From: Stephen Talbott
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 31/10/00 20:27
Subject: NetFuture #113
NETFUTURE
Technology and Human Responsibility
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Issue #113 A Publication of The Nature Institute October 31,
2000
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Editor: Stephen L. Talbott ([log in to unmask])
On the Web: http://www.netfuture.org/
You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes.
NetFuture is a reader-supported publication.
CONTENTS:
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Quotes and Provocations
Do We Really Want Higher Test Scores?
Over-justified Toys
Asian Rice: A "Stunning" Result
Is Growing Pessimism about the Internet a Cause for Optimism?
About this newsletter
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QUOTES AND PROVOCATIONS
Do We Really Want Higher Test Scores?
-------------------------------------
In NF #107 I mentioned a home-schooled boy who resisted all pressures to
read until he was ten years old, and then began to read voraciously on
his
own (a common story except where early attempts to force reading set up
a
resistance that the child never overcomes). I commented:
The idea that earlier is better is one of the strangest notions ever
to
seize hold of parents. Why not assume that later is better?
Certainly
it can be easier, with much less stress and alienation on the child's
part. Children all have their own rates of development, and it is
impossible to comprehend all the suffering that results from forcibly
subjecting them to the standardized schemas of school and labeling
them
accordingly.
This continues to eat away at me. The whole idea that an accelerated
education is a better education seems little more than a disgusting
reflection of parents' competitiveness. (This competitiveness, of
course,
is encouraged by schools.)
Impatient parents should stop and think a minute about one of the things
distinguishing the human being from animals: remarkably delayed
maturity.
Our highest capabilities evidently have a lot to do with the fact that
we
are *held back* in our development. Even as adults we can experience
that
the inspiration too quickly seized upon, too quickly straitjacketed
within
definite form, loses its inner life prematurely. Its potentials grow
best
when it is nurtured for a time in a protected place, slept on, shaped by
all the diverse powers of our organism, given an imaginative space for
transformation. In our life as a whole, this imaginative space is
called
childhood.
The computer is a superb tool for forcing certain kinds of development.
It is wonderfully effective at coercing the fluid imagination into
arbitrary, crystallized forms. It easily replaces inner activity with
impressively articulated skeletons of algorithmic logic. It can elicit
from children feats of abstraction worthy of a rocket scientist,
delighting parents who remain unaware that they are witnessing a damping
of creative powers. Creativity, after all, is the life that overcomes
abstraction; it gives us new images of wholeness worth abstracting
*from*.
Our death-like, context-destroying powers of abstraction are among our
highest, and therefore most dangerous, powers, which is reason enough
for
them to come late. When our more vital, organic, imaginative, and
child-
like capacities are not first cultivated to the fullest, then we lose
the
means to revivify our abstractions. Working with these abstractions
becomes like eating sawdust -- a pretty good description for much of the
scientific curriculum today.
Evidence that computer-based learning improves test scores has been hard
to come by. Even harder for many people, I'm afraid, will be the
realization that higher test scores may just as well signal an
educational
failure as a success. We do not, after all, hope for the birth of a
75-pound baby. It is equally perverse to push for an adult-like
intellect
in a child.
Over-justified Toys
-------------------
You're doubtless aware of the technologization of children's toys. In
three years the use of electronics in toys has increased from less than
ten percent to more than sixty percent, according to the president of
Mattel's Fisher-Price unit. Technology, he says, can deliver "all the
things we want for the child and what the child wants for fun and
enjoyment".
In a story last February 17 entitled "The Road to Toyland Is Paved with
Chips: Technology Takes Over the Nursery", the *New York Times* cited
some
of the reasons why high-tech infant and pre-school toys are proving such
a
commercial success. Unsurprisingly, much of it has to do with parents'
desire to help their children "get ahead" and become little adults.
(See
previous article.)
A spokeswoman for the Toy Manufacturers of America, Terri Bartlett,
summarizes the matter with wonderful unconcern:
"[Children] respond faster, and their senses are heightened, because
in
society everything is coming at them faster." She added: "We're all
into doing more things. The times they are spending on various types
of toys is being shortened. It's like they are multitasking with
their
toys."
It doesn't seem to have occurred to Bartlett that just possibly we ought
to protect the child from some of society's more extreme trends, rather
than view those trends as nothing more than a commercial opportunity.
The *Times* article mentions a toy called the Babbler whose parts a baby
can strike, making things happen -- the parts light up and babble in
Japanese, French, English and Spanish. In case you've missed the adult
point, a toy store owner clarifies: "It's a wonderful cause-and-effect
toy". Get it? -- strike X and something happens. That's cause and
effect, which sounds marvelously scientific.
Then there's the Intelli-Table developed by Microsoft and Fisher-Price.
