The New Education

Your being here suggests that you possess the critical skill of being able to read. I remember being taught to read at 5, and it was a long and gradual process. Word by word I learned how to interpret nonsensical symbols into thoughts and ideas, originally from someone else's mind, but which would then incite new thoughts and ideas in my own. What followed in my childhood memories are many priceless journeys in reading. I read fairy tales and novels, biographies and articles. My understanding, my tastes, and my comprehension all developed and matured, each attainment leading seamlessly into the next. Reading is the foundation of so many things I know today. My perspectives on life, my academic education, my pursuit of personal interests and more are all dependent on this extremely fundamental ability of being able to understand words on a page.

This is by no means a unique experience. The advent of scholasticism and literacy raised the common man's intelligence and capability in ways that fundamentally redefined our cultures. Of course, previous to widespread literacy, there were other forms for attaining information: such as conversation and example. While these methods were not abandoned through being able to read, literacy allowed for additional ways to attain information that were never available before. For one, you could have information repeated to you over and over as many times as you needed by rereading a passage. For another, you could experience phrasing that had been carefully cultivated and  revised for ultimate directness and clarity. For another, you could experience thoughts and opinions that came from miles away in countries that you would never visit in life. Even when writing was used to communicate works of fiction, it still provided new opportunities to access artistic, moral, and inspirational information. In short, it can be concluded that a literate man was generally a superior version over his illiterate self, and was better qualified in all things. The literate man now had the tools by which to better attain all knowledge and skill available in the global consciousness.

To me it is evident that today we are experiencing yet another drastic revolution in communication and information with the advent of computational technology and the internet. Like literacy, this technology is a versatile means to many ends. It is a tool in the belt of those that wish to access information of any sort. Obviously it does not replace literacy, rather it does much to accentuate and expand it. One way in which computers and the internet fundamentally change our approach to the dissemination of knowledge is that it allows the forming of databases that can digitally store information greater than that of any library, but which can be searched faster than is humanly possible. They also now allow for the virtually immediate sharing of information and conditions from opposite ends of the globe. You can experience content in many new forms, including interactive experiences. You can participate in many-to-many interactions, no longer limited to one-to-one or one-to-many communications. And more easily than ever before these tools allow you to be a producer of information, rather than just a consumer. As before, the man that possesses technological literacy will be a superior version of his technologically illiterate self.

Those that ignore this new tool will progressively find themselves moving slower and slower than the rest of the world. Taking more time to learn less, those people will also find themselves attaining a lesser status than others. In the same way that traditional illiteracy has become a trait of the poorer, the uneducated, and the deprived, so it will be with technological illiteracy. Any educational institution and any concerned parent should have as priorities that children learn their alphabet, learn how to read...and then learn how to install an app and conduct a web-search.

Outsourcing Our Moral Resolve-Video

Outsourcing Our Moral Resolve

We've all heard that no internet filter is foolproof. Undesired content will periodically get through to harass innocent users, and malicious users will always be able to find a way around any security measure. I'm sure we've also all heard, and even shared, that this is the reason why we need to have a personal moral filter to be safe. While that certainly is a reason, I very strongly feel that even if we  had a foolproof filter, where was never any chance of seeing lewd material by accident or intent, that that would in no way lessen the importance for a strong, moral compass inside. It is imperative that we be able to moderate our choices first and foremost by the strength of our own integrity, and thus we are not meant to outsource that responsibility to a software. All that being said, I do support filters and wholeheartedly recommend them, but they should only be seen as tools to complement, and never replace, our own moral resolve.

Illusionary Values

Entertainment can be a means for teaching real-life lessons in a condensed format through analogy and imagery. As an example, many video games tend to offer the player rewards in return for effort, providing a life-lesson of putting the necessary effort into attaining the richest things. If, however, gamers stop viewing the game as merely anecdotal, and the artificial rewards become as real to them as any other, then they end up valuing things of little worth over things of greater. Why put thousands of dollars and years of hard effort into a simple college degree, when you could just put in two hours and save an entire village? This skewed perspective fails to grasp that a village which can be saved in a couple short hours, must not be a village that is much worth the saving. The fact that real-life accomplishments come harder speaks to the far greater value of them. We should let our games encourage us to strive for the best of life, not spend the best of our lives striving in games.

Our New Media-Book Post

We live during a unique period of change in the media. Specifically social media is now prolific, changing the dynamic of how we receive and share ideologies, news, and entertainment. This has brought a massive increase in content and the ability for anyone to be producing it. So, is this new dynamic better or worse? In a word, yes. Simultaneously breadth and depth are being expanded, both for the best and worst of material. Ideally we would only be producing the good and worthy, but there is no authoritative standard that content must meet.
Before this onset, the media was filtered many times before being distributed. It was filtered by the laws of the land, by investors who demanded getting a profitable return, and by the ethics that the creator of the media had been trained to abide by. The system certainly had its flaws, but at least there were checks in place to counter and curb those flaws.
Today none of those checks are in place for our new media-sharing platform, and the only people who could police the content is us, the creators of it. The most empowering thing about social media is that if we don't like what is out there we can really do something about it. We can see the negative and the base and we can drown it out by producing our own positive and uplifting material. If it is quality, if the masses enjoy it, then it will become viral and its influence will make the internet that much better of a place to be. The internet will become what we determine it should become and if we wish to flood the media with goodwill, worthy content, and places of safety there is nothing to stop us.

Which System is the Right One?

The technological world hosts a great deal of variety, both in ideologies and implementations. One specific example is whether operating systems should be closed (Apple), open (Microsoft), or ridiculously open (Linux). The different core beliefs of each system naturally lead to very different implementations, and thus each method is innately more proficient in some tasks than its competitors, and more deficient in others. People tend to become attached to one or the other and then argue over why all the others are woefully inferior. Personally, I think that's silly. Would we really want to eradicate the others so that only one remained? In what way is it a bad thing to have a variety of different solutions for our many different needs? In what way it a bad thing for competition to drive each method to iterate and ever improve? We will never have a "perfect" single system, but we can at least have a powerful conglomeration of these unique ones.

Unwanted Attention

In the past few years the prevalence of women in technical fields like math and physics has increased, while computer science has remained a male-dominated pursuit*. Concerned parties endeavor to change the culture of computer science and encourage more women to consider that branch of study. While well-meaning, I wonder if these efforts might at times have the opposite effect of driving women away. I have heard young women in BYU's computer science program express exasperation over actually being too well received in their courses. They weren't able to just be another student, because they were constantly reminded of how rare a treat it was to have them there. It's nice to be wanted, but very few enjoy always being thrust into the limelight. In some ways, this treatment can even be insulting, as it tends to make one feel like a commodity. A valued commodity to be sure, but still, a commodity. Women are women, not a rare collector's item.

*http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16digi.html?_r=0