My friends tell me that computers should be used to let students learn
in their own style and at their own pace.
Maybe they're right, but frankly I'm not convinced. That kind of advice
goes counter to my personal experience, in that many of my worst
problems can be traced precisely to the fact that I did learn in my own
style rather than, say, in Einstein's style. To be perfectly honest, I
wouldn't recommend my learning style to anyone, let alone myself. And I
wouldn't recommend my learning pace to a turtle. So forgive me for being
subversive on this topic, but I can't deny my own history, even if it's
a history of info vertigo.
Info vertigo, of course, is the dizzy sensation you get when you have a
lot of numbers that won't add up. Or a lot of words that don't fit
together, like the words "digital information." I keep hearing people
talk about digital information, but I can't imagine what that means.
What in the world is digital information? "Information" is a word like
"surprise" (as the information theory folks would agree). How can people
glue the words "digital" and "information" together, as though the
resulting phrase means something? I'm feeling dizzy. The words don't add
up.
Maybe the reason they don't add up is that they don't mean much
individually. An engaging article by John Perry Barlow in the March 1994
issue of Wired insisted that information is a verb rather than a noun,
an interaction rather than a thing. And Mr. Barlow is right about that.
But then he goes on to expound on what information "is," as though it
were, yes, a thing with properties that allow you to say information is
this and information is that. And so pretty soon he's briskly describing
the "properties" of information, explaining, for example, that
"familiarity has more value than scarcity" and hinting that information
producers should take his word (as a Grateful Dead lyricist) that "the
best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away." Well,
that's a charming attitude and an inspired marketing strategy (in
appropriate situations, not to include national security secrets!), but
it is hardly a true general statement about the nature of all
information. As a matter of fact, the heart of the problem is that there
are no true general statements about the nature of information--which is
what always gives me this feeling of vertigo.
The word "information," like the word "good," makes sense only in
context. A good football game is not at all like a good bullfight
(unless you're a Dallas Cowboys fan). And the word "good" can mean such
different and opposite things as hard, soft, sweet, sour, salty, fast,
slow, etc., etc. I can't tell you whether fast is good or bad until you
tell me whether you're talking about a race car or a heartbeat. In a
similar way, the word "informative" can be used at different times to
praise a statement because it is precise, general, factual, evocative,
candid, colorful, outrageous, quantitative, profitable ("Put $10 to show
on Nevermore"), new ("You just crossed the border"), old ("A kiss is
still a kiss, a sigh is still a sigh"), and so on, in a very long list
of often incompatible characterizations. So now let's tack "digital" in
front of the word, and we have the phrase "digital information," and I'm
falling and spinning and feeling very ill.
A few weeks ago a young man was driving on I-75 north of Atlanta, and
the hood of his Geo Metro blew off (as he later told the police officer)
"for no reason." What a strange remark. For no reason! Did the young man
expect that the hood would have a reason for blowing off? When hoods
blow off, they're not trying to be reasonable; they're performing an act
of sheer will. If the young fellow can't see that, I fear he's a prime
candidate for info vertigo, because it's entirely unreasonable to expect
reason in ordinary life--just as it's unreasonable to expect information
to be describable in terms of a logic or a taxonomy.
Once you try to impose a taxonomy on information, you're behaving as
though information is something with fixed meaning, whereas in fact it
has multiple, inconsistent, and changing meanings. The sentence, "That
was a very informative presentation," has no more independent meaning
than the sentence, "That was a good play," has in describing a football
game. The words are essentially preconceptual grunts. The phrase "good
play" by itself gives not the slightest clue whether the play was a
pass, tackle, punt, etc. And the phrase "very informative" is, well, not
very informative.
One of the consequences of this state of affairs is that more
information will not necessarily (or even usually) yield better
decisions, more knowledge, or finer perceptions, any more than 1,000 TV
channels will create for us the utopian bliss unachievable by a mere 60
or so. The house of information is a house of mirrors, and its landlords
are Zeno, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Lewis Carroll. The word "information"
means whatever we say it means whenever we choose to give it a meaning.
Digital technology doesn't change the nature of information; it simply
changes the nature of information users (i.e., it changes our nervous
systems, as Marshall McLuhan liked to say). And it tends to contribute
to information vertigo, extending Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
from the behavior of subatomic particles to the behavior of
communications. By providing incredible powers of transmission, storage,
transformation, and analysis, digital technology leaves you with the
feeling that the more closely you've determined an information
particle's momentum, the less certainly you can determine what the hell
the information actually means.
When was the last time you ran across an eternal verity while scanning
the information particles from the New York Times or CNN? Do you, too,
have info vertigo? Or is it just me?
If you think I've got the wrong attitude about all of this, let me know.
However, please be patient with me. It may take me awhile to get back to
you, because I think in my own style and at my own pace. Especially when
I'm feeling so dizzy.
John Gehl is editor and publisher of Educom Review. [email protected]
Call 800-254-4770 for a subscription to Educom Review.