with lots of noise in it, but some photoshopping saved it.

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360 Winter Photos from the Saddle

These are some video screen grabs from the long way home commute from work last week.  Windy and cool, but still up near ten degrees Celsius with bright, winter sunshine.  The roads were relatively sand and salt free thanks to days of rain and floods.


The Ricoh Theta 360 camera is wrapped around the mirror with a Gorilla Pod.  A 360 video clip starts it off followed by some Adobe Lightroom heavily tweaked screen grabs aimed at creating a more abstract feel.



 




All the screen grabs with various modifications can be found in this album.



If you’re looking for a motorcycle friendly camera, the Theta 360 has push button controls that are easy to use (most others have finicky wireless connections through a smartphone).  You don’t have to aim it or focus it, it just grabs everything in an instant.  The screen grabs on here are from the 1080 video the Theta made while attached to the rear view mirror.


My last ride was November 28th.  I used the same 360 camera then, but didn’t have the Gorilla Pod at that point so those ones are all hand held.











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Exercising the OnePlus5 Smartphone camera

Following that adage I looked for a phone with a good camera this time around.  The OnePlus5 has an excellent camera as far as hardware goes, but the software still has some catching up to do.  Fortunately OnePlus seem committed to regular updates.


Walking home on Dec 23rd, one of the darkest days of the year, I took a post-sunset shot of the Grand River thinking it wouldn’t come out at all.  Not too bad for a very low light shot.  Similarly the multi-shot night time hockey gif taken on winter solstice in full darkness.


The photo of my lovely wife and her colleagues singing was also taken in a dark room.  It was post processed in Paper Artist, my favourite on-phone photo editing app.





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Digital Tribalism

Are we watching digital vandals sacking what’s left of Rome? It can begin with something as ephemeral as truth, and quickly turn into a guerrilla war. Wikileaks only speaks the truth, and the digital tribes believe it’s absolute. The words spoken and footage shown isn’t the truth, it’s too concrete, too certain, but the tribes need a focus, a common will.

The tribes are all around us, we are starting to identify ourselves more virtually than we do physically. We believe we have more in common with the people we associate with online than we do with our own countrymen. Democracy proves it with declining voter turnout and moldy, dysfunctional bureaucracies. People feel less and less relevant to where they are.
Your social networks linked to interests become more and more concrete in your mind. The people you game with are your comrades. It’s little wonder that these bands of virtual patriots rally behind the cry of truth overturning hypocrisy that Wikileaks is sounding. Bring down the government, bring down the corporations, bring down those things that try to limit our digital selves.
Perhaps it’s time to embrace the new, as our ancestors did with sail powered ships, printing presses and industrialization. The ships brought plague and genocide in the New World, the printing presses overturned a millennia old religious institution in Europe and industrialization is still slowly poisoning a very finite bio-sphere, but each of these things ushered in new eras of discovery and innovation; the digital era will be no different.
Why we ever thought that our brave new world would exist in happy harmony with the old world ideas of nationhood and economics is rather ludicrous; like expecting horse drawn carriages to run calmly next to a super highway. The digital truth we’re in the middle of inventing is going to demand some changes.
I wonder if people throughout history simply stumbled into obvious, overwhelming change without realizing it. In 500 years, students learning the early 21st Century will wonder at how people clung to ideas that were obviously outdated. Perhaps they’ll wonder why those nation states were so amazed that a apparently powerless little organization could unclothe them so easily. Perhaps they’ll wonder why no one stated the obvious.
But then again, maybe as Rome burned they really did fiddle, we are.
The best digital future books:
http://thedaemon.com/ fantastic new author
http://100milediet.org/ the future of how we feed ourselves – doesn’t seem important until you realize what is
We Are Legion: the beginnings of the end of geographical government?  The beginnings of digital nationhood?
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Wearing Out Willpower: edfail!

 
So, forcing people to constantly modify their behavior wears out their willpower and causes measurable deficiencies in their mental abilities. You can expect a 10-30% decrease in mental skills if you wear people out by forcing them to waste their willpower on maintaining arbitrary social norms.
 
