Welcome to the deep dive. You know, it's funny.
Whenever a new piece of technology lands in a
classroom, there is this almost immediate entirely
predictable panic. Oh, absolutely like clockwork.
Right. We hear all the time people complaining
that, you know, screens are rotting brains or
the calculators will just make everyone forget
how to do basic math. Yeah, the classic calculator
argument. Exactly. And we tend to assume this
anxiety is totally unique to our modern fast
paced era. But today, our mission is to explore
how changing information technologies disrupt
education and society. And why our current panic
over computers in schools is actually just the
latest chapter in a pattern that goes back, I
mean... It really is. We're looking at a cycle
of disruption that just repeats itself over and
over throughout human history. Yeah. And to help
us map that cycle today, we're drawing on a really
thought -provoking essay by Dr. Gary Ackerman.
It's from HackScience .Education, and it's titled
On Changing Information Technologies. Such a
good piece. It is. What the author does so effectively
is he pulls us out of the immediate arguments
we're constantly having, you know, about screen
time or app usage. Right, the day -to -day stuff.
Exactly. And he places those specific anxieties
into a much broader structural context. Well,
to kick things off, I want to tease a historical
irony that honestly completely refrains how we
look at educational tools. I love this part.
It's wild. One of history's most revered philosophers.
I mean, a thinker whose ideas literally form
the bedrock of Western civilization absolutely
despised the idea of students learning to read
and write. Yeah, it sounds totally counterintuitive
to modern ears, doesn't it? It really does. Because
we treat literacy as like the ultimate hallmark
of a civilized mind. But this resistance, it
perfectly captures the intense friction that
happens every single time the dominant tools
of learning begin to shift beneath our feet.
OK, let's unpack this. We need to travel all
the way back to ancient Greece to really grasp
that technological panic in education is not
some 21st century phenomenon. Not at all. So
in the essay, Ackerman brings up James Glyke's
2011 book, The Information, which details Plato's
incredibly harsh criticism of writing. I actually
have the quote right here. Oh, read it. It's
scathing. It is. Plato was commenting on teachers
who were starting to introduce writing to their
students. And he said, you have invented an elixir
not of memory, but of reminding. And you offer
your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true
wisdom. The appearance of Listem, I mean, that
is a stinging indictment of a skill that we now
consider just the absolute baseline of participating
in society. Right. It honestly reminds me of
someone today complaining that using a GPS on
your phone completely ruins your natural sense
of direction. Oh, that's a great comparison.
Like the argument goes that if you don't internalize
the route yourself, you aren't really navigating.
You're just blindly following a blue line on
a screen. Yeah, you're outsourcing the navigation.
Exactly. And Plato was basically applying that
exact same logic to the written word. He, um...
He saw writing as this external crutch, an outsourcing
of human cognition that would just make students
lazy. That GPS analogy captures the sentiment
perfectly. Because to understand why Plato felt
such a deep sense of loss, you really have to
look at the cognitive architecture he was trying
to protect. The oral culture, right? Exactly.
He lived in a largely oral culture. For centuries,
human memory was the primary technology for storing
and transmitting knowledge. Wow, memory as a
technology. That's a cool - way to phrase it.
Yeah, because Bards memorized massive epic poems
and philosophers debated through these highly
structured spoken dialogues. Memory wasn't just
a biological function. It was an actively cultivated,
highly revered technology. So when writing started
to gain traction, Plato viewed it as a literal
degradation of that innate human ability. He
genuinely feared that relying on scrolls and
text would cause our internal cognitive muscles
to atrophy. He thought it replaced the true internalization
of knowledge with just, like, mere reference
material. Yeah. You aren't learning the concepts.
You just know which scroll to check when you
need the answer. Which is a critique you hear
echoed in classrooms today about search engines,
isn't it? Oh, all the time. Just Google it. Right.
But the essay introduces a really powerful counter
perspective from the 17th century philosopher
Thomas Haas. Hobbes looked back at those proliterate
oral cultures. The exact environment Plato was
so fiercely defending and he saw a deeply flawed
system. Interesting. Why? Well, Hobbes argued
that without writing there was no rigorous method
to knowledge. He wrote that there was no planting
of knowledge by itself apart from weeds and common
plants of error and conjecture. Oh, wow. So Hobbes
is pointing out that human memory is actually
incredibly faulty. Highly faulty and subjective.
