Knowledge is Out, Focus is In, and People are Everywhere

David Dal­rym­ple thinks that in the net age, fil­ter­ing, not remem­ber­ing is the most impor­tant skill. In his response to Edge’s annual ques­tion for 2010, How is the Inter­net chang­ing the way you think?, he says that those who are able to resist the dis­trac­tions posed by a del­uge of unre­lated infor­ma­tion and focus on what is impor­tant are bet­ter equipped than those who are knowl­edge­able. “Knowl­edge was once an inter­nal prop­erty of a per­son, and focus on the task at hand could be imposed exter­nally, but with the Inter­net, knowl­edge can be sup­plied exter­nally, but focus must be forced inter­nally.” The idea that an exter­nal infor­ma­tion repos­i­tory can replace human mem­ory is inter­est­ing, but the dichotomy strikes me as a lit­tle extreme. We can’t turn off our mem­o­ries, and there is value in serendip­i­tous find­ings. Focus and dis­trac­tion work in con­cert in any under­tak­ing. We’ll just have to be more mind­ful of which one is lead­ing the quest for knowl­edge. via Idea of the Day