Which Is More Important? Ownership Of Ideas... Or Community, Knowledge & Learning?

from the some-questions dept

My wonderful sister sent over the following quote on plagiarism vs. a community of knowledge and scholarship by famed literary critic F.O. Matthiessen, from his classic book, American Renaissance:

"During the course of this long volume I have undoubtedly plagiarized from many sources--to use the ugly term that did not bother Shakespeare's age. I doubt whether any criticism or cultural history has ever been written without such plagiary, which inevitably results from assimilating the contributions of your countless fellow-workers, past and present. The true function of scholarship as a society is not to stake out claims on which others must not trespass, but to provide a community of knowledge in which others may share."
-F.O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance 1941

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Will Always-On Gadgets Change The Way We Think About Knowledge?

from the hopefully dept

While Nick Carr is getting a lot of attention for his weakly supported conjecture that the internet is making people dumber, perhaps a much more interesting question is how technology is changing the way we think about knowledge and information. Carr's piece was sort of the modern equivalent of parents from a generation ago worrying about kids using calculators in school and forgetting how to do math. Of course, that didn't happen. It just allowed individuals to better use the tools at their disposal to do even more interesting and complicated mathematics.

The same thing appears to be happening with modern technologies as well. They're acting as an extension of what's available, and changing the way we think about knowledge and what's important to remember. That lets people "outsource" parts of what they used to need to remember to a backup brain (i.e., technology), and use their primary brain to work on more important things. This becomes even more interesting when you connect it to studies that have shown the real determinant of intelligence isn't necessarily how much you remember, but what your brain decides to forget. If we can train ourselves to ignore easily accessible data, and leave our brains to focus on more important tasks, then it's quite possible that technology can enable people to do much more complex thinking.

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