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Re: [ba-ohs-talk] Art, Culture Enable a Culture of Knowledge


Rod.    (01)

I can't very well fault you for omitting that tiny word "not" when looking back at my
own sloppy writing!    (02)

In re KM, I am digesting "A survey of the real-time economy" in The Economist of Feb. 2,
which you will find on the net at
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=949071    (03)

A worthwhile read, but maybe you Silican Valley guys already know all about that stuff.
It also puts things written about on on this forum in perspective. It keeps on hitting
me how truly personal computing (and with that lifelong education of the digitally
augmented kind) is treated by the industry as a whole as table scraps. Some decades ago,
we used to talk about "organization man"; before that of the "man in the grey flannel
suit." Now look at that picture of modern man in that Economist article. Pretty well
seems to sum up much of modern life: on and off the job.    (04)

There is a small, but, to me, significant  error in your page
http://www.welchco.com/sd/08/00101/02/00/11/05/140021.HTM
Not your fault, just a communication error between us. I did not take an advanced degree
in chemistry; just a bachelor's. I had  diplomas and some career in chemical technology
as control chemist, resp. control engineer in the pulp and paper indusry. Then went to
Pulp & Paper Magazine of Canada. At age 40 I decided to go back to school to prepare for
teaching. Received a BSc, then a teaching diploma and an M.Ed. Spare-time studies while
teaching at an inner-city college. (I was hired as a college professor two years before
I received my B.Sc.) These data may not be significant, except that it is my overall
upbringing as a child and "educational history" that made me interested in digital
augmentation as soon as I had my first 0.25-K pocket computer. I learned the importance
of environment on educational achievement. As a teenager I was a total failure (war;
irrational home environment), but later, when serving on a radio station in Indonesia, I
borrowed books from a local High School and it took me three months spare time to get my
High School diploma (had some physics and math under the belt, though, but no biology,
history, geography, English, and some other stuff). The environment was just so
stimulating. Same later, when I compressed a five-year program into two before migrating
to Canada. My personal experience was somewhat in conflict with the way I had to view my
role as a college teacher, something hard to understand by people who have grown up
through the system, which is just about everybody. One of the books I want to review for
Fleabyte is Stephen Ceci's "On Intelligence: A Bioecological Treatise on Intellectual
Development" (Harvard U. Press). As far as I am concerned, he is dead-on.    (05)

It is from this background that Doug resonates with me. (Being of about the same age is
also a factor.) Right now, working on Fleabyte is often quite discouraging - little
stimulation from environment - but I sort of feel that the lessons life has taught me
would go to naught if I don't give it a try. Who else is going to perceive its
significance unless I demonstrate it instead of just talk about it.    (06)

Henry    (07)


Rod Welch wrote:    (08)

> Henry,
>
> Thanks for drawing attention to an error in my letter on 020209, which said that
> "...intelligence does guarantee success,"  since this was intended to say that
> "intelligence does not guarantee success," but merely increases the chances of
> success, since, as you know, variables that impact life exceed the capacity of
> any one faculty from guaranteeing anything, under the general rule there are no
> guarantees in human enterprise.
>
> I was a little surprised there is not more support from this venue to report, &c., &c.    (09)