Module 2 lecture comments

a. “Knowledge in the Age of Abundance”
b. “From Script to Print”
Write a post in your blog with your thoughts on these lectures.

 

Knowledge in the Age of Abundance

Did I overlook a link to the Weinberger LITA keynote? I’ve had a busy week and I could have missed it but I did find the address here: http://litablog.org/2009/11/david-weinberger-video-lita-forum-2009/
The embedded video didn’t play for me but I downloaded the video and was able to view it. Dr. Roland’s lecture summarized it nicely so it may not be necessary to watch the video in order to comment on the lecture.
I took an interest in the concept of “good enough”. Weinberger did take some questions (at least 2) about this. By “good enough”, Weinberger says that our networked age is pretty good at providing information that is “good enough” for most needs. It probably can’t answer which restaurant is the *best* restaurant in a certain city but you could most likely find enough information to know if you’d like to try a restaurant or not. Since most people would just be trying to decide on whether to go to a specific restaurant or not, the information is “good enough” to assist with the decision.
Google (Yahoo is most popular in Taiwan actually) searches often produce these “good enough” results for most of the things people want to know most of the time.

• What time is it in Paris?
• How old is Paul McCartney?
• What is the entry fee for Stonehenge?

But “good enough” results are “good enough” most of the time but not all of the time. What do information seekers do then?
I also took interest in Weinberger’s mention of “stopping points”. So true! Each unclicked link beckons to be clicked! Wikipedia’s “random entry” link leads users on all kinds of information journeys.
When thinking of the amount of information available at our fingertips in mere seconds, I thought of this wonderful clip from comedian Pete Holmes. “We know everything but we aren’t a lick smarter for it.”

 

From Script to Print

Hmmm…. I’m up against the deadline here… just a few minutes… and I’m not sure I have much to say about this. At least not in a coherent, thought-out, post.
I’m thinking:

• I have taken a lifetime of crayon availability for granted.
• I’m glad to hear orality mentioned. In my work as a missionary, we have found that even in a highly literate society (Taiwan literacy > 95%) that most people still prefer oral learning and transmission over print.
• The telephone is old but still awesome. Oral. Full-duplex.
• Texting is half-duplex. not oral. hmmmm.
• I enjoyed the lecture. I actually listened to it 2 times and parts of it more than 2 times. I absorbed it more like it was a history and anthropology lecture.
• It probably isn’t possible to overstate the importance of the printing press.
• I did really appreciate that the lecture didn’t just end after mentioning all the main points but it ended with a “so what?” question. IMO, “so what?” always needs to be asked. It is is relatively easy to point out how the status quo isn’t perfect… but what should/can we DO?

must submit this….. one minute to deadline…………….