Tomorrow Must Surely Come

Many years ago, (man, I'm getting old) I listened to the keynote address at a national conference. I think it was by the Vice President of Development of Microsoft, but like I said, it was many years ago. Anyway, in this address he gave this analogy:

50,000 years ago - man was a hunter/gatherer, living in family units and having very little communication outside of his realm.

5,000 year ago - man became agricultural, putting down roots leading to civil culture.

500 years ago - was the invention of the printing press, leading to the mass production of information that could be disseminated.

50 years ago - was the invention of the first computers.

5 years ago - was the invention of the internet. (I told you I am old, this was probably the mid 90s)

This analogy, which you may have heard before, demonstrates the trajectory of information dissemination that has taken place in the world. But I would like to update it a bit.

10 years ago (2000) - it was told that the average home computer was more powerful than the entire computer system that put a man on the moon.

And just the other day I was told that scientific computing experts are saying that the average laptop is more powerful that the average super-computer of just 5 years ago. And that this, has always been the case, every five years.

Now, with this said, I noticed a job "want ad" that said that the applicant needed 10 years of experience. 10 years. That was two super computers ago. What information was this person educated too? Is it still relevant today?

I am not disparaging this company for wanting a person with vast experience in their field. But on the other hand, how relevant is his or her education?

This is powerful stuff. With the exponential growth of information available and the speed at which you can get it, you just have to wonder what information needs to be taught in schools. Are schools being tailored to take this into account? I am sure they would say that they are, but are they really? And if they are being tailored to today's world, what about tomorrow's?

The power of computing, the power and relevancy of search engines, the ability to discern information from crap. Networks, the accessibility to receive and to give information, open source coding, cloud computing; where is it going? Digg, StumbleUpon, Disqus, Viadeo, Xing, Facebook, Ning, YouTube, bebo, buzznet, wiki, gala, Dopplr, Whirl...

And then the most important question is; what are you going to do to stay on top of and stay relevant in your profession in tomorrow's world?

The speed, by which a computer can become, does have limitations according to computer engineers. It has to do with a "Heisenberg" kind of thing. The way I understand it, computing speed is coming down to the number of electrons it requires to perform a function. Therefore, the goal is to get it down to one electron, traveling unrestricted, to its destination (literally, at the speed of light). The "Uncertainty Principle" problem then is you can know its location but not its speed or you can know its speed but not its location. This means when you get to these speeds, you cannot control the speed or the destination. Basically, it doesn't work.

But speed of computers is not really the issue. It is the amount of information available, both good and bad, that is so daunting. If a company is working on only half of the information available to them, it will be very difficult to keep up with their competitors. This is just as true for IBM, as for Procter & Gamble and as for Joe's Hardware store.

I have often said that colleges should require a class in logic for all incoming freshman. There seems to be a lot of illogical people out there. But now I might suggest a class designed to differentiate between true and false information, a way to distinguish between credible information and the crap. This has always been done by looking at the source. Unfortunately, I am not sure that is reliable any longer. There are far too many people making claims that seem to have hidden agendas.

I don't really have the answer to what or how this class would be designed. There are people much smarter than I that could focus on this, but I do perceive a problem developing in our society. Perhaps a "problem" is too strong of a word, but instead we are not taking advantage of our society's own developments.

What value is it to teach today's philosophy when tomorrow the world will change and make it obsolete? What value did we give our children when their college education is outdated before their loans are paid off?

Perhaps education needs to focus more on the philosophies within the world, throughout history, which has brought us to where we are today; and less time on the state of today's philosophy, alone. Perhaps this time would be better spent learning methods of gathering and assimilating new information.