Knowledge media face an awkward chasm between theories.
The old theory was naive transmissionism: "I'll convey this knowledge by telling you about it." That's effectively books' learning model.
But we know that model's wrong: learning is an active process of assimilation.
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Books (and videos and lectures) sometimes work anyway, but because the learner's doing the heavy lifting—making connections, posing & answering questions, etc
In apprenticeships and great classrooms, the new theory (constructivism) operates: teachers foster active assimilation.
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But what's the equivalent of a "book" which was composed using an effective theory of how its reader will learn? We don't know.
It's a rock and a hard place: we know the old theory's wrong; we don't know how to make media which operate under our new theories.
Exciting times.
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I want to talk to you about this tomorrow! I find myself mostly in agreement, but I might add nuance with written media (tho not usually books specifically) around structure supporting nonlinear, exploratory learning; great papers do this (and other things) well, IMO.
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How do you feel about the 'stealing knowledge' paradigm of Japanese craftspeople?
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It’s what’s necessary given the media we have (and in contexts where knowledge is primarily tacit), but I feel we can produce media which convey its benefits to a larger % of people more rapidly and cheaply.
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Is that a future for AR/VR? Ability to create any environment, interact, start/stop, and use data to gauge learning progress.
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I don’t think the rendering modality is the high order bit. To believe that, I’d need a persuasive theory of why 2D dynamic platforms can‘t produce the media we desire, and I havent heard one.
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Lots of valuable ideas, but there's much missing before we can gel the pieces into a general medium for conveying and assimilating knowledge.
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Really well put! Quite excited about the future of this space and what you learn here!
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I wonder if it's possible to avoid the heavy lifting required in reading. It seems to result from seeking a means of re-expressing the new idea in terms of already known concepts. Then again, if that search could be made more efficient... discounting expensive, traditional means.
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Its ideas represent a valuable piece of the puzzle. Yet it's just a piece. If we take Logo to be a vessel for differential geometry: if one is interested in learning about that topic, how exactly should one use Logo to pursue it? Logo assumes an outside facilitator as context.
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