View source for Alan Kay at Marshall McLuhan Lecture (2003)

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<subtitle id='00:00:00'> [Applause]</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:08'>well first of all we welcome all of you to the Marshall McLuhan lecture this is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:15'>the first year that's held at new school University we're very enthusiastic about it being held here our Media Studies</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:21'>program was started in 1975 who was</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:25'>inspired by Marshall McLuhan and his</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:29'>teachings and his writings it is quite appropriate that this university that's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:33'>tried at its best to provide a forum for visionary thinkers to be a home for this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:39'>lecture series and to welcome Alan Kay who is one of the station's most</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:44'>preeminent visionaries to speak to all of us this evening my task is now completed which was to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:50'>welcome you here in the first place and now to do my second mission which is to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:55'>say that it is a pleasure to be co-hosting this event with the Canadian</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:00:59'>consul general who I will now welcome this podium please welcome Consul</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:04'>General Michael Phillips [Applause]</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:12'>it's my turn to say how delighted we are to be collaborating with the new school</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:16'>and organizing this lecture now this is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:20'>the fourth year that this annual lecture is is being held but the end but it's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:25'>first time that's being held with the new school we're very grateful for the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:29'>enthusiastic involvement of the new school and also grateful that the new</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:33'>school has lent its and prestige to to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:38'>honoring Marshall McLuhan the McLuhan lecture is a cornerstone of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:43'>consulates yearly program called the upper north side get it to celebrate</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:50'>Canadian achievement the lecture of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:54'>course is a yearly celebration of the intellectual heritage of our legendary</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:01:58'>Canadian media visionary our aim is to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:03'>draw on contemporary innovative thinkers from many disciplines to stimulate</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:08'>thought about how Marshall McLuhan's ideas continue to influence the global</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:13'>village his very his ideas are very much with us today of course the only the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:18'>other day I saw an article in The New York Times discussing the tribute and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:22'>light near the World Trade Center and it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:26'>referred to McLuhan's idea that light is a pure communication medium on behalf of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:33'>the consulate I want to thank dr. kay for agreeing to this lecture the first</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:37'>he's following in the footsteps of Tom Wolfe camille paglia</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:41'>and Jerry Brown and I also want to thank</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:45'>Terry McLuhan the daughter of Marshall McLuhan who's here tonight for her</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:50'>helpful support she brings insights as</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:02:55'>only a member of his family could thank you too</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:01'>[Applause]</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:05'>my my job is now finished now called dr.</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:09'>Wilder Thank You president Kerry and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:18'>council Phillips in a book by Michael</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:24'>Hiltzik called dealers of lightning which Alan Kay actually coins a title to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:29'>it about Xerox Palo Alto Research Center or Park as it's known in the trade the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:37'>chapter about Alan Kay is titled not your normal person more than anyone else</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:44'>at the core of the computer revolution Alan consistently dared to be different</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:48'>he dared to be ridiculed and eventually</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:52'>he dared to be great the day that he was interviewed it's reported for his job at</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:03:57'>Parc he was asked what do you think your greatest achievement will be at Parc</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:02'>it'll be the personal computer he replied what's that once at Parc perhaps Alan's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:11'>quirkiest habit of many but was carrying around this contraption about so yeah</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:16'>big that he called the Dynabook sometimes the mini-com or the kitty comm</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:21'>it went by different names but generally that's called the Dynabook and for anybody who would listen he would flip</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:25'>it open and say well here will be the flat panel display in the keyboard and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:29'>you'll have all your music and mail and films and everything right in here now</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:34'>people would smile indulgently but he</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:39'>never backed down from his vision and as we know the rest is history</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:43'>not only did Allan have the idea of the personal computer but moreover he had</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:48'>the idea of the interface that would make it usable for real people he and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:54'>his colleagues did a great deal of their research and still do with children</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:04:58'>knowing that while adults will put up with almost anything they have to look</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:03'>at windows for instance</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:08'>he wrote if the medium is the message</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:12'>then the message for children of low-bandwidth time-sharing is bla they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:17'>simply won't pay attention now I'm proud to say that at the age of about six my</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:23'>daughter in the early 1970s was one of Alan's pioneering kid researchers that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:28'>parkour every Saturday she would go over there where Park employees would gather</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:32'>it seemed like it was in a basement somewhere between mr. wizard and Mister</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:36'>Rogers in this setup and and and these kids would do mysterious things all</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:41'>morning so I called my daughter last night and said what were you doing I know it's a Saturday morning she said</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:47'>well it was before there were mice was sort of like it was before dinosaurs</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:51'>when dinosaurs ruled the earth so we had big turtles on the floor and we could</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:05:56'>use the computer to make them move around and draw things so I guess instead of mice you know turtles we now</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:01'>have mice so I guess I'd rather have turtles but in any case as you can read</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:08'>in your program subsequently after the dazzling years at Parc Allan went on to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:13'>become chief scientist at Atari a fellow at Apple Computer of VP of research and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:19'>development at Disney and he's currently president of viewpoints Research</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:24'>Institute still working on the cutting edge still working with children</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:30'>he's garnered many many awards and and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:34'>memberships and all the rest Academy kinds of memberships but one thing you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:39'>may not know about is and he's one of the most professional amateur pipe</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:43'>Organists you will ever you will ever meet Alan has spent his life promoting</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:49'>the notion that the computer is a means and not an end</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:53'>quoted in Hill six book he said he told</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:06:57'>me today there was a better book about this but people get trapped into</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:07:01'>thinking that anything in the environment is to be taken as a given</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:07:05'>it's part of the way our nervous system works but it's dangerous to take it as a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:07:10'>given because then it controls you rather than the other way around</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:07:14'>that's McLuhan insight he wrote one of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:07:18'>the bigger ones of the 20th century and on that note it is my great pleasure</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:07:22'>to present this year's Marshall McLuhan lecture dr. Alan Kay</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:07:28'>[Applause]</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:07:42'>thank you it's a real pleasure to be invited here and I brought a few toys</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:07:49'>along too to help with the talk but I'm</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:07:55'>reminded by this this lecture of a story</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:02'>that I that my old friend Neil postman told me Neil and his friend Charlie wine</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:09'>gardener actually followed McLuhan around when they were students and they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:15'>said McLuhan was a really dynamic lecturer but he never answered questions</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:22'>he was asked every time somebody had asked him a question he'd stop for a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:26'>second he'd say well how about this idea and somebody asked him a question about</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:32'>that and he'd stop for a second you say well how about this idea so Marshall</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:37'>McLuhan was a generator of ideas and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:41'>although I've never had the pleasure of being at one of his talks I presume that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:45'>they just started and he went through</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:49'>one idea after another probably on somewhat similar to Buckminster Fuller</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:54'>and then at some point the talk stopped</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:08:58'>and that was the end of that flow I of ideas for that for the evening now in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:04'>this talk tonight I actually made up a beginning middle and end but we may</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:10'>never get to the end and I think that's fine my talk actually starts with this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:18'>book how many people remember this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:22'>little paperback book here this is the one original one I had this is now</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:28'>yellowed and I was an undergraduate at</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:34'>the University of Colorado when I first tried to read this book and I actually</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:38'>couldn't understand it and it was my I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:43'>read many books every year understood most of them but I couldn't understand</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:48'>this book but I didn't think anything of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:52'>it because there's a wonderful saying that Leon Lederman the Nobel</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:09:56'>prize-winning physicist once gave an advice to readers of one of his books</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:01'>which is if you don't understand it don't worry just keep on reading and the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:07'>next time you see these ideas they'll be hauntingly familiar so my my majors in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:22'>college were mathematics and I had another one in molecular biology and the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:27'>year after I failed to read understanding media this wonderful book</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:32'>came out by Jim Watson the co-discoverer</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:36'>of the structure of DNA and it was mostly about tiny little bacteria that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:42'>exists in our gut ecoli and I was</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:46'>fascinated because I was working also working my way through school as a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:51'>systems programmer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research so I'd</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:55'>been programming for about four years by</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:10:59'>this time and molecular biology the gene</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:11:03'>was the first book that started really talking about the fundamentals of life</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:11:09'>as though there are a new kind of mechanism not the kind of mechanisms we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:11:15'>associate with meshing gears and clockwork and the normal mundane</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:11:20'>machines that we build but a new way of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:11:25'>propagating effects around complicated structures and I was fascinated to find</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:11:34'>out just what kinds of things are inside this tiny little bacterium and I knew</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:11:42'>that the cells in our body are about 2,000 times as large so we're a nee coli</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:11:49'>has about five million proteins cell in our body has about 60 billion proteins</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:11:55'>large molecules that do work and so in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:11:59'>any kind of computer terms even a single cell in our body was far</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:04'>beyond all of the computers that existed on earth back then and I also happen to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:11'>know that our thumb joints have about a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:15'>billion of these cells and in fact your</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:20'>thumb you'll never forget this now next</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:26'>time you look at your