New Technology and Ignorance

What do they say: "One man's ceiling is another man's floor"? do not know where I'm going with that, just a thought.

 

Congratulations on joining life.

I can't for the life of me understand how people read the paper EVERY day, read several books a week both fiction and non-fiction - has for all their lives, and know almost nothing when I mention stuff. Ok - I'm talking about my 87yr old mother. Things like road rule changes (years ago) she didn't know about. Simple finance is totally obscure to her.

Totally unobservant. I mentioned on PriusChat a while back - I had owned a small Fiesta, silver, manual, diesel sedan for 4½ yrs which I took her to appointments etc in. I turned up in my new Prius - larger, white, auto, quiet, hatchback and she just got in. After 5, maybe 10 mins later she commented "I do like the white in your car, it looks fresh", totally not noticing that it was a new car, much quieter, no diesel clatter.

You gave 2 gender specific examples. But it's not a gender specific thing - one of my daughters is a whiz with mechanical and technical stuff. I only had to bring in a flat pack furniture item, and she had it assembled before I had the car unpacked - well almost. If I was missing a soldering iron or drill, I'd check her room first. Conversely, I know a few guys who I wouldn't trust with a screwdriver, let alone a drill, allen-key or welder.

 

Our society worships sports and entertainment personalities. Scientists and engineers who develop technological advances that improve our lives... not so much.

After all, it's so much easier to shoot a basketball or run with a football than learn calculus, physics or chemistry. So why waste your time on something that you'll never use or need?

 

That's why the big push for STEM - We're at the edge of the abyss, only two ways to go...

 

I tell my students that "Engineers have an advantage over the rest of the population. We know how things work and they don't".

JeffD

 

And as they get older sport-stars run out of puff. I'm a pianist and pipe organist, and now I'm retired, I can spend as much time as I feel like still enjoying playing music. My friends who laughed at me when I was doing a diploma on piano way back and played football, basketball, did athletics etc - some are using walking sticks, or have endured knee, hip, etc replacements. Yes, there are a few elderly athletes, but not many. The number who now say "I wish I had kept up my piano lessons" is staggering.

 

Having hit my head on both, I try to be as forgiving of missteps in the dance between human understanding and technology as possible.

The distinction is I can be forgiving of ignorance, but once discovered I don't understand NOT trying to remedy the lack of understanding.

Maybe the difference being, someone who refuses to crack the cover of The Prius Owners Manual, despite the thickness of the tome, I enjoy learning as much about the vehicle I own as possible. In today's society, especially if you have access to a computer and the internet, there is no excuse for NOT knowing about anything you wish to gain knowledge on.

Learning about nearly anything now, is as simple as posing the question. The choice to purposely remain ignorant? Sometimes puzzling.

Some of this I suspect is generational. As younger generations are born into the reality and technology and expectations of their respective times. My 10 year old nephew, is totally comfortable using Computers, The Internet, Tablets, Cell Phones and a host of things that I have had to "learn" and adapt.
Having lived through corded phones, and when "Phone Books" were valuable and guarded commodities, I sometimes have to remind myself that access to knowledge is now a internet query away. This is less a symptom of ignorance, and more just a symptom of having lived through a lot of technological advancement and change. The difference between stepping into the ocean new...as it is..and having been in the ocean and trying to catch the next wave.

 

guilty as charged your honor.

 

Another thing I tell my students - "People say that you learn from your mistakes. I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others. Less pain; more learning"

JeffD

 

...don't get me started...

 

This term fascinates me. What are the key features of an 'electro-political problem'?

Is the gender problem you're thinking of simply that the reason for your being there could be misconstrued, or because of a way she reacts to information coming from a person of your gender?

I have a sister who will sometimes ask me about something, and then seem unexpectedly adversarial if I begin to go into it. Though she hasn't used the word, I read her reaction as if she feels I'm 'mansplaining'. The puzzling thing is, that's something I try pretty hard not to do—not that I never have lapses, but I grok the idea and try to be careful about it. The way I understand it, the classic form of mansplaining (as I took away from Rebecca Solnit's essay, anyway) is the man feeling so driven for some reason to 'explain' something that he's actually making it up, with bonus points when the person being mansplained to really is knowledgeable about it and can tell he's making it up!

Where it gets disorienting for me is where I seem to have been asked to go into something, and it falls within the set of things I know stuff about so I'm really not making it up, and the person who asked reacts as if I'm mansplaining anyway. Hard to know how to respond ... I-sort-of-get-what-your-reaction-is-about-but-I-don't-see-how-that's-what-I'm-doing is a bit perilous ....

-Chap

 

People have vastly different competencies. E.g., many of those technically incompetent people make me look very socially incompetent. And please, don't ever ask me to sing or play team sports.

 

I feel that literacy should include numeracy and basic understanding of physical/chemical/biological world. This appears to be a minority viewpoint.

At the same time, people can be highly successful and inspirational with very little such higher-order literacy. This seems impossible (pointless) to argue against. Simply means the human endeavor is a broad thing, which we already knew.

On the other hand, following successful and inspirational as if they were knowledgeable sources (where they are not) seems quite unwise.

Also, "standing on the shoulders of giants" is best appreciated as Newton snark. Even though he did not say it first.

 

the powers that be have been talking about improving science education in the country for a number of years now. i don't know what or if anything has changed, but my children received about the same education i did, 30 years later.
technology proficiency on the other hand, comes with the introduction of new products.they did get more computer training than i did, and are much more proficient at using and understanding them.
physics, chemistry and biology don't follow that same path. i have one who majored in them, and two who are as clueless as i am.

 

can't argue with any of that. in the 90's, my kids all had the availability of advanced courses, even to the point where you could skip sat's if you were proficient enough. unfortunately, every time there was a budget crisis, these courses were the first on the chopping block, because the requirements for slow/non learners were all written in law.