It "promises to teach children who press its buttons about colors,
letters, numbers and musical concepts -- the last with animal sounds,
like
the baaing of sheep, set to snippets of a Mozart sonata".
It's hard to comment on patent nonsense; where do you find a toe-hold
for
rational response? People who are obviously failing to see the child
are
not likely to see the point of any defense of the child.
Nevertheless, I will venture to note that there's not much a child can
do
-- whether it is stubbing a toe or lifting an arm -- that does not teach
whatever needs teaching about cause and effect. After all, there's no
shortage of things that "happen", even in the most toy-deprived child's
life. Recognition of cause and effect is ultimately grounded in the
experience of mastery over our own bodies and limbs; simple toys for
which
the child must *create* the uses -- blocks, sticks, leaves, stones --
are
as useful for this purpose as anything else. And they are much
healthier
for the child.
The real fact of the matter is as obvious as can be: the Babbler serves
primarily to *conceal* cause and effect, substituting something
altogether
arbitrary and rather more like magic. Why in the world should touching
one particular part of this device result in a sudden outburst of
babbled
Japanese? The "causal mechanism", not to mention the sense of it all,
is
completely hidden from the child.
Much the same goes for those Microsoft-inspired buttons that teach
children about "colors, letters, numbers and musical concepts". The
toddler does not need musical concepts; he needs *musicality* in his
life
-- and not arbitrary snippets of sheepish and Mozartean sounds, but
music
that arises coherently out of the encircling human context. And if you
still want cause and effect, let the music express the current mood and
goings-on between child and parent, not the inane selections of an
engineer in a remote cubicle.
In general, we should see a red flag whenever adults set out to "teach"
infants and very young children. About all we can realistically hope
for
is to learn from all the amazing things children accomplish during these
years, most of which have eluded our most sophisticated efforts at
understanding. The child learns to speak, not because we "teach" him,
but
because we enter into and share his world in the most intimate way. Our
lives together become a speaking, and this alone is what enables the
child
to speak. We could usefully take this as the model for all learning.
Related articles:
** "When Childhood Should Rule" in NF #80.
http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/1998/Nov2498_80.html#2c
** "Dangerous Baby Walkers, Dangerous Software" in NF #96.
http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/1999/Oct1499_96.html#2a
** "Toddlers as Geometricians" in NF #80.
http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/1998/Nov2498_80.html#2b
** "The Most Powerful Tools Are Unbearably Simple" in NF #80.
http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/1998/May1498_71.html#1c
Asian Rice: A "Stunning" Result
-------------------------------
In a massive Chinese experiment, a major rice disease was reduced by
ninety-four percent. How? -- by using the latest pesticides and
genetically modified crops? No, but by rejecting the principle of
monoculture and returning to more natural contexts. As the *New York
Times* reported:
In a stunning new result from what has become one of the largest
agricultural experiments ever, thousands of rice farmers in China
have
doubled the yields of their most valuable crop and nearly eliminated
its most devastating disease -- without using chemical treatments or
spending a single extra penny.
Under the direction of an international team of scientists, farmers
in
China's Yunnan Province adopted a simple change in their rice
paddies.
Instead of planting the large stands of a single type of rice, as
they
typically have done, the farmers planted a mixture of two different
rices. With this one change, growers were able to radically restrict
the incidence of rice blast -- the most important disease of this
most
important staple in the world. Within just two years, farmers were
able to abandon the chemical fungicides previously widely used to
fight
the disease. (August 22, 2000)
The experiment, covering 100,000 acres and involving tens of thousands
of
farmers, was reported in the August 17 issue of *Nature*. A commentator
in that journal, Martin S. Wolfe, notes that "monoculture is convenient;
it is easier to plant, harvest, market and identify one variety of crop
than several". This, of course, is the fragmented, blindered sort of
agricultural efficiency that technology so readily propels us toward --
an
efficiency that has forgotten its own larger purpose, which is to
promote
healthy contexts for living.
Wolfe points out some of biodiversity's benefits, as highlighted by the
work in China:
** A more disease-resistant crop, interplanted with a less resistant
crop,
can act as a physical barrier to the spread of disease spores.
** "An increase in the complexity of the pathogen population may also
slow
the adaptation of the pathogen" to the crop mixture due to competition
among the pathogens.
** Of the two varieties of rice used in the Chinese experiment, the
taller
variety was the one more susceptible to blast. But, when planted in
alternating rows with the shorter variety, the taller rice enjoyed
sunnier, warmer, and drier conditions, which appeared to inhibit the
fungus.