thumb you'll remember forever that it's about a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:30'>thousand cells wide so it's almost</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:34'>within the limit of being able to see those cells so it's about a thousand</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:39'>cells by 1,200 cells by about 800 cells hi and Jim Watson like all of us has</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:46'>about a hundred trillion of these cells in their body that has a lot of cells</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:52'>each one of them was 60 billion proteins and here's the most interesting thing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:12:58'>that the atoms in our body don't persist</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:13:06'>so even in our bones which we think of as being rather permanent all of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:13:12'>atoms in our body are recycled about once every seven years think about that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:13:17'>for a second the blood set the red blood cells we have are recycled about every</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:13:23'>hundred days large parts of our body</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:13:27'>mass are recycled every few weeks and so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:13:32'>if you look at it if you ask what is a human being from the standpoint of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:13:38'>molecular biology we're actually a pattern we actually move through space</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:13:44'>sucking up energy and matter</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:13:48'>reformulating that into us continuously and leaving less organized stuff behind</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:13:54'>us as we move through time and space and so we persist as well as we do for our</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:02'>seven or eight or nine decades on this planet because we're constantly</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:07'>rebuilding ourselves every second of every day</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:12'>what does this have to do with this talk</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:16'>well it it's a new kind of context and this talk is all about context so when I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:21'>went to graduate school the computers</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:26'>were enormous on the outside and tiny on the inside and programming was actually</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:32'>a lot like making a clock with gears so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:37'>the programs were small you could do precision work on small programs and you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:42'>could get them to run but what was happening at that very same time was a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:48'>kind of expansion that we're still in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:52'>the middle of today so the invention of computer graphics by heavens Sutherland</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:14:57'>the invention I think of personal</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:02'>computing even though I made up the term I always think of when I think of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:08'>personal computing I think of these two images here's Ivan sitting in front of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:12'>display screen doing interactive computer graphics in 1962 here's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:17'>Engelbart in the mid-60s actually doing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:21'>the kind of networked computing we wish we could do today</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:26'>and here's West Clark with one of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:30'>first computers that where the human was higher than it was in fact one of his</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:36'>design goals was if you put it on a table and you sat down to it your head</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:40'>would be higher than it so he didn't like to have the idea of computers</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:44'>looming over you and so these three images were kind of the proto images of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:49'>personal computing and right around then</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:15:54'>Gordon Moore's law which I think everybody has heard of in this room which is the prediction that all good</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:00'>things in silicon were going to double</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:04'>somewhere between every year and every two years and he made a thirty-year</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:09'>prediction and that prediction was quite accurate so the doubling period for the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:14'>last 30 or 35 years now has been about</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:19'>18 months and many other technologies that have doubled faster than that then</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:26'>finally the graduate school I went to as part of the ARPA Research community</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:31'>which was about 17 places some of them</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:35'>universities some of them companies that have been funded in the public domain by</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:40'>the Department of Defense to essentially invent computing and one of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:47'>inventions that had was in the wind and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:51'>was the ARPANET which is what we call the Internet today and so as a graduate</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:16:57'>student there one of the things that we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:02'>were told that we had to do besides work on our thesis was to figure out how we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:07'>could make a computer network that could have more than a billion nodes and yet</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:14'>never break and of course I started</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:18'>thinking of biological organisms because we don't have the same 300 or 400</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:25'>million nodes on the internet as we did ten years ago but the Internet has that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:29'>never stopped and so what's happened is the Internet is I believe the only</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:36'>artifact of humans that we know of in history that has</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:41'>replaced all of its atoms and all of its bits at least twice now since it first</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:46'>started working in 1969 and has never</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:50'>had to be stopped so this is a new kind</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:17:54'>of machine context the only the closest</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:00'>thing to it may be the record holder could be the United States of America</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:05'>which if you think of it as a system run</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:10'>by the Constitution as its operating system has had this wonderful property</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:16'>of being able to renew itself over and over again generation after generation</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:21'>and has never failed completely has had</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:25'>some disastrous chapters but is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:29'>basically held together and the system has prospered so all of these things got</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:35'>me thinking about computing and I came up with a an idea that today is called</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:41'>object-oriented programming in which</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:46'>every little software thing that you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:50'>make things out of is kind of like a biological cell and you can control the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:18:56'>cells the cells are computing in parallel you can map them onto a vast</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:19:03'>worldwide network or you can have millions of them inside of a single</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:19:07'>machine and with that we thought we could do some nifty things like make a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:19:12'>desktop computer and this is the first</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:19:19'>personal computer I made we we called it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:19:23'>a personal computer at uni and this is a picture of it on its own display so you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:19:28'>can sort of see what it looked like kind of modern for 1967 it had a tablet for</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:19:33'>drawing into and multiple windows and a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:19:37'>start of a graphical user interface and an object-oriented operating system</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:19:44'>and there was a pseudo semi professor at</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:19:52'>Utah his name was Bob Barton and he was</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:20:00'>there under duress he he was the world's greatest computer designer and was a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:20:07'>friend of the head of the department and he'd been talked out of out of industry</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:20:13'>basically to spend a couple of years as a professor at the University of Utah and he didn't really like graduate</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:20:18'>students he was a very mysterious character this is this isn't actually a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:20:25'>photograph of him I believe he's never been photographed so in order to depict</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:20:33'>him I I found somebody on the net that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:20:37'>that looked kind of like him and then blurred</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:20:46'>and he was really grumpy and the worst</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:20:52'>thing was he didn't he wouldn't talk to the graduate students so I really wanted</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:20:57'>to talk to him so I went and visited his</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:02'>home and talked to his wife and I got a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:07'>few things out of her but the main thing I found out was that he liked McLuhan and so I made my project the summer of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:14'>67 that by god I was going to read and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:20'>be able to talk to this guy about understanding media so this time I try</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:25'>to not quite a frontal attack I found the Gutenberg galaxy which may</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:31'>be Marshall McLuhan's greatest book many</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:35'>ways of thinking about it it's a fantastic book and through that I got a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:41'>much stronger idea of what McLuhan was talking about and that allowed me to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:46'>then reread understanding media and when I understood what McLuhan was talking</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:52'>about in understanding media just blew my mind um having read the book a couple</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:21:59'>of times since then I believe only half the things in it are true but if you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:05'>consider the area that Marshall McLuhan was working in a 500 batting average is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:11'>incredible because and so reading the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:15'>reading the book is an interesting challenge you have to read it in it in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:20'>the way every book should be read but really are which is to try and sift</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:25'>through every statement and try and understand whether you know the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:32'>hyperbole was tuned into something</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:36'>divine or was just a reverberation and I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:41'>believe that these books are the most among the most valuable books written in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:45'>the 20th century</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:50'>now here's a quote I really love and an</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:22:59'>interesting thing about this quote is I'm sure it was by McLuhan I think I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:03'>might have heard it from Neil postman it has various attributions people have</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:08'>used this quote quite a bit if you look on the web there are various</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:12'>attributions to it I have not been able to find this quote myself and any</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:16'>written work of Marshall McLuhan so if somebody knows where this quote is I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:21'>would really love to track it down but</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:27'>on the other hand you know this is like somebody once said if there weren't a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:31'>God we'd be forced to invent one and so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:35'>this is one of these quotes that if Marshall McLuhan didn't make it up so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:39'>what it's a perfect McLuhan type quote and it represents one of his main ideas</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:46'>which is that the context which is what's really important in our life is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:51'>essentially invisible we're the fish and this pink water that it's swimming</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:23:56'>around and isn't is something that the fish is not strongly aware of and once I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:01'>understood a bit about what McLuhan was saying it reminded me of a model of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:07'>creativity that Arthur Kessler had done in the act of creation also in the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:11'>mid-60s and I've colored it to make it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:15'>sink up with McLuhan idea so Kessler said yeah human thought is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:21'>kind of like a plane and with an ant</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:25'>wandering around on it and the ant can have the illusion that it's making</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:31'>progress that it's choosing goals and directions that it's solving problems</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:37'>getting around obstacles but in fact everything the ant does is pink but</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:44'>every once in a while and there might be a little blue outlaw idea but</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:52'>we've all been to school we've got parents we go to church we live in a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:24:59'>culture so there's a lot of mechanisms</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:04'>for doing this Chris flat in action as we'll see in a minute the kersplat is a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:09'>wonderful first order idea because most ideas are mediocre down to bad so you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:15'>absolutely want to have our kersplat and the reason that Chris flat has built</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:20'>into us and into our culture is because most of the 80,000 years