Yeah. Without a physical, immutable record, the
truth just gets overgrown with rumors and myths
and generational mistakes. Exactly. For Hobbes,
writing wasn't a degradation of the human mind
at all. It was a purification process for human
knowledge. That makes a lot of sense. It allowed
society to lock down facts, build upon them across
centuries, and just systematically weed out the
error and conjecture that's inherent in oral
storytelling. And, you know, Between Plato's
reverence for memory and Hobbes's reliance on
the record, text decisively won the war. Definitely.
The written word disrupted all the old patterns
of information use and completely redefined what
it meant to be an educated person. Plato lost
the war and society moved on to a completely
new baseline. Yeah. And that brings up a really
vital question for you, the listener, as you
go about your day today. Think about your own
habits. Yeah, seriously, think about it. Are
you currently relying on an elixir of reminding?
Maybe it's your digital calendar or the notes
app on your phone or, I don't know, an alert
you set to take a daily medication. Oh, my whole
life is in those alerts. Right. Plato would argue
those tools diminish your true wisdom and memory.
But you have to ask yourself if you could even
function in the modern economy without them.
I would be entirely lost without my calendar
alerts. My entire professional life relies on
that specific elixir of reminding. Same here.
Because society decided Plato was wrong, text
eventually became the undisputed king of information
storage. And it stayed king for a very, very
long time, which created this historically unprecedented
era of stability and learning. That stability
of the print era is crucial to examine. because
it explains why our current moment feels so chaotic
to so many people. Here's where it gets really
interesting. The author of the essay, Gary Ackerman,
shares a personal anecdote about his own grandfather
to illustrate this point. I love this story.
So illustrative. His grandfather graduated from
the University of Vermont in 1939. Ackerman himself
graduated from that exact same university 49
years later in 1988. Almost half a century. Right.
And they both study biology. Ackerman actually
has some of his grandfather's textbooks sitting
on his bookshelf right next to his own college
textbooks. Yeah. Now if we just look at the field
of biology between 1939 and 1988, the leaps in
knowledge are staggering. Oh, I mean, you're
looking at the discovery of the double helix
structure of DNA. The dawn of modern genetics,
massive leaps in cellular biology, entirely new
ecological paradigms. It's a different world.
A half century of explosive scientific advancement.
So the content of those two sets of textbooks
is vastly different. But Ackerman points out
that the actual literacy skills required to succeed
at the university remained identical. Yes. Both
men relied on reading printed text linearly from
top to bottom. Both shared the exact same habit
of writing notes in the margins of their physical
books to synthesize the information. Right. Despite
a 50 -year gap in entirely new scientific realities,
the mechanics of how a student interacted with
knowledge hadn't shifted an inch. What's fascinating
here is just how profound that structural stability
really was. For centuries following the invention
of the printing press, being educated simply
meant mastering text. Just reading and writing.
Yeah. If you could decode complex written language,
sit with a dense book for hours and articulate
your own thoughts on paper, you had the keys
to the kingdom. You were set. The underlying
scientific content evolved, sure, but the interface,
the book itself, remained a constant, predictable
variable. I think it is really important to highlight
this for you, the listener, because this highly
stable, textbook -driven environment is almost
certainly the one you grew up in. Oh, totally.
Highlighters, paperbacks, taking notes on a physical
pad while a teacher stood at the front of the
room. The universal standard. That was it. We
spent generations perfecting how to teach, learn,
and test within the medium of print. And because
the medium didn't change for hundreds of years,
we naturally started to mistake the tool for
the learning itself. Oh, that's a huge point.
We built our entire educational architecture
around the physical book. When you do that, reading
a textbook stops being seen as just one way to
access education, and it actually becomes synonymous
with education itself. Right. It is school. Exactly.
So when that foundational tool is suddenly swapped
out, it doesn't just feel like a new piece of
technology is entering the room. It feels like
the very concept of learning is under attack.
Ackerman's grandfather writing notes in the margins
is a perfect system when information is static.
But that exact same habit completely breaks down
when the text you're reading is connected to,
like a live updating global database. It doesn't
translate. No. So we need to explore why those
time -tested 1939 textbook skills are suddenly
starting to look obsolete. But let me play devil's
advocate for a second here. Go for it. Push back
on this with me. We're talking about reading
a screen versus reading paper. But isn't writing
a traditional research paper in 1988 a form of
manipulating information? I mean, I remember
pulling from physical encyclopedias, synthesizing
different chapters, taking my own notes and creating
something new. Why is doing that on a computer
fundamentally a different cognitive act? That
is the crux of the modern debate right there.
