TITLE: Thinking and Doing in the Digital Age
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: May 02, 2011 3:52 PM
DESC:
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BODY:
Last week, someone I follow tweeted
this link
in order to share this passage:
You will be newbie forever. Get good at the beginner
mode, learning new programs, asking dumb questions,
making stupid mistakes, soliciting help, and helping
others with what you learn (the best way to learn
yourself).
That blog entry is about inexorable change of technology
in then modern world and how, if we want to succeed in
this world, we need a mindset that accommodates change.
We might even argue that we need a mindset that welcomes
or seeks out change. To me, this is one of the more
compelling reasons for us to broaden the common
definition of the liberal arts to include computing and
other digital forms of communication.
As much as I like the quoted passage, I liked a couple
of others as much or more. Consider:
Understanding how a technology works is not necessary to
use it well. We don't understand how biology works, but
we still use wood well.
As we introduce computing and other digital media to more
people, we need to balance teaching how to use new ideas
and techniques and teaching underlying implementations.
Some tools change how we work without us knowing how
they work, or needing to know. It's easy for
people like me to get so excited about, say, programming
that we exaggerate its importance. Not everyone needs to
program all the time.
Then again, consider this:
The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a
better one yourself, just as the proper response to a
stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with
a better idea.
In the digital world as in the physical world, we are
not limited by our tools. We can change how our tools
work, through configuration files and scripts. We can
make our own tools.
Finally, an aphorism that captures differences between
how today's youth think about technology and how people
my age often think (emphasis added):
Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really
be good for. To evaluate, don't think; try.
This has always been true of inventions. I doubt many
people appreciated just how different the world would be
after the creation of the automobile or the transistor.
But with digital tools, the cost of trying things out has
been driven so low, relative to the cost of trying things
in the physical world, that the cost is effectively zero.
In so many situations now, the net value of trying things
exceeds the net value of thinking.
I know that sounds strange, and I certainly don't mean to
say that we should all just stop thinking. That's the
sort of misinterpretation too many people made of the
tenets of extreme programming. But the simple fact is,
thinking too much means waiting too long. While you are
thinking -- waiting to start -- someone else is trying,
learning faster, and doing things that matter.
I love this quote from Elisabeth Hendrickson, who
reminded herself of the wisdom of "try; don't think"
when creating her latest product:
... empirical evidence trumps speculation. Every.
Single. Time.
The scientific method has been teaching us the value of
empiricism over pure thought for a long time. In the
digital world, the value is even more pronounced.
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