humans have</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:25'>been around we have been a subsistence society and a subsistence society has to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:31'>be very careful about the experiments it makes so if you're living on the edge of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:37'>disaster finding out how your culture has learned how to live in this very</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:43'>chancy way of doing things and then committing to it wholeheartedly is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:47'>actually a very good first order strategy it turns out it's a terrible second order strategy and it's part of a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:54'>large collection of strategies in which the first order strategy and the second</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:25:59'>order strategy are both true but opposite but every once in a while when</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:26:09'>you're waking up in the morning or out for a jog or taking a shower instead of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:26:15'>raucous splat you get a Kirpal how many people here have had a Kirpal so just</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:26:22'>just to help you the technical term for a kerpow is holy shit</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:26:27'>and how many people have had her Kirpal</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:26:32'>okay seems to come from the heavens we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:26:38'>aren't aware of how we arrived at this Kirpal and in fact in the old days when</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:26:44'>people had your pals they went out and started religions on the basis of it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:26:50'>only sometimes was this a good idea because like all ideas their pals</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:26:56'>themselves are usually mediocre down to bad but they have this epiphany epifanov</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:06'>feeling attached to them that makes them seems so true so perfect so apt so much</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:13'>from God now today what we need to do</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:17'>with when we have ideas like this is to use some of the methods of science to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:21'>try and deal with this new insight and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:25'>Cussler had a very interesting side comment they point out that the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:30'>emotional reaction connection connected</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:34'>with the kur powers range from laughter to the ah-ha of science to the long</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:40'>drawn-out sigh of art and so because he</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:45'>pointed out that a joke is an example of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:50'>an act of creation where the purpose of the joke is to leave you lead you down</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:27:55'>the pink pathway and then suddenly reveal it's about something blue and you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:28:01'>have this emotional explosion in science the AHA is often accompanied by laughter</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:28:08'>and I wonder if anybody would be willing to I can barely see you out there but I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:28:14'>wonder if anybody has an idea about why scientists laugh when they make a discovery be so much more effective if</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:28:21'>somebody in the audience volunteered anybody just hi</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:28:32'>what's funny about it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:28:38'>yeah and it's I mean basically the ways scientists think about is the universe</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:28:42'>just because they had an insight doesn't mean the universe suddenly changed to be</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:28:46'>in accord with that insight and it was</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:28:56'>always there that's what's cool about it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:00'>so science is all about dealing with stuff that's right in front of our noses</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:04'>except we can't see it and this long drawn-out sigh about art Kessler pointed</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:12'>out was that one of the great functions of art specially high art is to remind</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:16'>us that there are other contexts because we basically pull into simple little</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:22'>goldfish bowls for efficiency and we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:26'>need something to constantly remind us that there's a lot more perspectives on</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:30'>ideas and then of course the last thing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:34'>is is that it really helps to have a lot of different kinds of knowledge because</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:39'>then that gives you a way of colliding contexts that are normally not thought</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:44'>to have any overlap at all and for the learning stuff that I've been interested</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:49'>in for so long the kicker for most modern knowledge most knowledge that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:29:55'>happened after 1600 generally requires</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:00'>an enormous amount of effort on the learner to understand it as indeed does</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:05'>McLuhan stuff because the greater the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:10'>invention the weirder the discovery the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:15'>more effort the learner has to make in order to escape from the air pink plane</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:20'>into the blue plane of the particular idea so I got one of these huge ones</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:28'>when I visited Seymour Papert</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:32'>he had been working with children he here's one of the first Turtles he had</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:37'>papper it was a mathematician who'd spent five years with Piaget in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:41'>Switzerland and he had come up with an</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:48'>incredible idea and we'll see how it's related</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:52'>in a second so he had a turtle that could roll around on the floor and he</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:30:56'>had one on the screen and so to get a child to write a little program to draw</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:03'>a circle with with the turtle seamer</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:08'>would have the child acted out with his body close his eyes move his body in a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:14'>circle and then ask the child what are you doing the child said I'm going a little and turning a little over and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:18'>over and if you type that into logo here</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:23'>forward five is going a little right five as turning a little repeat is over</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:28'>and over and if you say let's do that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:32'>then this turtle with its pen down draws</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:38'>us a perfect circle without now you may</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:42'>remember from school that you had to know something about x squared plus y</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:47'>squared equals R squared in order to do this and there's none of that here this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:51'>is something that a six-year-old can do and the reason is that Patrick knew</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:31:55'>mathematics and he was actually teaching children I was sitting there with</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:00'>watching this with my jaw dropped he was actually teaching children the what is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:05'>called the differential geometry of vectors which happens to be the language</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:10'>mathematical language that most of modern science is actually represented</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:14'>in and I thought this was the greatest thing I'd ever seen</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:19'>anybody use computers for because it could actually transcend all of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:25'>algebra that normally is in the way in learning ideas like calculus and bring</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:30'>it home to being a toy the children</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:35'>didn't even know they were learning mathematics they were just playing with this turtle so on the flight back to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:42'>Utah I started thinking man forget about</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:47'>that desktop machine we have to do a children's computer and this is what</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:52'>Carroll was referring to as I made this cardboard model when I get back back to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:32:56'>Utah about what this machine should look</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:01'>like and I knew this machine was possible because of Moore's law</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:05'>so the interesting thing about being a prophet back then is it was easy if you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:10'>just paid attention to physics and people who understood physics so Gordon</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:17'>Moore was a solid-state physicist and he</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:21'>backed up his Moore's Law assertion the problem was that most most people</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:26'>especially most business people did not understand his arguments and so they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:30'>were consistently wrong about computing for more than 30 years in fact still are</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:35'>but if you actually follow this stuff you could plot out in time exactly when</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:40'>you could build a machine like this they were already flat screen display so this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:44'>I don't think of this as much of a prediction but it was a great focuser of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:51'>romantic zeal because this is a very romantic thing the idea of children of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:33:56'>11 and 12 learning advanced physics by</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:00'>programming up their own space wargames so they could play but basically in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:06'>using this notion of being in a world where math actually was a language that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:13'>made sense to talk was something that just completely gripped my imagination</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:18'>or reminding me of musical instruments and so I thought of this Dynabook as an</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:23'>instrument whose music is ideas and then</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:27'>I realized that I might very well be dead by the time the computer has ever</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:32'>used this way because if you look at the history of printing you have manuscripts</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:37'>you have the printing press imitating the manuscripts as McLuhan pointed out</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:44'>you have the Aldous books about 50 years</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:48'>later cheap books that you could put in a saddlebag but the real printing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:34:54'>revolution trailed by more than a hundred years really started in the 17th</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:00'>century to produce what we call modern</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:04'>thought it's true there are important things deadly things life concerning</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:12'>things in the 16th century like the Reformation the Reformation was an</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:17'>attempt to and deal with problems that were of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:21'>great concern back here from the 17th century on the way reforms and so forth</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:29'>were looked at was in a completely different direction forward so I had</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:34'>this image of there being these big expensive mainframes the inevitability</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:40'>of the desktop computer and then this Elvis like notebook computer and that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:47'>all of us would be long gone by the time stodgy humanity got around to using the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:54'>computer for what was good for so we actually talked about how people were</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:35:58'>going to use this thing for imitating paper for decades now we didn't think</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:36:04'>they're gonna use it to imitate paper for three decades so there was no way we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:36:12'>could be as cynical as what has actually happened now let's talk for a second</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:36:19'>about what we were interested in and I want to relate this to McLuhan's ideas</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:36:25'>because in thinking about what was going</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:36:31'>on the key thing for me was that McLuhan</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:36:37'>said no matter what else you think you're paying attention to just try and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:36:42'>invert figure and ground and try and see if you can pit parcel out what the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:36:48'>actual context is that's invisible while</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:36:52'>you're being distracted by all these things around and so the part of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:36:57'>invisible context of the printing revolution was the regularity of it so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:05'>it actually the regular area of it actually changed the kind of argument that people thought they could write</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:09'>about and it changed the argument from being allegorical which could survive</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:16'>many different slips of monks pens and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:20'>even telling the monks telling the stories differently to something where</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:27'>the very galleys that you proved as an author where</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:31'>guaranteed to be replicated thousands and thousands of times so this changed everything about the way</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:38'>we argued and it took a long time for that change but the change was probably</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:42'>the biggest change in human history now what were we concerned about so looking</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:48'>ahead you have to ask questions about what is the invisible context that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:53'>computers could provide that could actually be beneficial from for</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:37:59'>humankind and you also have to ask questions about what is the invisible context they could provide that will