My presentation: "In the cloud, everything you think you know is wrong"

[GreyGeek]

Carr is an interesting writer, and a good weaver of words and ideas but, like you, I feel he is on the edge of being a Luddite. Here is a video of a speech he gave last year:
http://bcove.me/7j4zpzwz

"For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,”

Wired's Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski."

Carr's analogy says more about his use of the web than the web itself.

Personally, the web is a GIANT LIBRARY/THEATER/SOCIAL CLUB, available from my living room 24/7. I can go as deep as my knowledge and experience allow me to go on any topic in any discipline I choose. I am better informed about more things, people and events than any time in my life and my information is from all regions of the spectrum. No one filters it for me As long as there are no barriers to posting, and as long as greedy interests do not completely steal the public commons, I'll have more than enough adequate information from which to learn and/or form opinions. In the last ten years It has triggered me to read more published books (not e-books or pdfs, all though I read plenty of them) than at any time in my life. I rarely watch Hollywood movies any more, except when I take one of my grandsons. My media is from sites like PBS Novo online, the Discovery channel, and various other freely available educational channels on the Internet, like your presentation, an hour well spent.

My wife and I have not had cable TV for almost a decade, and we don't miss it.

My regrets are that the Internet and sites like Khan Academy were not available when I was in college and my brain had more neurons than it has now. When I say the Internet is my brain I mean it.

[capt-zero]

Pretty amazing presentation steve. Way over my head most of the time. Your discussions with GreyGeek concerning adaptability and your mention in a later post about the rate of change in technology and it's expotential increase makes one wonder if we aren't fast approaching the "technological singularity" Vinge speaks of.

However, before I get into a conversation about subjects which my ignorance of vastly exceeds my ability to say something useful about; I did want to say it's nice to be able to place a face, voice, gestures, ect. to someone whos' posts one follows avidly.

Thanx,
capt-zero

[SteveRiley]

Carr's analogy says more about his use of the web than the web itself.

Attention, Nick Carr: if you can't handle distraction, how about availing yourself of one of the many tools to block the annoying crap? With a simple browser bookmarklet (even works in Rekonq!), you can turn this...



...into this...

My regrets are that the Internet and sites like Khan Academy were not available when I was in college and my brain had more neurons than it has now. When I say the Internet is my brain I mean it.

Let the Internet do the heavy lifting of storing and remembering. That creates more space in my brain to fine-tune my ability to sort, discern, intuit, and synthesize. Sounds like evolutionary process to me.

[SteveRiley]

Pretty amazing presentation steve... I did want to say it's nice to be able to place a face, voice, gestures, ect. to someone whos' posts one follows avidly.

I'm honored. Thanks very much for your kind words.

[Qqmike]

SteveRiley: "Let the Internet do the heavy lifting of storing and remembering. That creates more space in my brain to fine-tune my ability to sort, discern, intuit, and synthesize. Sounds like evolutionary process to me."

Exactly so. I learned this when studying under the well-known mathematician Paul Halmos at Indiana University, 1972.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Halmos

He would tell us NOT to try too hard to memorize anything (in terms of facts, figures, and such). Use your brain for higher-level functions. If you can't remember some detail, look it up. (I've mentioned this at the forum before, but it fits in again here.)

[woodsmoke]

Re let the internet do the heavy lifting.

The first chemistry prof I had in college was one of those "gotta weed out the bad ones" kinda guys. First thing out of his mouth was that 60 percent of us would fail the class and last thing was to memorize COMPLETELY the periodic table through the M shell.

I walked out of the classroom to the head of the dept's office, told him what the guy said and said something like "The periodic table is on the wall for a reason, and that reason is to use it. And that the class should be about how to use the table and not memorize it." And asked if there was another professor who had that attitude and I would take his class.

BTW I did not have a chemistry class in high school, but at least had enough sense to know what the table was for,( I had learned about it by reading Gamow's 1, 2, 3 infinity,1961 re-edit (I think)).

The head of the department chuckled and said something like: "You think like me, take my class!"

I did and never looked back.

Same for the cloud. I still have a lot of stuff on cds etc. but am moving to the cloud but also saving "important" stuff to physical media.

