Quotes about knowledge:
“If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done” – Peter Ustinov
The message that is trying to be told is that, when an expert believes something to a certain extent, they hold to their opinion as if it were a fact. It is trying to say how an expert would hold that idea to be a fact even if it is not necessarily true. For instance, this particular quote is saying how an expert would decline there ever being the possibility of the world blowing up because he believes so strongly about the topic, even though it isn’t a fact. I feel like this quote really correlates with the topic we learned in TOK in the past month. We were watching a TED talk and they were talking about how you know that the data you receive from experts are accurate. Throughout this TED talk, the lady was talking about how we believe most everything experts say but a lot of the time it is not necessarily true. Later on in the TED talk the lady was talking about how experts are wrong more than we think and that even doctors misdiagnose their patients around more than several times a year. All and all this quote really makes me think about the topic of experts and what we can really trust from what they say. It makes my mind ponder over the idea that I have been told so many lies during my life time from experts telling us the wrong data. This quote has made me think of how I can’t just believe everything I hear from now on and that I should really look into the information I am being given. This quote makes me think of another quote I always hear which is “Don’t believe everything your told”. This quote goes along with the one I have picked above because its message is that you can’t everything you hear even if it was from an expert. One post that I have done earlier this year that correlates with this quote is my belief vs. Doubt post. The post pretty much says what I have just commented in the above paragraph. The link to the post is below.
https://evantheman.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/belief-vs-doubt/
Questions about Knowledge
Why and how has man attempted to collect and archive all of humanity’s knowledge and what does the future hold?
I believe man has attempted to collect and archive all of humanity’s knowledge because as humans, we want to learn about our past and document our lives. We want to keep humanity’s events in order and learn from its lessons. I believe that humans want to keep things that they cherish for long amounts of time so they can look back and cherish on it. We humans have kept all of humanity’s knowledge in a variety of different ways. We keep our archive in millions of books around the world that teach children and adults about human’s knowledge. A lot of our archive is stored on computer hard drives so we can keep them for long amounts of time. We also store our archive in wise old folks who tell their stories. As our human knowledge increases, so does our technology and as our technology increases, the more of humanities knowledge we can uncover. We also have the technology to digitally copy all of our human’s archive which is really helpful because we always will have a back up of our knowledge that we have acquired. Having stored all of this knowledge, we as humans learn more and more from each of the previous generations. This brings me to the question, what does the future hold? I believe that the future holds wonderful technology because as I said, we learn from each generations that passes. Our future holds a world in which we know more than ever before. This topic that I’m talking about can relate to when we studied about wolfram. Our technology has advanced so much from our previous knowledge that we can now go on the internet and solve various problems which will increase our knowledge. I believe our future holds a world fulfilled with amazing technology.
Readings in Diigo comments:
Knowledge:
It is not “not knowing” that is the problem. It is the lack of doing. .
Doing is a form of knowing.” (p.124)
Doing is a way of learning and acquiring the knowledge of a certain subject. Doing is the best way of learning because you can learn from your mistakes. I also believe that doing something gives you more than just information; it gives you many different skills as well. The quote is saying how not doing is why we lack knowledge but it is really because of the lack of interest in a certain topic. Us as humans are driven by what we love so we do what we love. Knowledge in the form of doing is the best way of learning in my eyes.
“The pursuit of knowledge is ongoing. Unlike most desires, this desire is insatiable.” pg. 15
This quote makes my mind ponder on how us as humans are driven by the pursuit of knowledge. For example a kid goes surfing because he wants to pursue his dream of gaining the knowledge of what it is like to go surfing. It makes me think about how much effort the human race has gone through. It makes my mind ponder on the fact that when we gain knowledge on a fact, we just want to go farther and investigate the topic to the fullest extent. This quote is saying how we go to our limits and try to pursue knowledge to get the feeling of satisfaction. My real question is “Will we ever be satisfied with our knowledge”? Everyone in our world is trying new things to try and satisfy themselves, so will we ever stop searching for more knowledge?
How the internet is changing what we know:
“Information is easy, knowledge is difficult.”