be</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:05'>anything but beneficial for us so one of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:09'>the things that concerned a lot of us back then was how easily fooled humans</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:15'>had been over their entire history and especially to us in the 60s and the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:20'>early seventies we thought pathetically</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:24'>fooled and so we're very concerned about this notion of being fooled now my</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:31'>friend Betty Edwards have teaches drawing I think everybody is familiar</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:35'>with her drawing on the right side of the brain books and she has a wonderful</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:41'>thing she shows her class</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:45'>on the first day of drawing class she points out that the reason they're</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:51'>having trouble drawing is not because they can't move their arm they're having</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:38:56'>trouble drawing because they are too</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:00'>quickly perceiving something about the objects in front of them the perceptions</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:07'>of what they are and the labelings of them are so acute and so fast that they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:14'>never get a chance to actually look at them and so one of the many examples she</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:20'>shows in that first day is this one where she shows these two tables and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:24'>says so for example the size and the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:28'>shape of these two tabletops is exactly the same and her class says no that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:35'>can't be possible she does this with cardboard but since I have a computer</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:39'>here so I'll take that tabletop put it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:43'>right down there and then I'll rotate it and this is not</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:48'>a trick people have accused me of it but</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:52'>in fact all of the table tops in this drawing were made from a single table</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:39:58'>top shape I've shown this hundreds of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:03'>times it's one of my favorite examples and talks and I still can't see that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:07'>they're the same shape however if you're</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:13'>curious about this the slide is not gonna be on long enough but the way to decide that they are is you take a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:18'>pencil and do just what artists do to avoid being fooled put your arm out</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:23'>straight and measure and you'll see that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:28'>they're exactly the same so the Talmud says we see things not as</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:34'>they are but as we are and I'd really like to know what happened to the person</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:40'>who made that statement in the Talmud because if you take it to its logical</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:45'>conclusion it has some unsettling right</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:55'>so so here's the way science looks at</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:40:59'>the world this is a toughy and I'm gonna</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:06'>spend a little time at it because it's one of the most important insights in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:12'>human history as a it's very simple in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:16'>one sense but it's very subtle in another it has to do with admitting that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:23'>we have three pounds of oatmeal inside of our head rather than an exact</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:29'>duplicate of the entire universe so once</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:36'>you once you work and this is it this is a tough one because it seems like we do</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:41'>have something about the universe inside of our head but it's actually just a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:46'>representation so it's like something</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:50'>written down in a book and you can write down almost anything in a book and that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:54'>we're talking at lunch about this movie A Beautiful Mind which is a very bad</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:41:58'>movie about John Nash and a really bad movie about math but it's a pretty good</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:05'>movie about schizophrenia but they missed their chance to point out that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:10'>everybody all of us are everyday both</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:16'>awake and sleeping are dealing with hallucinations because that is how we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:21'>see the world the difference between us and a schizophrenic is how verifiable</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:28'>the hallucinations are and they're less verifiable when you're dreaming</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:33'>schizophrenia in part is doing things</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:37'>while you're awake that are quite reasonable and natural</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:42'>while you're while you're dreaming so and scientists have this problem too</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:47'>they also have three pounds of oatmeal inside their head and what they try and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:52'>do a couple of hours each day is to remember that so here's the way science</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:42:57'>thinks about out here in the world where</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:02'>we can't go is something</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:07'>some sort of phenomena and we don't know what it's part structure is we don't</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:11'>know anything they don't even know what their parts mean anything but what we do</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:16'>get to experience is some vastly reduced</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:27'>shadow of this phenomena and we can look</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:31'>at it more closely with specialized instruments like microscopes and telescopes so for example and then what</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:38'>we try and do is we try and make a model in our brains that casts the same kind</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:44'>of shadow and in science the criticize</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:49'>the criticizing of this model both</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:53'>intrinsically and compared to the shadow done by the real phenomena is what's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:43:57'>called knowledge so science is a relationship it's not knowledge itself</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:44:03'>it's a relationship between the difficulties we have or with</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:44:07'>representing things and what's out there</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:44:11'>in the in the world that we can't get to directly so it's a lot like making Maps so let's suppose this is gravity the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:44:17'>bunny out there is gravity and our hand</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:44:23'>puppet here is Newton's theory of gravity and it's pretty good we still</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:44:27'>use it for space shots we used it to land on the moon and a little over 100</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:44:33'>years ago they noticed that I'm the real bunny it had a round tail and when they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:44:38'>looked over here on newton's theory there's this arm sticking out</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:44:47'>see how funny science is and they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:44:56'>realized that was going to really be a difficult thing to get that arm out of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:03'>his hand puppet and so they floundered around for a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:07'>while finally Einstein came up with a completely different way of putting the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:12'>tail on the bunny but he knew that he</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:16'>wasn't finding the truth about the real bunny out there he was just putting a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:21'>tail on it so one of his beautiful short</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:25'>lines is you must learn to distinguish between what is true and what is real</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:31'>and this is as good as any anything anybody's ever said about this because</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:35'>what he meant is the stuff that can be true is stuff that we represent in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:40'>language so we can write things in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:45'>English that are true and we can write things in math that are true but they're</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:50'>only true because they're hermetically sealed they're only about themselves</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:54'>they're not about anything out there the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:45:58'>stuff that's real out there is a different category of things and he had a longer thing to say he said as far as</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:03'>the laws of mathematics refer to reality if they are not certain and as far as</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:08'>they are certain they do not refer to reality so the cool thing here is and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:16'>that I I think this is one of the coolest thing that's why science is one of the great art forms is by giving up</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:22'>all conceptions of truth the absolute notions of truth we find in the Bible</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:26'>and in Greek thought by giving up those</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:32'>ideals for instance science admitting it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:37'>really can't get at the truth can nonetheless look at a 12 year old with</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:42'>diabetes diagnosed it and actually create the molecules that this child</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:47'>needs to live so no other belief system on earth can do that and it does it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:53'>because it's trying for something else what it's trying</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:46:57'>or is a highly criticized abou map of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:02'>the best that we know of these shadows and that has worked out to be much much</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:08'>more powerful than protestations about</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:12'>ultimate and exact truths now a real</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:17'>character that how many people in this room have ever read anything by Alfred</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:22'>Korzybski count Alfred course--it well nobody knows</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:27'>whether he is really account if you know about Alfred course of skating so he's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:34'>his great book which is oh I'll match</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:38'>his if you want a book that's difficult to read I'll match science and sanity up</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:42'>against this any day of the week but</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:48'>this is a great statement he said one measure of sanity is how closely ones</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:52'>and journal representations of the world really resemble the world and by this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:47:57'>measure humans are at least quite unsane so this is a very useful word we are all</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:03'>unsane just like we are all hallucinating now here's a here's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:12'>another idea which is that math is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:17'>probably the most dangerous thing to get good at if you don't also get good at science if you remember Socrates is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:24'>complained about this office anybody</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:29'>here remember what that was so remember</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:34'>he's complained about the Sophists as the Sophists taught the youth of Athens</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:39'>to be able to win arguments regardless of whether they are true so this office</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:44'>are probably an early form of lawyer and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:50'>and in fact learning how to reason brilliantly in a hermetically sealed</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:54'>system like language is one of the most dangerous things we could ever get to do</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:48:58'>because we like to rationalize everything we do and the better we get</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:02'>at rationalization the more dangerous we are so math desperately needs science</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:08'>reasoning deficit desperately needs science which this reminder that we have to keep on</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:14'>checking out reality to see whether our brilliant inferences actually have any</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:21'>kind of currency in the in the real world math is useful though because it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:27'>is so precise that it gives you a way of thinking about things that are</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:31'>unthinkable in English for instance no scientist worries about whether a photon</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:35'>is a particle or a wave probably everybody here has seen discussions</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:40'>about the paradoxes of quantum mechanics but you have to realize that two</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:44'>scientists they aren't paradoxical at all because scientists think of them</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:48'>entirely in terms of mathematics and there's nothing paradoxical about the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:52'>mathematics I once heard Steven Weinberg trying to explain this to an audience</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:49:56'>and I'm not gonna go any further with it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:50:03'>anyway deep Zen so when you think about this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:50:09'>and you've gotten through understanding media all of a sudden the realization I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:50:18'>had anyway was gee Montessori is maybe the smartest people person I've ever</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:50:23'>heard of connected with education certainly in this century because her</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:50:30'>notion was that children are set up by nature to learn through play and what</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:50:39'>you if you want them to learn the 20th century through play then you have to give them 20th century environments