That is what I was advocating to the college a few months ago when I had my melt down.

Aahhh welll....

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

.....
Exactly so. I learned this when studying under the well-known mathematician Paul Halmos at Indiana University, 1972.

He took only three years to obtain the degree, and was only 19 when he graduated. He then began a Ph.D. in philosophy, but after failing his masters' oral exams,^[1] shifted to mathematics, graduating in 1938.

Winners never quit and quitters never win.

mmmm... Qqmike .... grad school in 1972.... forty years ago. You must be in your mid to late 60s?

P.S. -- Helmos is a data point in my theory that really smart people have photographic memories.

[Qqmike]

GG, 63 here.

"Helmos (sic) is a data point in my theory that really smart people have photographic memories."

Interesting that you say that. On the first day of class, Halmos would take a Polaroid photo of the entire class (classes in his courses were small, under 20 students or so--he taught Real Analysis, Measure Theory, Set Theory, and such, at the 500-800 graduate levels), he had us tell him our name, he wrote our names down, and after that point he knew who we were by first and last name. That was his way of respecting each of us as people. A lot of profs of his distinction would never take a second to learn a student's name, not in grad school., and not until you proved yourself. But Halmos was different. He would joke that THAT was his way of having a photographic memory.

I can't recall that he had a photographic memory (it does ring a bell), but he was clear with us: Don't waste your time! Use your brain to think from scratch and extend the known boundaries. He was quite a philosopher, too, reflecting his early training in Philosophy grad school.

No textbook for the class. He gave us the theorems to prove on our own (on the honor system not to cheat by reading books) and present in class if he called your name: "Mr. Smith, would you please present your proof of [such and such theorem]?" You then might try (or confess you couldn't prove it). He would continue until someone in the class succeeded. One time he called my name on a real tough theorem. I was real proud of my very clever, two-line proof, so I got up, went to the board, and QED'd in three seconds (using a sexy application of the powerful fixed point theorem in Banach spaces). Halmos' response was "Very clever proof, Mr. Q. But it's too clever for me and for the rest of us. From your proof, I can't really see what's going on, and I'm sure your colleagues didn't learn much from it either. Thank you, please sit down now. Does anyone else have a proof of this theorem that I can understand?" He was impressed, but he let me know I had to come down to Earth and get back to basics. And he was right: I really didn't understand what was going on at the detail level, I only understood things at the abstract level of the function spaces involved. There ya go.

Naive Set Theory was one of his basic books, a very short, interesting, and powerful book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naive_S...ory_%28book%29
http://www.amazon.com/Naive-Theory-U.../dp/0387900926

[Qqmike]

GreyGeek, you know, now that you brought it up about Paul Halmos, I believe I am remembering something now (but need to do a bit more research): I don't think he had a photographic memory per se. I think that was his joke. He'd tell us he had a photographic memory, and then joke that he had thousands of photographs. He took them of everyone! I think that was a play on words for him. He was definitely real clear with us: Do NOT waste your power memorizing silly stuff, mundane details, things you can look up as you need to, to support your reasoning activity. Dr. Halmos was a real nice guy, likable, good sense of humor; he was, of course, eccentric but very approachable.

http://scidiv.bellevuecollege.edu/ma...mosQuotes.html
http://halmos.tumblr.com/
and, of course, his book, I Have a Photographic Memory:
http://www.amazon.com/Have-Photograp.../dp/0821819399

[GreyGeek]

My "theory" was based on my personal observations in grad school. All of the guys who consistently scored higher than I did in exams had photographic memories combined with a powerful intuition. They only had to look at or read something once and they understood it and could recall it, and could extend it into areas not covered in the text or sample problems. I had a photographic memory (of images) but I still had to pound the books to drive home principles, and do the problem sets. I could concentrate on a page and create an image of it in my mind that I could recall at will, later. It allowed me to "memorize" all the physical constants, numbers, etc... As far as theories I focused on learning to derive things from first principles instead of memorizing formulas. Unfortunately, I learned after the fact that I am part of that 10% who have a bad reaction to Aspartame. It destroyed my ability to take mental photographs and it destroyed my memory of physical constants, and more .... Now I am not sure about Avogadro's Constant, for example, unless I look it up, because I have no confidence in the order of the digits in the number. Once I look it up I can correctly recall it for a period of time, but after awhile it gets jumbled up again. Deriving formulas by integrating differential equations is problematic because I have to review the rules of integration just about every time I attempt to do that.

