In a message dated 97-03-07 22:56:58 EST, launerb@crl.com (William H. Launer)
writes: "The current crop of publications are failing the younger generation
by fostering "instant gratification" and neglecting to explain the basics of
how something works. "Just plug these ic's into this prefabbed pcb
(available for $29.95), and it works immediately!"
Yep. That's the way it is: my sons both think that they should be able to buy
it at the local toy store and go home to enjoy hours of brainless fun pushing
through the imaginary skies of childhood toy models that were plastiformed in
China using slave labor. The older one is a little less hooked on this, but
it's still part of the game.
Why learn about it when all you have to do is plug it in. Damn glad that I
didn't have translation software or I'd be a monophone (as opposed to a
stereophone) and have missed out on a lot of interesting adventures between
the pages of books.
Second, most technical books available to youngster today present absolutely
no background on what this stuff went through to get to where we are today.
Thus no one learns about Marconi (or Phillips or that Russian guy who also
discovered radio by extending Hertz's experiments out over a bowl of borsht)
and thus no one learns how this stuff got to be what it is. And, naturally
enough, when the books leave out the history and go directly to the BSEE
degree physics of electromagnetic wave propagation, kids like my
nine-year-old shut the book and wait for the toy to appear on the shelf in
some WalMart continuum.
That's why I refuse to get rid of books. Some day someone will ask me a tech
question that demands a little history for its answer and I'll have the
resource material.
By the way, this "ahistorical" approach to learning has been a big part of
literary criticism over the past 15 years or so, so much so that I once
received a paper back from a prof with the note "why do we need to know all
this history?" scribbled on the back. Well, if you don't know the writer's
history, you can't know what the hell she or he is talking about. Garcia
Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude can only truly be appreciated when
the reader knows something about the author's life and how the story came to
be written. Without that, it's just words in a vacuum. So today it's now
becoming hip to go back and "re-discover" the history of a text. Even potato
chip bag ingredients lists as texts maybe. (Which brings up the new game in
psychology, called "narrative psych," where the person's life stories are
treated as text, as in "the self as a text within a historical frame." And
you don't wanna know how I got into that one, dudes.)
Just for a little history, see?
73
Nils
WB8IJN &c
-- and I discovered the other day while inventorying the accumlated parts for
the 7x11 Pearl that (a) the chase has been brazed back together and (b) one
of the roller arms is missing the entire hook, spring & channel on one side.
Bet there's a couple tumbles to the shop floor in this press' history. . . as
a text, of course. So it's off to Dave's Sterling Type Foundry to spend
money. Think I'll get another bucket of 10 pt Century Schoolbook while I'm at
it. The three cases I already have just ain't enough.
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