and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:50:44'>this seemed like the best idea I'd ever heard and so she spent 20 years</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:50:48'>designing toys that were designed to be treated as toys by the children but that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:50:53'>she thought would have powerful cognitive side effects on their common</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:50:57'>sense and so we can ask the question is what should these thinker toys be in the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:03'>21st century but along with Montessori we have to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:08'>realize that the important thing for children to learn in their earliest</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:13'>years is not a stencil knowledge the way most schools try to teach them and try</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:18'>to test them the most important thing is for the kids to learn the uncommon sense</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:22'>the new epistemologies for the new ways of thinking that have appeared</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:27'>just in the last few hundred years this is what education is failing miserably on beyond miserably totally backwards</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:36'>from what's actually important and so you get thousands and millions of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:41'>stories of children who have been through years and years of school being</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:45'>taught facts and tested on the facts not having any kind of foundation to hang</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:50'>these ideas on so right around this time</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:51:56'>was when I first met Neil postman through one of his earliest books</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:00'>teaching as a subversive activity and he</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:05'>was one of the first people people to actually start proposing that teachers</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:12'>set up contexts and teachers not try and lecture and teachers not try and do this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:16'>and not try and do that but to actually</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:20'>change the internal foundations of the way students think by getting them to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:25'>think so it Xerox PARC looking at ideas</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:32'>for childhood development one of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:36'>things we looked at was PJs stages in which in early childhood a child makes</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:42'>things with their hands and learns by doing and then there's a visual stage</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:46'>where the child thinks there's more water in the tall thin glass and so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:50'>forth and then a symbolic stage which towards the end of PJ's life he wrote an</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:54'>essay for UNESCO where he he said in the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:52:58'>essay that he believed more than 90% of all Europeans never got to the stage</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:53:07'>someone that was wonderful and we got</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:53:13'>attracted to Gerry Bruner who had written this marvelous book called</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:53:18'>towards the theory of instruction and Bruner had retested some of the Piaget</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:53:26'>experiments and he discovered for example that he could get the child to change their mind on the water pouring</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:53:31'>experiment by just blocking the tall thin glass or taking it away and he</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:53:37'>could get the child to say yeah there's the same amount of water in the glass because where would</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:53:42'>it you know where were the extra water come from if he couldn't see the tall</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:53:46'>thin glass and he'd change over if he could see it and so Brynner had this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:53:51'>idea that oh there's actually multiple men multiple mentalities existing and at</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:53:56'>any given time and in any given stage of development you have many ways about</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:01'>thinking about the world that was you know why this was even controversial I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:05'>don't know but Gerry did the experiments</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:11'>and his personality was forceful enough to get people to start thinking about combining these mentalities so for</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:17'>example you can get a child who's theoretically in the visual thinking</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:22'>stage and by blocking their view like Patrick did when he wanted the kids to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:27'>make a circle with their body you can get them to revert to a kinesthetic way</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:33'>of thinking or even leap ahead to the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:37'>symbolic type thinking that children are not supposed to be able to do with that age so this to us was a very powerful</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:42'>model and we thought boy what we want to do is really combine these three ways of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:48'>communicating and we made up a slogan called doing with images make symbols</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:53'>that you're basically leading by grappling with things kinesthetically</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:54:59'>your understanding by configuration and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:05'>you're generalizing using using symbols</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:09'>so at Xerox PARC we use these ideas and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:17'>came up with a lot of the technology that used today some of it was quite an</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:23'>improvement on its successors because</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:27'>the commercial world actually didn't care about why many of these ideas were</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:32'>were done so the the overlapping window interface was designed for children to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:37'>learn in the space of a few minutes because we had some hard things we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:41'>wanted to teach them one of the supreme irony is that Microsoft Windows now</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:45'>requires training courses in order to learn</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:52'>now through these inventions from Adele Goldbergs and my point of view we just</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:55:57'>gone to a lot of work to make computers that we could actually take down to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:02'>schools to see what the kids are actually doing now here's one where I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:06'>think Marshall didn't go far enough he wasn't hyper Berlocq this is a great</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:10'>statement children are the messages we send to the future but not really they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:15'>are the future what does he mean by</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:19'>messages there's nobody there to listen to them except the children of today so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:25'>they actually are the future we're sending to the future and so we have to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:29'>be very very careful about the kind of environments that we put children in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:33'>because it's the environment the environments that are absorbed into this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:40'>context that we're not aware of so for example television is the worst thing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:46'>that ever happened to higher-level education and parents should treat it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:51'>like a box full of loaded guns or a liquor cabinet and simply not have it in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:56:56'>the house this is an almost impossible proposition to put before people today</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:02'>but because television is an incredible teacher but as Neil postman has pointed</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:07'>out it can't carry the discourse of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:11'>20th 21st century it can only carry the sum of its discourse and it's fantastic</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:17'>at that and it's so pervasive it has</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:21'>this way of creating an entirely new world in which people accommodate -</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:27'>without even realizing it we can use that as a strength and I want to give</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:35'>you a little sense of what this might be like so we've come into the present now</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:39'>let's take a look at how a child might</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:43'>play and learn advanced mathematics and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:47'>then maybe a little science so this will be the last part of this this talk here</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:51'>now when I use the word play when I'm giving talks in front of educators they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:57:56'>are very upset because they and most</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:01'>parents don't think education should be fun after all they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:08'>didn't enjoy it and look how successful</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:12'>they are but the thing you realize is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:18'>and Montessori realized this is that she knew artists and scientists and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:23'>mathematicians and every single one of these as an adult professional was</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:28'>having fun we still use the term playing music if you talk to a mathematician why</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:35'>do you do it it's fun it's playful so many of these things that are the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:40'>hardest and least successful at being taught in school are being taught</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:44'>because they're being taught as some sort of catechism of some new religion</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:48'>rather than being taught through play like Montessori wanted so let's take a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:52'>look here from the child's point of view now so from the child's point of view</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:58:57'>what we say is okay what would you like</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:02'>to do if you could do anything and we found one of the things that they like</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:07'>to do is they'd like to learn how to drive a car so we say okay dry yourself</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:12'>a little car that you'd like to learn</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:17'>how to drive and by the way once you do</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:22'>that as looked at from the top so right away this gets them into a different</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:27'>perspective than they ever had almost no children have ever looked at a car from</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:31'>the top so it takes them a while to think about what it might look like and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:36'>both boys and girls have the same interest in this they both want to learn</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:41'>how to drive and both boys and girls put on big off-road tires these day</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:50'>because remember the the why or why do children want to do things no child</subtitle>
<subtitle id='00:59:57'>eighty thousand years ago he wanted to learn advanced mathematics and we have</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:01'>the same genes as we did eighty thousand years ago as far as we can tell so so I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:06'>say okay that's that's good here's my little car it's been made from a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:11'>painting into a thing I can do things to this thing I can make it larger and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:15'>smaller so it's kind of a graphical object I can rotate it I can look inside</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:20'>of it and now we see an interesting contrast the child's world is the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:25'>hand-eye world over here and math many</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:31'>parts of math is best handled through symbols symbols are not the way what</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:36'>they like to think of this looks cold and forbidding over here this looks hot</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:40'>and interesting so our job in the true Montessori style is to keep them playing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:45'>and gradually let them see what the power of these guys are so you can think</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:51'>of this as being like a trip to math land if you take a child to France they're gonna be much more interested in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:00:56'>learning French than they are sitting out in the middle of Idaho somewhere</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:00'>right and as papri pointed out a long</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:04'>time ago that when a when a child doesn't do well in math the schools</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:09'>frequently say well this child is not math minded but if a child doesn't do</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:14'>well in French they can't say this child is not French minded and if there's any</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:20'>analogy between those then what the children need is a math land okay so the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:25'>first thing we do is get them to rename this so everything is has to do with</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:30'>this car that they have get them to look at a property here's one called heading</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:34'>I'll press down on this and the little number there is counting up and you can</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:39'>see the car turning and look look right over here while I turn the car by hand</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:46'>alright so this is the name of this property of where the car is heading and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:51'>I can influence it by changing these numbers here here's a little behavior</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:55'>car forward by five click on it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:01:59'>over and over again the car goes forward car turn by five still pretty dull but</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:05'>if you pull this out and drop it on the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:09'>desktop there it makes a little script for you car four by five car turn by</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:14'>five and let's just start it ticking now by clicking on the clock</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:18'>there and all of a sudden what have we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:22'>got well we've actually got a logo</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:26'>turtle with a pin on