The difference lies in the architecture of the
information environment and really the sheer
scale of the cognitive load. OK, how so? Well,
we tend to think of digital media as just a new
wrapper for old content. We assume reading a
PDF on a tablet is like, you know, moving from
a hardback book to a paperback. Right, just a
different format. But Ackerman makes it clear
that digital technology challenges deeply held
beliefs about cognition itself. When you wrote
a research paper in 1988 using encyclopedias,
you were pulling from sources that were heavily
curated, vetted, and structured by publishers
and experts. They did a lot of the heavy lifting.
Exactly. You were navigating a pre -planned garden.
So the boundary of the information was already
set for me. I just had to walk the path the authors
laid out. Precisely. But digital information
is entirely dynamic and largely uncurated. The
new baseline skills required today go far beyond
just decoding text and synthesizing curated chapters.
It's way messier. So much messier. Students today
must be able to access vast databases of raw
information, manipulate that data to find hidden
patterns, create new media from those insights,
and then disseminate their findings across really
complex networks. They're no longer navigating
a pre -planned garden. They're being dropped
into a dense jungle with a machete and told to
find their own way out. Man, so it's the difference
between reading a printed road atlas where the
cartographer has already decided what the most
important highways are versus using an interactive
digital mapping software. That's a great way
to look at it. Because with the software, I have
to zoom in. overlay live traffic data, filter
out toll roads, cross -reference weather patterns,
and then instantly share my custom route with
five different people. And the cognitive load
there is entirely different. You aren't just
absorbing a static map anymore. You are curating,
filtering, and synthesizing multiple live data
streams in real time. It's exhausting just thinking
about it. Right. If we connect this to the bigger
picture, a student researching biology today
isn't just reading a chapter on genetics. They
are interacting with digital models of DNA that
they can literally spin around on their screen.
Yeah. They are cross -referencing real -time
global databases of genetic sequencing that update
every hour. They're assessing the credibility
of a source that might have been published like
three minutes ago by an unverified author. Oh,
the credibility part alone is a full -time job.
Exactly. And they are likely doing all of this
while collaborating on a shared document with
peers in another state. So if you take a linearly
trained brain, someone who expects information
to have a neat beginning, middle, and end, just
like Akram's grandfather's textbook, and you
put them in that dynamic digital environment,
they're just going to drown in the flood of information.
Yeah, completely drown. The old skills actively
work against you because you try to read the
internet from top to bottom. And you just can't
do that. Approaching a dynamic network with a
mindset leaves you vulnerable and overwhelmed.
It's not just about accessing information anymore,
it is about the capacity to rapidly manipulate
it. Without the ability to restructure and filter
data, a student is functionally unprepared for
the modern world. So what does this all mean?
It means a lot. Yeah if the very definition of
cognition and literacy is changing from passive
absorption to active manipulation, we have to
look at the stakes for society going forward.
And the essay argues that if you lack these digital
manipulation skills, you are functionally locked
out of participating in modern life. The stakes
are profoundly high across economic, political,
and social spheres. It touches everything. Let's
unpack how that lockout happened structurally.
Because it feels very similar to someone who
couldn't read in the 19th century. It's a perfect
parallel. Back then, If you were illiterate,
you were barred from the best jobs, you couldn't
read the newspaper to understand the political
landscape, and you were just at the mercy of
whatever information other people chose to tell
you. Ackerman is saying that in the 21st century,
a lack of digital manipulation skills is the
exact same kind of barrier. Applying for even
a basic entry -level job today often requires
navigating automated digital portals, filtering
through application tracking systems, and managing
online identities. Just to get an interview.
Right. But the political stakes are even more
severe. Understanding modern political discourse
requires the cognitive ability to filter out
deep fakes, recognize algorithmically generated
misinformation, and identify biased data sets.
Right. If I can only process information linearly.
How do I participate in a democracy when my social
media feed is hitting me with targeted political
ads and AI -generated articles? You can't. Not
effectively. If I approach a social media feed
the way Ackerman's grandfather approached a biology
textbook, I'm going to assume the information
is being curated for my educational benefit.
I'll just assume the publisher vetted it. And
that is exactly how a linearly trained brain
gets defeated by modern information systems.
Because the algorithm curating your feed is dynamic.
It adapts to your behavior. It's not a textbook.
No. It isn't optimizing for your education. It
is optimizing for your engagement, which often
means feeding you outrage or sensationalism.