While beginning the reading, this quote really popped out at me making my mind flare up with thoughts. I want to say that i totally agree with this quote because information is just memory but knowledge is way more. When a teacher gives you a test on just information, all you have to do is use your memory even if you don’t understand it completely. Knowledge is something that you must understand because when you have knowledge in a field, you can apply your self in many different ways. Knowledge is gained from doing where as information is gained from listening or reading. All and all i totally agree with this quote!
“My worry is that the superabundance of information is devaluing knowledge.”
The first thing that i want to point out is that i do not agree with this quote. I know that there is a vast amount of information on the internet but i do not believe that devalues it. Everyone retains and understands information differently so i believe that how you retain the info is how valuable it is. Just because there is a vast amount of information doesn’t mean that our information is not as valuable. All information is valuable to some extent but its how you use it that really shows how valuable that information is.
Theme 1 about thinking:
Thinking:
While reading these articles and watching the videos I was thinking about how we think and the process we go through. I never really pondered on this thought but after watching these videos, my mind has exploded. The articles really made me think about how reliable we are on technology and how we are becoming more dependent on technology for thinking. For instance in the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” it talks about how our technology is beginning to store more information and our brains are beginning to retain less. It says how we are becoming reliable on Google to think for us and less on our minds. It says how the humans in our generations are slowly avoiding sitting down and reading but are starting to skim for fast information. I definitely agree with this article of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” to some extent but I also believe that technology increases our thinking to unbelievable levels. All the technology we have like smart phones can help you answer any question you have at any second which is amazing. Technology has increased our information bank by a vast amount. The article that can back up my opinion would be “Google Is Not Making You Stupid”. A brief summary of this article is that our technology is increasing our knowledge and thinking because we can learn so much through Google or the internet. It is pretty much saying that we can get any information at any given time because of Google and that is increasing our thinking. These articles have brought me to the questions, Is it bad that we are relying on Google for thinking? Is technology in the near future going to bring bad things because us as humans may forget the ways of thinking on our own? Is Google helping or destroying the human mind?
Out of all the videos I watched, “The Secret Powers of Time” animated video had the hugest impact on my opinion of thinking. This video had some amazing quotes that made my mind ponder. The video talks about how there are past oriented, present oriented, and future oriented people. Past oriented people are the people who think about past events that were good or the bad events. There are present oriented people who live in the moment and live for pleasure. Future oriented people who believe life doesn’t start till after death. These 3 different characteristics really show how the specific person will think. I found it really interesting when he said that present oriented people would live near the equator where the weather is warm and not likely to change. I like when he says schools “take present oriented little beasts and make them more future oriented” because future oriented kids are more likely to get a better job and follow the rules. Thinking is something that I never really thought about but after reading these articles and watched the videos, my brain has gained much information.
Encyclopedia:
While reading these articles and watching these videos, I was thinking about how much our encyclopedia has expanded from generations. I do believe that encyclopedias are extremely special and valuable because you can learn a lot about a certain topic at any given time. I believe encyclopedias make everyone’s life easier on the daily. One article that really made me think was the article about the encyclopedia of life. This article was extremely interesting to me and really made me ponder on this idea. Encyclopedias are useful because you can learn a large about of information from one topic. I also thought that the TED talk “Reinventing the encyclopedia game” was very interesting. This video was talking about how they have the idea of a game where you start with a random topic, read it and look for something that you didn’t know before and then research that topic. I learned many things as he typed random information on the online encyclopedia. This theme on encyclopedia really expanded my horizons relating to the topic of information. I found these videos and articles very interesting.
Libraries:
As I was watching libraries of the future by jisc, it really made me think about what our libraries are going to be like in the future or if we even will have libraries. A woman was talking in the video and said “Our libraries are increasing faster than ever and that in 10 years we may not even have libraries”. These lines really stood out to me because our technology is increasing so fast that our knowledge archive is being over flowed. I also found it interesting when they were interviewing random citizens and they were saying that they rarely get their information from paper but from a technological device. I find it hard to believe that this is true because I personally would rather read a book then read on a kindle or an electronic device. I personally like to hand write things because I believe it contains more meaning when you do so. This theme was very interesting and I really think that this information I learned will stick with me forever. I have learned a lot from these articles and videos and it really makes me think harder on the theme. I hope we still have libraries in 10 years but, we will have to see.
Here is my vlog url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eB_oaVkZjE
evantheman 