It's the same way with Linux. Things I used to know how to do and could recall instantly, I now have to consult Mr. Google to bring back to mind. Once I have the information before me I have usually have no problems doing what it is I want to do. As time progresses I find myself becoming more and more just a surfer.

[Qqmike]

I must say (admit) that I'm in the crowd that places very little value on having a photographic memory. It is certainly true that when one becomes interested in a subject and pursues it out of passion and a deep sense of meaning, and you become driven to master it, THEN--usually for most of us--you automatically start remembering the minute details of the subject-area you are working in ... at least for that period of time you are so obsessed with it (after which, you may start to get foggy on the details and facts and figures if you cease to work in the area for awhile).

GG, and this, which I meant to say something about but forgot this morning: "He took only three years to obtain the degree, and was only 19 when he graduated. He then began a Ph.D. in philosophy, but after failing his masters' oral exams,[1] shifted to mathematics, graduating in 1938."

That is well known, of course. Halmos himself was philosophical about it. My guess is he quit because the profs (in philosophy) were playing games with him. Not uncommon in grad schools to flunk everyone the first time around (dues paying, character building). One would think it to be the other way around! That is, you flunk math (the hard stuff) and then go to philosophy. Fact is, one can do a lot of mathematics at the philosophical level, philosophy of math, math logic, the set theory stuff, even category theory smells of it. Interesting how things turn out.

[GreyGeek]

.....Not uncommon in grad schools to flunk everyone the first time around (dues paying, character building)......

That was one thing that amazed me ....the amount of politics played at the graduate level of education. I had a couple blowouts with my major profs, but they hold all the cards, so one just goes back into the lab and fumes into the vent. However, the last blowout, and my anger, led to my serendipitous discovery of a solution to a step in the synthesis of a compound that had been evading them for several years.

[Feathers McGraw]

Steve, do you have a working link to that presentation? I think the video has been removed.

Came here searching for your firewall thread, but this looks like an interesting one too!

[woodsmoke]

To speak to the OP.

My previous lab assistant.... a brilliant young lady.... and I actually put all of the Biology inventory on a spreadsheet using my old Toshiba Lappy.... we did a virtual "item exchange" between campuses... to prove that one could, indeed, keep track of inventory "on the "google" net"..

I then showed it to the "head of the department"" and was informed that "the college" was going to purchase an "inventory system".....

"They" are AFRAID of "being held accountable"...if "something goes wrong"....and they are OLD WHITE GUYS....with "degrees" ...in "business management"....they are not paid to "think" ...they are paid to "cut costs"....

Welll the Physical Science Department....wherein I now teach...hired a ..."firebrand"....she....then hired.... A FORMER U.S. Navy "inventory control" person.... 27 years of age...

Upon our first meeting at a faculty conference...I mentioned what the lab assistant and I did....

THREE DAYS AGO.... I found out.... the new head of the department....a wonderful woman... told her... "take care of what you think needs to be taken care of (sic)..."

And in the space of two months this BRILLIANT young woman has put ALL OF THE INVENTORY...........into a "local" .xls spreadsheet.....

and then came to me....and asked me to....transfer to her.......through Google docs...the inventory that we did at our local campus....

THE POINT BEING.............

THE CLOUD CAN GO TO CRAP................ It is all stored "on the local machines" with EVERYBODY's annotated changes.....

if the cloud gets hacked...........so what!!! GEEZE LOUISE......

just compare what is on ALL ...of the "local machines..." to the "cloud".....and get on with business!!

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Steve, do you have a working link to that presentation? I think the video has been removed.

Yeah, I dunno why Esri took down the video. At one time I had a copy of the entire MP4 file, but now I can't find it. *grumble*. I gave the same talk at the Riverbed's annual SharkFest conference, and one of our bloggers wrote a summary of the material. I've done that talk many, many times, but can't seem to find a recording anywhere. Sigh.