If you consume that feed passively, the way you
would read a printed page, you are being manipulated
by the data instead of manipulating the data
yourself. Wow. Which brings us to the real urgency
of this deep dive. If students leave school knowing
only how to read a printed book and write an
essay on paper, we have fundamentally failed
to prepare them for the reality of their world.
We've prepared them beautifully for 1988, but
we have left them entirely defenseless against
the algorithms of today. The author stresses
that this isn't just an IT issue for schools
to figure out in the background, you know, like
deciding which brand of laptops to buy, this
raises an important question about the very purpose
of our educational institutions. Because this
shift from print to digital is still incomplete,
schools are caught in this messy transitional
middle ground. Ackerman argues they must actively
renegotiate their strategic goals to match changing
societal expectations. OK, but instead of using
corporate speak like renegotiating strategic
goals, what does that actually look like? on
a Tuesday morning in a modern classroom? Good
question. Because we aren't just swapping out
chalkboards for smart boards and calling it a
day, right? No, no. It looks like a fundamental
shift in how we assess a student's capability.
We have to move away from grading memorization
and linear recall. OK. In a renegotiated classroom,
a teacher might start grading the quality of
the questions a student asks a search engine.
Oh, that's fascinating. Right. Or we might assess
their ability to take a massive, messy data set
and curate it down to three actionable insights.
We could test how well they identify the hidden
biases in an AI -generated summary of a historical
event. So the skill isn't knowing the event,
it's critiquing the machine's summary of the
event. Exactly. The entire assessment model changes
from asking, what do you know, to asking... What
can you intelligently do with this endless flood
of data? It's a complete restructuring of value.
We're shifting from rewarding the storage of
information to rewarding the architectural management
of information. Beautifully put. And honestly,
that explains the intense public panic we see.
When parents or politicians get upset about screens
in schools, or they complain that kids don't
read classic novels the same way anymore, they're
feeling the friction of this massive societal
renegotiation. They're feeling the exact same
panic Plato felt. Yes. They recognize that the
elixir of learning is changing again, and they
are terrified that true wisdom is being lost
in all that digital noise. But just as writing
eventually expanded throughout society and redefined
what it meant to be educated, Digital manipulation
is doing the exact same thing right now. Yeah.
The institutions that cling solely to the 1939
model of literacy, hoping this is just a passing
phase, will simply cease to be relevant to the
lives of their students. It is a lot to process,
especially if you grew up firmly in the print
era. But looking at it through this historical
lens really takes the sting out of the modern
anxiety. Let's briefly recap the journey we just
took. Sounds good. We started in ancient Greece.
with Plato terrified that the written word would
destroy human memory and wisdom. We then jumped
to the incredible 50 -year span of textbook stability
in Vermont, where the scientific facts of biology
changed, but the act of reading remained perfectly
identical. The golden age of print. Exactly.
And finally, we arrived at our current moment,
this incomplete, messy transition into a world
of digital cognition, where the ability to actively
manipulate dynamic information is the new baseline
literacy for societal survival. It's a sweeping
historical arc, but it proves that technology
and education are always engaged in this complex
dance. Disruption of the status quo is the historical
norm, not the exception. Here is the big takeaway
I want you, the listener, to hold onto as you
navigate your own week. The next time you feel
completely overwhelmed by information overload
or you get frustrated by some new digital tool
you have to learn for your job, Or you just find
yourself worrying about how kids today are interacting
with their screens. Which happens to all of us.
Remember the historical context. You aren't just
dealing with an annoying software update or some
fleeting generational trend. Yeah. You are actively
living through a historical transition, every
bit as monumental as the invention of the alphabet
or the printing press. It's huge. It is supposed
to feel overwhelming. You're watching the very
definition of human literacy change in real time.
As we navigate this massive shift together, I
want to leave you with a final thought to mull
over. Let's hear it. If Plato lost the war against
writing, and if traditional printed textbooks
are currently losing the war to dynamic digital
manipulation, it makes you wonder about the horizon.
Digital tools are continuing to evolve so rapidly,
they're no longer just storing information for
us or even just helping us search it. Right,
with AI. Exactly. With the rise of artificial
intelligence, these tools are beginning to actively
process, synthesize, and generate insights for
us. So what deeply held sacred human skill will
the next generation view as completely unnecessary?
Wow. And more importantly, will they be right?
What a lingering question to end on. That is
definitely going to keep me up tonight just thinking
about what skills I am currently treating as
sacred. It's a lot to chew on. It really is.
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
dive. We'll catch you next time as we keep unpacking
the ideas that shape our world.