…. how do we design schools? What do we constantly do to children all day? Then we demand that they work at their peak mental efficiency (which is impossible because we’ve worn out their mental focus on things like not talking, standing in line, doing what they are told, sitting quietly, doing what they’re told…); it’s weakening the teachers, it’s also damaging students.
 
We’ve essentially created an education system designed to produce poor mental acuity. I’ve always said that teachers dissolve their in-class credibility with students if they are used as hall monitors and cafeteria ladies (they are in my school). It turns out that having to constantly sit on every little social deviance measurably weakens our ability to perform mental tasks in both teachers and students as well.
 
If you have a moment, give it a listen (there is a pod cast on that webpage), some great insights into how modern psychology is measuring willpower and its effects on mental ability, and how we’re completely ignoring them in education.
 
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A Modest Ontario Education Proposal

The politics of teaching are on my mind lately.  Ontario has financial issues, and cutbacks seem certain.  I’ve previously talked about how good Ontario’s education system is, the frustration of being an active educator in this political climate, and, most recently, the simplicity of the salary grid.  I’ve asked hard questions about Ontario’s historical assumptions, and I think I haven’t been entirely one sided in the process.

Being active in my union, I fear that I don’t tow the line as much as I should.  Being a department head, I fear that I don’t tow my employer’s line as much as I should.  The sidey-ness of this whole thing frustrates me.  Why this is an adversarial process in which one side tries to take as much as possible from the other, to the point of hurting them if possible, in order to score political points.  It all seems very inefficient to me.  Along with the inefficiency there is the hypocrisy.  How we can expect, even demand, that students be rational, collaborative and unselfish when adults seem so intent on doing the opposite?

I’d like to make a modest proposal.  Now, this modest proposal won’t win you political points in media that cares more about emotional confrontation than truth, and it won’t inflame issues by fabricating lies; this proposal is all about fixing problems, and working collaboratively to do it.  If you want to look revolutionary, this won’t do it for you.  If you just want to hate on something ideologically then this will not suit your style.

This modest proposal is for mature, collegial people who begin with the premise that everyone involved in developing an economically sustainable education system with the highest standards of excellence isn’t going to throw these noble goals away for their own benefit at first opportunity.

This modest proposal won’t play to invented deadlines and the fictional drama that ensues.  It asks for an honest, transparent assessment of what is financially available for sustainable education in Ontario, and then it asks the parties involved to look at how they can maintain the levels of excellence currently achieved while meeting those transparent and accurate financial goals.  People playing games about the value of education need not apply.  If you think quality education isn’t important to the prosperity of Ontario, then you’re an idiot; it’s important that we do this well.

In this proposal, unions don’t protect older teachers at all costs into the largest possible retirement they can get, we consider everyone involved in the system fairly.  We have to consider that no education system is sacred and the end result is focused on fairness and excellence.  This proposal will consider what has worked world wide in terms of meaningful teacher assessment (because OCT sure isn’t it), and all parties will create a better way forward with it.

The first part of this proposal is a voluntary freeze for the next school year while the ministry, boards and unions sit down in a collaborative manner, agree on the finances, and then move to meet them.  If the union wants to offer early buyouts for expensive, senior teachers in order to free up positions for lower paid, new teachers, at great savings to the province, then this should be considered.  Putting money into the hands of people across Ontario isn’t a crime, especially if it helps them retire more independently.  If the ministry wants to restructure the grid in order to encourage excellence in teaching rather than stubbornly holding to a seniority only focus, then the union should join them in creating a grid that recognizes the many ways that teachers contribute to and improve their profession – just showing up to work shouldn’t get you within 5% of maximum salary on any reasonable grid.  If, in the process, senior teachers who do nothing other than show up and go home suddenly find themselves making $15,000 a year less, I’m ok with that, and any sane thinking person should be too.