it and a costume on</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:37'>top of it so all of a sudden the child</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:41'>has made the first step into differential geometry here</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:50'>okay so I'll get rid of this but of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:54'>course the child wants to steer the car</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:02:58'>so turning this down to zero the car goes straight negative numbers makes it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:03:03'>go in the other direction but this is not very exciting</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:03:12'>real cars our lips come back here real cars are actually steered of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:03:16'>steering wheel so we say to the kids okay paint yourself a steering wheel</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:03:28'>and the steering wheel is the same kind of thing as a car so this is like old time Lego you can make anything out of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:03:33'>this stuff look inside it let's call it steer here</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:03:38'>and it's got a heading and what do you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:03:44'>think will happen if we pick up the name of its heading and drop it right into</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:03:49'>car turn by here well now we can steer</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:03:54'>the car and the kid has just learned about variables something by the way</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:03:59'>that most adults in America do not understand yet but here the variable is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:04:06'>actually doing work by standing in for all the numbers that are flowing out of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:04:11'>the steering wheel now it happens that the steering wheel is too sensitive so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:04:18'>it's hard to steer the car and the kid starts complaining after about 20</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:04:22'>seconds of joy and this gives us a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:04:26'>chance in the classroom to give the kids a little bit advice but let's suppose the kid is not in a classroom where the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:04:31'>teacher doesn't understand this or the parents don't understand that the kid is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:04:35'>home what is the child going to do the child needs to get some advice from</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:04:40'>somebody and the child can actually come over here and find a kid somewhere on</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:04:46'>the Internet might be 5,000 miles away in Germany like Tommy is here and ask</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:04:53'>Tommy some questions and I've got Tommy on this other computer here link through</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:01'>the internet and so Sam who's our main</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:06'>guy over there opens the chat to Tommy and says hi Tommy</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:12'>and over the Internet it goes and shows</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:17'>up on Tommy's machine so Tommy says hi</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:22'>Sam they dialogue mocking back and forth and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:28'>this actually has this actually has</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:34'>voice chat so they can talk back and forth while they're doing stuff and so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:39'>the complaint is what's how can I steer my car and Tommy says once you share</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:43'>your screen with me and so Sam says</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:47'>share down here and this allows Tommy over here to five thousand miles away</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:05:56'>look at Sam's screen notices something</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:00'>adults would like to do because adults work together with each others and if</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:05'>you notice both of the kids cursors are</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:09'>in here in both screens here so I'm not gonna be on Tommy's machine I'm gonna go</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:14'>over here on Sam here and say okay now look inside here</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:19'>once you try dividing that number coming out of the steering wheel by something</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:23'>like three and Sam comes over here and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:28'>says oh yeah that's much better</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:32'>and suddenly Sam for the first time in his ten-year-old life understands what</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:37'>divide is good for I think about this as</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:41'>a mathematician I view it as somewhere between obscene and a crime to not teach</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:46'>math with understanding because its greatest virtue is that it's completely</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:51'>understandable and so trying to teach a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:06:55'>concept that isn't pragmatically in the child's world there's a very ugly thing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:00'>that schools do and then finally it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:05'>would be nice if mcloon were here to see all this finally Tommy says okay let's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:11'>play and he just dumps his car onto the shared space 5,000 miles later it shows</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:21'>up on Sam's machine and because it was</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:25'>sent running it shows up running and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:30'>they can interact simultaneously this is always tricky for me because I have to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:34'>watch to Mission seems at once but and any number of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:40'>children can can do this so and the last</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:44'>thing of course is to go to full go to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:49'>full screen so I'm going to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:07:54'>now what I'm going to do here is I think</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:08:02'>now is a good time to make an ending and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:08:17'>I think what I'm yeah so I think what I think what I'll do here is just skip</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:08:21'>ahead a little bit so I put in a whole</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:08:27'>bunch of things that I of course wanted to show you but let's end with this so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:08:38'>here a bunch of little cars bouncing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:08:43'>around and you could do a lot of things with these cars you can pretend they're gas particles you can learn something</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:08:48'>about kinetic theory of heat let's suppose they're people in a village and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:08:54'>what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn all of them blue but leave one red</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:08:59'>infected one I'm going to let that in fact all the rest people always root for</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:09:10'>the last blue one</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:09:17'>hard to see what happened there so I'll get a little graph over time so you see</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:09:23'>not a lot started at the beginning there let's try it this with a different time</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:09:31'>constant and for the kids you can just change the kind of time concept by changing the little village that they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:09:37'>infect in so you see that had a very different thing I just changed it by a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:09:42'>factor of two and the infection here</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:09:46'>what worked like this now here's the interesting thing that aids has this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:09:51'>curve typhoid and cholera have this curve this is the human pee hole of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:02'>human common sense and imagination cannot see that AIDS is a problem the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:10'>time constant is too long it's outside of our ability to assume danger whereas</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:17'>we can easily see a typhoid or a cholera epidemic as something that needs drastic</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:22'>attention science is an imagination amplifier so a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:29'>lot of different ways of thinking about science and I don't think teaching</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:34'>children science in vocational training is a very good idea</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:38'>the reason to teach science is it's an imagination amplifier the best one we've</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:42'>ever come up with and it allows us to understand a disaster before it happens</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:48'>most of the world however doesn't have that imagination amplifier and so this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:54'>graph was nineteen mill this was nineteen million when I first took this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:10:59'>article out is now up to twenty more four million people who have died and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:11:03'>most of these people who have died have died unnecessarily because they and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:11:09'>their politicians could not see what aids was before it happened to them now</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:11:16'>five hundred years ago about a hundred</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:11:20'>years before the printing press a much more interesting situation</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:11:31'>happened where the bubonic plague came in from China through Venice and into</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:11:36'>Europe and all told about a quarter million of the world's population died</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:11:43'>but the interesting number here is that the hundred million people who died from</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:11:48'>bubonic plague is about the number of people who are going to die from AIDS</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:11:53'>because in many many cases if the best</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:11:57'>things that could be possibly done in the world today we're done still about a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:01'>hundred million total people would die now these pictures of bubonic plague</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:07'>were taken by a camera because plague is still with us but it's not dangerous in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:14'>this widespread non understood way</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:18'>here's an irony for people who like irony's as the causes where the same</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:24'>kind of causes that ignorant people have us been assigning for thousands of years</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:28'>it was Satan the Jews enemies pointing poisoning wells remedies herbs aromatic</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:34'>woods praying why I was praying a bad memory remedy because it got everybody</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:39'>together in churches where the fleas could jump from person to person more</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:43'>efficiently so now the point of this is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:47'>that five hundred years ago everybody in the world was in the same state with regard to dangerous things like this but</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:54'>today large parts of the world almost a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:12:59'>billion people in the world one-sixth of the world's population actually has</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:04'>defenses against this and understandings of it and the rest of the world doesn't</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:09'>so if we're looking ahead to what the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:13'>biggies are in the 21st century the population problem aids this shows how</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:19'>many people are infected now so on the order of 40 million people are infected</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:24'>as of two years ago</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:29'>if you ask a biologist what's the biggest health problem in the world he'll say drinkable water most people</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:34'>don't have it and more people die from bad water in the world and all of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:40'>wars that are going on right now and all</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:44'>of the disease education of women is the key to most of these if you're looking</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:50'>for a cause this is it and every single</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:54'>one of these things can only be changed</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:13:58'>by letting McLuhan be a presence to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:14:03'>remind us that it's not the things that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:14:07'>seem apparent to us that are the biggest problems it is the context that we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:14:12'>consistently overlook when we trying to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:14:17'>think about our problems so to invert our ways of looking at</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:14:21'>things and look at context is the greatest gift that McLuhan gave us Thank</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:14:25'>You Marshall and thanks all of you for coming</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:14:29'>[Applause]</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:14:59'>so questions yes</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:15:05'>yes this this program which does lots</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:15:10'>more is actually a 21st century version of the stuff we did at Xerox PARC</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:15:15'>and it's free we gave it away to the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:15:19'>world starting about starting a 96 and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:15:24'>there are two sites if you're a hacker go to squeak it's called squeak go to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:15:31'>squeaked org and if you're a parent or</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:15:35'>an educator go to squeak land dot org</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:15:39'>yes not many</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:15:51'>bill bill is enthusiastic but I don't</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:15:56'>think that essay has a lot worthwhile to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:00'>be said in it actually yes</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:11'>no I'm saying that the if you want to train the intellect you have to change</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:19'>the heuristics that we use for dealing with knowledge we don't completely</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:23'>understand so for example in after</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:27'>Sputnik there was a lot of interest as</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:31'>there is today and whether children are