** The rice experiment yielded a clear "yes" to the question whether
expanding the area of mixed plantings multiplies the benefits. (This,
by
the way, emphasizes how remarkable it is that organic farming has
performed so well in the few studies of its economic viability relative
to
conventional farming. A one-hundred-acre organic farm surrounded by
thousands of acres of monoculture must cope with the resulting
imbalances
in the larger landscape -- imbalances likely to inundate the organic
crops
with single disease agents or insect pests. That is, the organic farmer
not only has to pay his own way, but also has to pay for his neighbor's
sins. As more farms are converted to organic methods, the performance
should get even better.)
** A kind of immunization occurs when crops are exposed to a diversity
of
pathogens (disease organisms). Upon being attacked by a less virulent
pathogen, a plant's immune system is stimulated, so that it can then
resist even a pathogen that it would "normally" (that is, in a
monoculture) succumb to.
This last point reminds us that our notions of disease susceptibility
ought to be kept flexible. Susceptibility is not a fixed trait of a
crop
variety, but rather is relative to the conditions of cropping. Many
existing susceptibilities are, to one degree or another, artifacts of
the
crop's extreme isolation from anything like a natural or supportive
context. This context includes not only other plants, but also the
complex, teeming life of the soil -- life that is badly compromised by
"efficient" applications of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.
(Our society ought to declare war on the term "efficiency", which
*almost*
without exception signals a blindness to larger, contextual concerns.
In
fact, when you look closely, you see that this blindness is just about
the
whole point of the term.)
If mixing varieties of a single crop proves beneficial, so also, Wolfe
notes, does mixing different crops. This kind of diversity encourages a
matching diversity of diet, and it militates against the dominant trend
toward increasingly "pure" monocultures -- first single crops, then
single
varieties, and now single, genetically engineered traits. Wolfe
suggests
that "even organic farmers underuse diversity, as they also have been
indoctrinated in the simplicity of and seduced by the universality of
monocultures".
You know that the backlash against the arrogance of the genetic
engineers
of food has reached serious proportions when *Nature* -- probably the
world's most prestigious scientific journal -- gives play to these
words:
Mixtures of species [such as corn and beans, or grains and legumes]
.... can provide near-complete nutrition for animals and humans
alike,
without recourse to expensive and uncertain forays into genetic
engineering. (Wolfe)
This, you will remember, was exactly the point of "Golden Genes and
World
Hunger" in NetFuture #108.
Related articles:
** "Golden Genes and World Hunger" in NF #108.
http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/2000/Jul0600_108.html
** "When Technology Is Smoke and Confusion" in NF #83.
http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/1999/Jan1999_83.html#2d
** "Finding Wholeness in a Pile of Manure" in NF #79.
http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/2000/Oct2798_79.html#2c
Is Growing Pessimism about the Internet a Cause for Optimism?
-------------------------------------------------------------
Have you noticed the minor epidemic of disillusion that has been on
public
display lately? I mean, in particular, disillusion about the Internet
and
the promise of digital technologies. At the very least you could say
that
it has become much more respectable to question technological
"solutions"
in popular media.
For example, the Alliance for Childhood's September release of its
report,
*Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood* (see NF #111)
provoked a massive response far beyond the Alliance's most ambitious
hopes. From the *New York Times* to the *San Francisco Examiner*, from
*U.S. News & World Report* to *Newsweek*, from MSNBC to CNN, from
*Education Week* to *eSchool News* -- and in extensive international
coverage as well -- the reportage was largely respectful of the
Alliance's
concerns. As an Op-ed piece by Joanne Jacobs in the Montreal *Gazette*
put it:
Perhaps the techno-pushers can argue persuasively that putting more
computers in classrooms is the most cost-effective use of school
funds.
OK. But they should have to make their case.
The recognition that a case needs to be made is a great advance over the
previous state of affairs!
On a different front, Bill Joy's article in *Wired* earlier this year
also
helped to legitimize technology criticism, while igniting a firestorm of
debate about the dangers of biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and
nanotechnology. A few other developments:
** The third Internet and Society Conference at Harvard University
produced a lot of news coverage like this:
"There's almost a backlash right now, sort of an enormous hangover
and
a retreat from the kind of giddy euphoria" that dominated the early
and
mid-1990s view of the Net's possibilities, Lotus Development Corp.
founder Mitch Kapor said in a speech he dubbed "the confessions of a
recovering technological utopian."
A decade ago, in the years after he discovered an early e-mail
community in the San Francisco Bay area, "I made a number of speeches
in which I said the Internet was going to make everything better. As
we know, that didn't exactly happen." (*Boston Globe Online*, June
1,
2000)
** The same news story contained this:
Pattie Maes, an associate professor in the Media Lab at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said she once believed the Net
would usher in four world-changing trends: leveling the playing
field
for small businesses to compete against the large, bringing "power to
the people," offering highly personalized information, and serving as
the "collective mind" of curious humans everywhere.