The historical assumptions around public and semi-private religious schools that receive public funding should be removed, this isn’t 1850.  If we are really worried about the bottom line, trying to run 4 public systems is a needless waste of money.  If people want specialized schooling, private schools eagerly await their cash.  Religious expression has been welcomed in every school I’ve worked at, this isn’t a removal of religious impetus from schooling, it’s an inclusive embracing of it.  If the province is in dire straits, nothing should be sacred other than ensuring the most inclusive, best possible education we can provide.

A clear eyed, honest assessment would allow us to restructure education in Ontario in a rational, economically appropriate manner with a clear focus on excellence.  Old habits die hard, but if we can shed them, there is no reason why unions can’t do their job of protecting members without having to compulsively over protect to the point where the incompetent take advantage of the situation.  There is no reason why the ministry can’t focus on producing the best education possible instead of being a political puppet to whichever government has the reigns.  There is no reason why boards can’t facilitate the collaborative relationship between these two educational poles instead of being used as a scapegoat between them.

Step one?  Remove the panic of an artificial deadline.  All sides agree to meaningful and progressive dialogue on what needs to happen.  Strikes aren’t threatened, legislation isn’t threatened, this isn’t a threatening environment, it’s a collaborative one.  If students are expected to be collaborative and honest, why on Earth are adults acting this way?  It’s not very flattering to anyone, and it reeks of hypocrisy when administration and teachers demand it in school next year, from children.

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How Low Can We Go?

Just bumped into another Dad from my street who no longer comes out to get his kids on the other school bus in the morning. He told me a sad story.

Our local school bus companies were bought up by an American company who promptly fired everyone and rehired them at minimum wage. That didn’t bump up the investor returns enough so they also cut staff and combined bus routes. Their 8:30 pickup was becoming more like an 8:55 or 9:10 pickup. This happened for weeks on end. He finally went to the company and they reorganized their buses (again) to try and stabilize pickups. This is the 3rd time this has happened this year. This is why I don’t see them in the morning any more.
I wonder if the school board gets back money on this with cheaper rates. I wonder if all of those people who now can’t afford their mortgages, car payments or household costs (forget luxuries like having their kids play sports) are happy that the board gets such good rates. I wonder if the publicly funded school boards did anything whatsoever to try and resolve this without people who do a vital job being treated like refugees.
This reminds me of Michael Moore’s bit on airline pilots in the States in his last film.
What we appear to have here are publicly funded and operated school systems that seem intent on lowering the standard of living of thousands of people to improve bottom lines Am I the only one this seems absurd to?
I then told him about where our school custodians are. That same school board is intent on cutting back their responsibilities until it can replace them with minimum wage paid contracted cleaning services. Everything I’ve heard from board politics around who has been hired to perform this, to the ground level response of our own custodians, has supported this explanation. Once again, a publicly funded school board seems intent on lowering the standard of living of hundreds of people in its area in order to lower its bottom line. The fact that minimum wage paid people with no particular on-going interest in their work will be responsible for numerous health and safety issues in schools doesn’t seem to be at issue.
As a younger man I was never a fan of unions, until I saw the epic mess that “business” makes of even simple situations. Whereas a union might protect the odd jerk while protecting many honest employees from abuse and exploitation, private business seems to screw virtually everyone in order to pay off a select few of the richest, usually while dismantling a working system in the process. Given a choice, I’d rather see as few honest people get screwed as possible, so union it is.
Private ownership of what should be publicly owned utilities never works out. The businesses squeeze it for as much as they can with no eye for sustainability. They reduce the effectiveness of a service to just below the bare minimum accepted by the public, then try and hold it there for as long as they can, hiring off shore call centres to field the calls at minimum cost. It’s been a long time since big business has done even it’s own R&D work, let alone truly add anything of value to human civilization.
So here I am, listening to yet another story of Globalization in a world that has proven again and again that it simply doesn’t work. Simplifying ownership into multinationals injures regional interests and only benefits a few of the very rich, making everyone else poorer in the process. The big lie is that we’re all told that we could be that rich minority if we: try hard enough – are smart enough – know the right people – whatever, but that simply isn’t the case.
In the meantime, I’m paying taxes (and working) for a public organization that promotes the povertization of entire sectors of employees that depend on it. Thousands poorer to so a select few can move into a higher income bracket.
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Machine Learning

