Academics, beware. We are about to be out of a job.
http://www.chronaca.com/
I don't know quite how to react to this -- on one level, it is somehow tragic. At the same time, I admire the iconoclasm of it, and while I think he's wrong-headed in his attempt to fix American education, at least he sees the problem and dedicated billions of hours to fix it, for what I doubt is very great remuneration. My favorite part is here: this section is designed to show the usefulness of the poster, but does the exact opposite.
I think that when I'm a teacher, I'll assign this as reading for the first week. Then I won't have to waste so much time teaching them that Christopher Columbus sailed to America at the same time as "cossacks first formed into bands in Ukraine."
I have no idea what that website is supposed to be depicting. Who (apart from people on research in Germany, obviously - and I mean that with the utmost of sympathy) has time to figure it all out? It's like the unmentionable Catan, but even more confusing. So, explain: why will we all soon be out of a job? Not enough bushels of wheat?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Simon here. I'm surely out of some loop that this claims to be critiquing. However, I will say that I'm awfully tired of hearing about how academics (both the people and the entities that represents) aren't "useful." This term is such sleight of hand: what really is useful? I mean, MATH doesn't put food into my mouth...
ReplyDeleteIt is the worst-designed website I have ever seen, but the gist is that the product is a poster with all academic knowledge IN THE WHOLE WORLD! Mostly I'm attracted to the Tower-of-Babel-esque pretensions.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the guy is claiming that academics aren't useful; he's claiming that they are extremely useful, but his definition of "academics" as "random facts on a massive poster with 1700 portraits" makes his claim self-defeating. This kind of puts the debate in relief: when people talk about how dumb everyone is, they say, you know, "Only 5% of Americans can name two oceans." But if they memorized this huge table they would do awesome on those tests but it would not mean anything. So the poster is like a thought experiment, except someone dedicated like ten years of their life to it.
I wasn't trying to critique anything. Essentially I just think it is a comical website. LIke this one: http://www.roberttoth.com/
Sure, he might say he's for academics. But isn't the whole pretension behind claiming you can fit knowledge onto one poster a bit like saying that knowledge is static? Will he print a new poster every time "we" discover something new?
ReplyDeleteWhat's more: this poster doesn't seem to consider what critical thought actually is. Old, dusty bits of knowledge. Silly scholars...anyone can do that.
http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/breadkills.html
ReplyDeleteApparently, it kills.
"During the American Revolution (1775-1783): Captain Cook discovered Hawaii; Mozart and Haydn flourished in Europe; Kant wrote The Critique of Pure Reason; and, Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations"
ReplyDeleteMy brain just exploded.