learning any modern knowledge so one of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:36'>the things they did after back then was to go to higher learning places like MIT</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:45'>and Harvard and they discovered that if they took students who got straight A's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:50'>in science and asked them science</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:54'>questions that they hadn't explicitly studied that their ability to answer</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:16:59'>them was roughly the same as it would have been 40,000 years ago so in other</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:17:05'>words they they were learning science in English but they were not learning any</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:17:12'>deep ideas about how to think about the world this is generally true this is one</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:17:19'>of the frightening things about the way we teach knowledge so the fact I have a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:17:27'>little video of it that shows</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:17:44'>Harvard look to graduate some simple</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:17:51'>questions in astronomy to test how a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:17:56'>lifetime of education affects our understanding of science we ask these</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:00'>recent graduates some simple questions in astronomy consider for example that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:04'>the causes of the seasons is a topic taught in every standard curriculum okay</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:08'>I think the seasons happens because as the earth travels around the Sun it gets</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:13'>nearer to the Sun which produces warmer weather and gets farther away which</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:18'>produces colder weather and thence and hence the seasons how hot it is or how</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:22'>cold it is in any given time of the year has to do with the the closeness of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:27'>earth to the Sun during the seasonal periods the earth goes around the Sun</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:31'>and and it gets hotter when we get closer to the Sun and it gets colder</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:36'>when we get further away from the Sun these graduates like many of us think of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:40'>the Earth's orbit as a highly exaggerated ellipse even though the Earth's orbit is very nearly circular</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:45'>with distance producing virtually no effect on the seasons we carry with us</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:51'>the strong incorrect belief that changing distance is responsible for the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:55'>seasons I took physics and planetary</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:18:59'>motion and relativity electromagnetism waves I've never really had a scientific</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:19:05'>background whatsoever and I and I got through school without having it I've gotten very far without having it I had</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:19:10'>quite a bit of science in high school yeah through physics want first year in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:19:16'>two years of chemistry regardless of their science education 21 of the 23</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:19:22'>randomly selected students faculty and alumni of Harvard University revealed</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:19:27'>misconceptions when asked to explain either the seasons or the phases of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:19:32'>Moon when it's further away from the Sun then it gets colder the earth</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:19:38'>position interferes with the reflection of the Sun against the moon so there's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:19:50'>quite a bit more of this so this is this</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:19:54'>is a part of a series called private universe you can type private a universe into</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:19:58'>Google and you can get these video tapes</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:02'>I think we can see that the real curriculum at Harvard must be confidence 101 because there's no way any of these</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:13'>kids adults we're going to admit that they didn't know or couldn't remember</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:18'>that it all been taught it I wanted one</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:22'>interesting omission that in NSF made is there's an obvious next question to ask</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:27'>anybody got a night what what question would you want to ask these kids is the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:31'>very next question yes exactly so so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:39'>what do you what he said is ask them about the southern hemisphere and that's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:43'>what I two weeks later I was giving a talk at UCLA and I found that the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:47'>audience was mostly seniors are going to be graduating and so I took about thirty</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:53'>of them outside and went through these two questions and I I did ask the second</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:20:59'>question which is to the ones you thought the proximity the proximity theory didn't have anything to do with</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:04'>what they thought about the Earth's orbit it was actually the common sense</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:08'>idea that as you get closer to a fire it gets hotter and as you get further away it gets so this is something it's almost</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:13'>built into people's nervous system but it's a common-sense way of solving the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:18'>problem and of course I asked them well tell me this do you know you know when</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:23'>it's summer up here in the northern hemisphere do you know what season it is in the southern hemisphere every single</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:28'>one of the UCLA students knew it was winter and I believe by simple induction</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:34'>that every one of the Harvard students knew it was winter I didn't know why</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:39'>obviously but people tend to remember that because</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:43'>it's odd and so they did remember that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:47'>and so every single one of these students that you saw here with</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:51'>confusion about how this works was also</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:21:55'>ignoring something that they had learned and knew and was unable to retrieve so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:00'>this problem was not a science problem at all the first problem was a kind of a math</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:05'>problem they couldn't retrieve contradictory knowledge even though it's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:09'>indexed using the same terms and use it in their own theory I said they tried to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:13'>bullshit their way through and so so the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:20'>key thing if you want to teach science if you actually study a scientist and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:28'>try and understand what makes a difference about what how the scientist</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:32'>does that scientists amongst a group of these Harvard kids probably didn't get</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:37'>any higher grades in physics because</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:42'>Harvard might not teach on real science but the difference between the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:47'>scientists and science type kid and the rest of the kids is the science type kid</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:51'>can answer all manner of questions in the way any scientist would answer</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:22:55'>including I don't know or I know how to find out or it's probably like this or</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:00'>there's a whole set of rhetoric that goes along with the person who's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:04'>thinking that way these kids are not thinking that way so so they fail and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:08'>basically that would even be okay with me except that the the deep ideas about</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:15'>how our country works are actually outside of the common sense of humanity</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:20'>right let's just take a simple idea that does not appear in any traditional</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:25'>society that we have ever known about on earth how about equal rights do you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:31'>think that's burned into our genes no way somebody had to invent that idea and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:35'>it's an idea that we try and learn and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:39'>teach and we're still not that good at it but it's an abstraction that's part</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:44'>of this artificial structure we call civilization if you think about it civilization is a bunch of hard-won</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:51'>inventions that go against normal human nature right let's not have</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:23:58'>war let's not have crime let's let's not do this let's not do that let's not</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:24:02'>discriminate let's let's be a different kind of person than people have been for</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:24:08'>the last hundred thousand years that is an incredible thing and in order to get</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:24:12'>it you have to get beyond normal common</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:24:16'>sense or else you know you're on tenterhooks it's like being thrust out</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:24:21'>on a pond on skates and not being able to skate yes yeah one of the earliest</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:24:32'>ones I had was an encounter with a vacuum cleaner when I was about I think</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:24:38'>10 or 11 my mother was truly wonderful</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:24:43'>about letting me take things apart and I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:24:48'>cannot remember why I took apart the vacuum cleaner but I did and what was in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:24:55'>there wasn't what I thought was in there and I remember struggling with I don't</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:25:06'>know what I said then because there's a vernacular of today that has worked its</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:25:10'>way into this story right so I didn't I didn't say this but basically what I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:25:15'>said was vacuums don't suck because all</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:25:22'>is in the all is in there as a fan and if you think about and the fan if you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:25:27'>look at the way the fan blades are set up they're bouncing air in one direction</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:25:33'>and not in another and the direction</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:25:39'>they're bouncing the air in is the exhaust of the thing where you have the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:25:43'>pressure coming out and so what the heck is hold your hand to the other end and I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:25:50'>suddenly realize there's if if there's no air molecules in there the only thing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:25:56'>you can be holding my hand there is air pressure from the outside</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:01'>and I went holy shit and somebody my thought was wow the the air molecules</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:06'>must be moving maybe as fast as a hundred miles an hour so when my father</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:11'>came home my father was a physiologist</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:15'>who and so I got him I said dad you know</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:19'>the the air molecules might be moving as fast as 100 miles an hour so so so we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:26'>went and got one of his college physics books and looked it up and we discovered</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:30'>that the every molecule in this room is traveling about 1,500 miles an hour and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:38'>so remember those scenes on movies when the somebody shoots the window out of a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:43'>plane everything gets sucked out they don't get sucked out they get blown out</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:47'>because think about it as soon as the air pressure is out of the plane no</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:51'>problem right so it's actually the air in the plane that is dangerous and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:26:57'>incredibly powerful and that absolutely blew my mom you know at 10 or 11 or so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:03'>just the realization that was exactly the opposite because vacuums by adults are always</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:09'>talked about as sucking and no way they</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:14'>don't and I think that was a that was a turning point for me when I suddenly the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:19'>world was totally upside down and then I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:23'>got used to it you know so I felt so by feeling about this new epistemology is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:28'>it's like when you go out in the ice and you can't skate so you're in worse shape</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:34'>than you were when you're on land this is why most people go back to land but</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:39'>the interesting thing about skating is if you get efficient at it it's incredibly more efficient than walking</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:44'>and running and that's what science has been so if you can get past that awful</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:48'>early stage it's like a violin is awful in the early stage and then it becomes</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:54'>one of the greatest musical amplifiers that we've ever come up with for musical</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:27:58'>impulse and so I think this is one of the dilemmas of model modern education</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:03'>is that there is a real hump that often</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:07'>has to do it because it's just at odds with everything that we believe in and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:11'>you somehow I have to get her get around that in one way or another and then once you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:15'>once you have gotten around a lot of other things become much easier so just</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:20'>a couple of those hits so that for instance the San Francisco Exploratorium</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:24'>was done by my friend Frank Oppenheimer who's the brother of Jay Robert Frank</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:29'>was a physicist and he got a lot of flak</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:33'>from