I listened to the Khan Institute TED talk the other day, and can see how a system like that could be flexible enough to adapt to each individual learner while giving the teacher fantastically accurate feedback on where problems lie and how to address them. A future like that looks bright indeed. Teachers would be free to focus on resolving problems and offering enrichment to basic skill sets, rather than standing in front of a crowd reciting facts. For skills based learning in languages and mathematics, this is revolutionary. This is technology used to differentiate a system that has developed some very habitual and static tendencies.
So, things are looking up, right? Education is slowly adapting to the technology wave and integrating it into a more flexible and responsive form of teaching. Then why do I think that once in place, this would allow governments to automate classrooms and drastically reduce the number of teachers in schools? Why do I think that, ultimately, this will dehumanize education?
I watched Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation recently (one of the top rated documentaries of all time, I highly recommend it). This has to be one of the smartest men I’ve ever listened to pulling no punches on a broad spectrum of Western history. This part (starting at 35:35), in particular, resonated with me about the times in which we live.
I think he’s ultimately right; machines do work slavishly for their owners, and those owners tend to be social powers in their own rights. Whether we’re talking the technology companies themselves, multi-nationals or governments, technology in general, and computers in particular, do as much (or more) to dictate our responses than they do to free us from conventions. If anything, computers are a more invasive and totalitarian convention than any art medium or the written word ever were. Digital natives aren’t people with a magical understanding of computers, they are human beings who have been taught to interface with them on a subconscious level. The industrial revolution started in the physical world and now continues its romp through the mental world, redefining human abilities in terms of how accurately and completely we can relate to digital technology.
Watching my poor grade 10s struggling through the standardized literacy test (in which they are identified by numbers and bar codes) today without their cyborg implants is reminding me just how pervasive cybernetics have become. They looked like ghosts without their constant media streams of video, sound and social connection. Watching them try to deal with 10 minutes of unneeded time at the end of the test without an onslaught of media was astonishing. They looked like they were in rehab.
Perhaps, as we grow through technological adolescence, it will become obvious that, at best, we will have a brave new world, at worst, a 1984. Digital technology will, ultimately, create a more manageable population, one that becomes easier to monitor while also becoming instinctively tuned to the needs of the machines that ‘serve’ them. A population that knows how to write (as long as it’s on WORD), or make music (as long as it’s on Garageband). Anyone who has watched a herd of high schools staring at Facebook can speak to its effectiveness as a herding tool.
More worrying is the sameness you tend to get out of student work based on the particular technology they used (we didn’t all used to self-identify through the editable parts of our facebook pages). Hand written documents are original in many ways that the boiler plate WORD DOC is not, but you ask students to hand write anything now (or draw anything – why bother when I can google it?) and they immediately ask, ‘what’s the point?’ Presentations have become powerpoints, then prezis, templates replace design, we find ourselves in a spiraling web of more intellectually focused (and limiting) applications; we start to develop an app mentality.
Machines will always favor efficiency over aesthetics, or ease of management over originality, or clear direction over multiple options. Their ones and zeros, by necessity, simplify the world their biological fore bearers created them from.
A few years ago I saw EPIC2014. It made some of my sharpest grade 12 media students cry. Here you have the concept of an individualized media feed, that gives you what you want, and nothing else. For the brightest, it becomes a nuanced, deep information tool, but for most of the population it feeds them what they want to hear: lies and gossip, while reinforcing their prejudices (sort of like Fox News). There might be some truth in that. If you’ve ever seen how students make use of social media, you can see how the stronger students reign it in, make use of it and control it, while weaker students are ruled by it.
I think that this will be the ultimate deciding factor: will clever people make use of technology to dominate, or will they use it to free us from conventions and allow us to think as optimally as we can? Looking at human history, the answer isn’t very flattering, but I hope for the freedom.