One of the interesting things to me is what we do when a commodity switches from scarcity to abundance.
In particular, when I was a kid a big problem for me was information scarcity. I remember reading the cereal box over and over because it was the only thing to read at breakfast. I read everything in the newspaper because that's what I had. Library trips were a big deal.
Now, though, I have an elaborate series of tricks for managing information abundance. Inbox zero. Browser tab zero. Instapaper, Pinboard, Amazon wishlist, Netflix queue. And Leechblock, beloved Leechblock. I have two laptops, work and fun, and the main difference is that on the work one I can't access certain sorts of information.
What will be especially interesting to me is to see how kids who are growing up now end up handling this stuff. I expect they'll be much better than me at this.
I used to beg my parents to order me various forms of an encyclopaedia, I used to devour bookshelves. I remember reading every breakfast food box and piece of junkmail, just because it was something new.
I remember my mom telling me how shocked she was when I was like 6 or something - she didn't believe me that I read one of these young adult books in a day, and so I then rambled the entire story out, and she was proud of that for a while. I told my mom recently that I was watching an anime, and she was surprised and happy that "I watch TV again", because I've pretty much stopped watching TV for the past 10 years or so. The contrast of these worlds is stark.
I remember this stuff and I feel like I've become dumber, because I feel like I can't hold as much information. What is really happening, is I can't hold as much information as a computer can. But then there's some kind of process that seems to run on top of the memorization, that feels more like it's something I'd call a sense of self. Sometimes it is tiny iterations of a swift selection mechanic operating on information that has already been indexed, sorted, qualified, quantified, translated and weighted countless times, other times, it is a way of being intelligent that I don't ever think I could ever program. It is the kind of thing that makes the comparison of AI to actual intelligence laughable and ridiculous to even begin to pose the question.
To me, it's more about being able to find a real signal in a world that is constantly producing enough noise to consume us all.
I grew up with Microsoft Encarta, but still enjoyed encyclopedias and such. So I think these are compatible. Talking about kids in the next generation, I've always wondered about whether Kindle / iPad / etc. encourage discovery of books and information. Information is available if you seek it, but how about discovery? As a kid, I picked up many books because they were either lying around at home or caught my curiosity in the library. Same with music! Because I had some casettes and CDs at home, I picked them up and listened to them. But Kindle, etc. are not designed for this kind of accidental discovery or for igniting your curiosity to pick it up and see what it is. Again, if you seek information, it is available, but if the books or music want to seek you out, (pardon the floral language), Kindle / iPad / etc. are suboptimal.
"Accidental discovery" also comes with a price. Even at 99c kindle ebooks... it still adds up. Going to the library as a kid, I could pick out 5-10 books for a week or two at no cost.
1. Real world spatial discovery is easier than 'virtual' discovery. Exception is probably Wikipedia, but it is not as well curated as your typical public library. Probably easier to discover music through CDs in a rack (curated by parents' tastes) and books in a library (curated by librarians, etc.) or home (parents).
Is there an application for virtual reality here? It sounds a bit like science-fiction and funky, but perhaps an e-book library / bookstore where you pick books in VR. Or more realistically, perhaps book and music discovery game apps?
2. For discovery of books and music, algorithmic recommendation systems are not sufficient. You also need curation. IIRC, as a kid, I did not look at books simply because they are similar, but mostly because I just found them in the shelves, where they were because a librarian or teacher or parent had found it to be worthy.
In particular, when I was a kid a big problem for me was information scarcity. I remember reading the cereal box over and over because it was the only thing to read at breakfast. I read everything in the newspaper because that's what I had. Library trips were a big deal.
Now, though, I have an elaborate series of tricks for managing information abundance. Inbox zero. Browser tab zero. Instapaper, Pinboard, Amazon wishlist, Netflix queue. And Leechblock, beloved Leechblock. I have two laptops, work and fun, and the main difference is that on the work one I can't access certain sorts of information.
What will be especially interesting to me is to see how kids who are growing up now end up handling this stuff. I expect they'll be much better than me at this.