the funders of the Exploratorium who would get they said we gave you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:37'>millions of dollars to make a science museum and you made a nosh pit because</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:41'>if you ever been there it's just 500 exhibits and 2,000 children bouncing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:45'>around trying things out and and Frank said to them to the funders he said you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:50'>don't understand said the first thing you have to get to in order to do</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:28:54'>science at all is to realize that the world is not as it seems and he said we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:00'>made 500 exhibits and each one teaches the world is not as it seems in its own</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:04'>way and what we want to do is collide the right kid with the right exhibit so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:09'>they'll have that hit the world is not as it seems and once they've had a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:13'>couple of those they might start including that as their part of their</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:18'>repertory of thinking about things then instead of just accepting things they might say well the world is not as it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:22'>seems let's maybe there's something behind the curtain so just the idea that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:27'>there is a curtain and that there's something behind it as one of the most</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:31'>people take things on face value and they're taught to take things on face</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:35'>value so for instance just the acceptance that you bring when you go to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:40'>a theatre beautiful looking people on</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:45'>the stage music great words is exactly</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:49'>the opposite of what you want to bring to it to a political rally but it's it's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:53'>held using exactly the same thing there's beautiful people on the stage</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:29:57'>beautiful words and you want to be in the exact opposite posture when you go</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:02'>to that political rally you want to be as mean and nasty and skeptical as you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:07'>can possibly be whereas in the theater you want to give yourself over to it so</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:11'>if you we're talking about schizophrenia before so another metaphor that's nicer</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:15'>than hallucination is that what we have in here is just a theater so we're</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:20'>always presenting the world back to ourselves as a theatrical production</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:24'>and that's the way the human mind works</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:28'>and not only are we easy to fool we like to be fooled we go to shows to be fooled</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:33'>and so politicians have easy time with us right so there's this thing of when</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:40'>are you gonna be fooled when you're not going to be fooled I think is one of the most important simple ways of talking</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:44'>about what I was talking tonight yes</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:30:56'>well there we don't want them to learn about context when they're 10 we want to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:02'>give them a different context when they're 10 they can learn about context</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:07'>later when they're in college and studying philosophy for young kids it's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:12'>not worth while explaining just what</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:16'>you're doing to them when you're creating an educational thing basically</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:20'>what you want to do is to have their</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:24'>assumptions and their heuristics you know their ways of dealing with things</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:28'>that they don't have strong knowledge about be different so when we watch you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:35'>know the way we assess children is to see how it because children are</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:41'>basically at that at this age they're doers they're not philosophy so what we</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:46'>do is to look to see how fluent they are just just as you would assess a child</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:53'>musician so when you assess the child musician you don't worry about whether</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:31:57'>they understand the theory of harmony because their brains aren't set up for</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:02'>really understanding the theory of harmony but what you can assess is where are they in musical expression and how</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:08'>do they think about music and you do it you don't ask them what they think</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:12'>because there's that great quote talking</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:16'>about music is like dancing about architecture</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:22'>so so basically some musicians can talk</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:27'>pretty deeply about music because they know what the words mean in English but</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:32'>you can't talk very deeply about music to somebody who hasn't had a lot of</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:37'>musical experiences because it's not clear what it's about same thing with</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:41'>the physics that I was mentioning that the the language of nature as Galileo</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:46'>pointed out as mathematics and so you just really can't talk about much</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:51'>science without getting to the math and seeing what is actually being claimed by</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:32:55'>science right so so for children our</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:00'>belief is you just and this is a belief that Montessori I think was one of the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:05'>first to articulate was yeah don't worry don't worry about it if you can if you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:10'>can change the children's common sense into the uncommon sense that represents</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:15'>these additions to thinking that the 21st 20th and 21st century have brought</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:20'>with them you've done your job you don't have to worry about that child ever</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:25'>again because they're going to be able to hang</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:29'>this odd knowledge on trees that are</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:33'>healthy see most scientists don't know even 1%</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:37'>of their field so making lists of what</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:42'>you should learn is it's complicated the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:46'>old theory of liberal education in the continent especially in England is if</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:51'>you take four incompatible things and go deep on them simultaneously with some</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:33:57'>mentoring you'll eventually get to the good stuff and it doesn't much matter which four things you pick because the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:03'>important thing is to get to the good stuff not not to worry about you know</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:07'>whether it's yeah</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:16'>well you don't because they just do it so the interesting thing it's like</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:21'>Berlitz in the sense that what you don't do is</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:25'>teach the children syntax and wait what you don't do is do this what they're</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:29'>doing is talking this mathematical language to their little creations and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:34'>so they don't even know they don't even think of it as a language or anything</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:38'>else but from their standpoint they're just making toys but in order to make</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:42'>the toys they actually have to think in this new way and we can tell pretty</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:48'>exactly how well they're thinking in this new way without ever bringing up the word math and without it because</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:54'>just it's just a new thing for the kids it's like like Pokemon you know it's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:34:59'>just a new thing that they do if they like to do it if the play is good if if</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:05'>they instead of going out to recess they like to stay in school during recess to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:10'>work on the stuff on their own if they want to take it home if they do projects</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:16'>on their own it actually brought quite a few of them to show tonight but I got bogged down in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:22'>the in the front part of the talk but basically you can tell right away</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:26'>whether the kids are doing real math or not and the whole point is the number</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:31'>one thing you want the kids to be doing is real math regardless of what the math</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:35'>is who cares when they're nine years old if they're doing real mathematical</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:40'>thinking that's what you want because that's the context that's what most kids</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:44'>never get to ever yes</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:53'>huh well-read you know first I don't</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:35:59'>know the answer to that but in my own life looking back on it was pretty</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:36:05'>interesting that I loved kindergarten and I loved graduate school and then</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:36:09'>there were 16 years in between that you</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:36:14'>know where I had to make time in order to learn because the learning official</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:36:20'>learning systems were not very good at it but the but I was incredibly</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:36:24'>fortunate as a child because I learned how to read fluently before I ever got</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:36:28'>to school and so I already knew they were lying to me in first grade and</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:36:33'>that's most kids don't have that advantage right yes you're hoping let's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:36:40'>do a couple more yes</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:37:38'>oh I don't think it had anything to do with what I invented I do understand</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:37:45'>McLuhan I'm not sure you do</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:37:53'>now I'm not using anybody here I'll tell</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:37:57'>you just to I'll tell you what I don't</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:38:01'>want to summarize summarize my own argument which is that the thing that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:38:06'>seemed important to me is that there are</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:38:11'>two parts of it to it one is that as a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:38:15'>as a person who was a scientist achill II trained in science and mathematics</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:38:22'>the there was a special thing that the computer could argue better than</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:38:29'>conventional media it led to a new way of arguing about things that led to a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:38:33'>new way of knowing about things and the we knew that the making it pervasive</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:38:38'>would set it up as an environment that</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:38:43'>could be learned pervasively and it could have these long-term effects that the printing press had so I think that's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:38:48'>just pure McLuhan ISM and that's what the aim is yes</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:39:05'>yeah that's what I've been saying all through the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:39:34'>good</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:40:25'>yeah well I think I think the the way I</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:40:30'>think about it as a TV doesn't exactly tell us how to think but it makes it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:40:34'>very hard to think about things that it doesn't tell us about so I think that's</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:40:40'>a little more gobbledygook II but I think a little bit more more accurate</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:40:44'>but I think I mean another way of looking at the medium is the message</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:40:48'>thing and was one I discarded for tonight was was this notion that in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:40:54'>order to actually when you have a radio</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:40:58'>in your car and you tuned it to some station the ability to actually get the</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:03'>message that's being sent there it requires the station to have a model</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:10'>requires your receiver to have a model of what the station is sending it has it</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:15'>has to synthesize the carrier wave in order to demodulate out the the music</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:24'>that you hear and that that was actually the first terms I thought of when I when</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:29'>I thought I understood understanding media because he was saying yeah the interesting thing here is not the music</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:34'>that's being sent on any particular occasion but what the radio set has to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:38'>be in order to get that thing at all in</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:42'>other words it has to become the very thing that carries the messages and he</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:49'>what he said about the about reading and writing was that the interesting thing</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:53'>is not the particular writing on any particular occasion but what it means to</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:41:57'>become a reader and a writer you become something qualitatively different than a</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:42:01'>member of an oral Society that's well</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:42:06'>maybe they have them okay good</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:42:20'>[Applause]</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:42:31'>[Applause]</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:42:36'>[Music]</subtitle>
<subtitle id='01:42:40'>no no it's perfect</subtitle>
<subtitle id='6203'>you </subtitle>