"I can't exactly say that all these visions have become reality,"
Maes
said. "Maybe they are becoming delusions."
** An *Economist* editorial (Aug. 19-25, 2000) cited Nicholas
Negroponte's
claim that children of the future "are not going to know what
nationalism
is", and Michael Dertouzos' claim that digital communications will bring
"computer-aided peace" which "may help stave off future flare-ups of
ethnic hatred and national break-ups". After noting similar claims
about
radio, the editorial went on:
Sadly, Rwanda's Radio Mille Collines disproved the idea that radio
was
an intrinsically pacific force once and for all. The mistake people
make is to assume that wars are caused simply by the failure of
different peoples to understand each other adequately. Indeed, even
if
that were true, the Internet can also be used to advocate conflict.
Hate speech and intolerance flourish in its murkier corners, where
governments (as France is now discovering) find it hard to intervene.
The editors also dispute the notion that the Internet will reduce energy
consumption and foster equality. It concludes: "Despite the claims of
the techno-prophets, humanity cannot simply invent away its failings.
The
Internet is not the first technology to have been hailed as a panacea --
and it will certainly not be the last".
** Bob Davis of the *Wall Street Journal* wrote a story entitled "The
Internet in Schools: A Crusade Backed by Scant Data or Results":
But from the political rhetoric, one might suppose that Internet
access
would be a transforming experience in schools once limited to
pen-and-
pencil-era technology, setting their students up to do much better in
the work force someday. So far, though, despite the huge national
commitment to wiring the nation's schools, there isn't much hard
evidence that either computers or the Internet actually have helped
close gaps in scholastic achievement. (June 19, 2000)
** Influential commentator, Walter Mossberg, says, "It's hard to think
of
an industry that has a hype machine as phenomenal as the high-tech
industry. My job is to be the anti-hypester." In a profile of Mossberg
for the *Washington Post*, Howard Kurtz cites Mossberg's credo:
Computers
are crap and the rest of us shouldn't take it any more.
I'm not sure what comfort to take from all this. I would be much more
optimistic if the disillusion led to widespread analysis on a slightly
deeper level, where people asked: What is it that made us susceptible
to
such false expectations -- and even now makes us repeat our mistakes
with
regard to the *next* generation of innovations? (There are undoubtedly
various answers to this. On one level, I think, the proper answer has
to
do with the mechanistic style of thinking that has taken such deep hold
of
us, reinforced by our more or less continuous interaction with
machines.)
I would also be more optimistic if it weren't for the example of
television. Finally, after several decades of television, our culture
has
reluctantly arrived at a rough consensus that "the tube" really does
poison society in various ways. Yet this conviction seems to have
little
bearing on the poisonous effects. Politics is not less damagingly
influenced by television today than in earlier decades, and the same can
be said for recreation, sports, family interaction, education, and
children's physical health.
Cultures of pessimism and even dislike can arise without any serious
reform of the practices scorned. Machines seem to have a wonderful
ability to paralyze our wills, or to make us feel helpless. This is why
one other news item may provide slightly more hope:
** The *Wall Street Journal* ran a story entitled, "In Backlash Against
the Wired World, Silicon Valley Fringe Pulls Plug at Home". It dealt
with
various high-tech executives and employees who have attempted to
simplify
their personal lives -- all the way down to the electricity-less living
of
the CEO of Respond.com. According to Carol Holst, program director of
the
nonprofit Seeds of Simplicity, "a large number of high-achievers are
sick
of the rat race". Half the four hundred attendees at a February
simplicity conference in Silicon Valley were dot-com executives. The
*Journal* reports that,
To distance themselves from the tech blitz, these part-time unwired
ones are devising elaborate escape schemes. Alay Desai, the 30-year-
old chief technology officer of a Santa Clara, Calif., start-up
called
Stario.com (www.stario.com), doesn't have a computer or phone in his
spartan apartment. The only objects are a small TV set and a
sleeping
bag. He refuses to buy a Palm organizer or a pager. Mr. Desai's one
concession is a cell phone, which he acquired, he says, when "my
business partners couldn't get hold of me, so one of them went out
and
bought me one." His colleagues say they still can't reach him
because
he turns the phone off at home or just doesn't answer.
Now, if all those executives can just bring themselves to carry their
new
ideals into the workplace .... Then the *real* revolution will begin.
(Thanks to Michael Corriveau, Aaron Renn, and Fred Tompkins.)
SLT
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ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
NetFuture is a freely distributed newsletter dealing with technology and
human responsibility. It is published by The Nature Institute, 169
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21C, Ghent NY 12075 (tel: 518-672-0116). Postings occur roughly every
couple of weeks. The editor is Steve Talbott, author of *The Future
Does
Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst*.
Copyright 2000 by The Nature Institute.
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