My friend works as a Kindergarten teacher, and from time to time she takes the young children to visit a local farm. There, the farmer asks the kids where their food comes from. For them, milk, honey or bread all come from the same place: “the supermarket”.

At first, you may think this anecdote is pretty funny, but it does give a certain insight into our disconnection from knowledge. After all, do you really know how your electricity is generated? Or where your water comes from, before it pours out of the tap?

On the one hand, this is good news. The fact that these issues are “solved” and we don’t really need to know everything anymore is freeing up time and space in our brains and allows us to focus on more important problems. In many regards, we are standing on the shoulders of giants. Specialization has made it possible for us and our labor to advance, so that today, only 2% of the population are farmers, compared to what was over 90% some 200 years ago.

The problem is that knowledge becomes so far removed from us, that at some point it might become very hard, if not impossible, to retrieve. Imagine for a second that all farmers suddenly vanished — how long would it take for the rest of us to pick up where they left off? And how long to be able to sustain the necessary supplies again? To give you an idea, just look at what happened when this guy tried to create a simple sandwich from scratch!

#utopia

While in the technologists’ utopian society, all necessities are provided by cheap / free labor (e.g. robots) we can take a peek into some very concrete examples and the changing mindsets of people living such a dream by watching the Arab cleric Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He points out how being able to simply buy everything through their incredible oil-riches has spoiled the attitude of many Arab people towards learning and working.

This knowledge disconnection gap gets bigger and bigger with the advent of even more modern technologies. 30 years ago, a soldering iron and a basic knowledge of electronics could spark your interest in building your own computer in your mom’s garage. In fact, the first wave of PCs was really designed for creators. Those inquisitive people became the driving force of the modern information age.

Today, your dad cannot simply pick up a wrench and fix your car anymore. It takes a mechanic and his laptop. So we are limited by the increasing complexity of things, our lack of understanding, and also by closed systems created by manufacturers. While their primary goal is to control the user experience, they also strive to create shorter lifecycles and teach consumers to throw old things away instead of repairing them. I highly recommend watching the adventure of Kevin Lynagh, who tried to build his own cellphone.

How can something we use everyday without questioning its provenance be so complex to understand for one individual? (Also see fairphone for a refreshing new take on a phone made out of LEGO-like building blocks).

What bothers me the most is that further down this road, almost all aspects of our life will limit us to our role as consumers instead of creators. We will inevitably become dependant on other people’s knowledge so that one day our children won’t even bother to think about tackling any problems themselves because “there is already an app for that”.

#simplicity

In fact — nowhere is this example more prominent than with Apple products. It would appear that one of the most successful companies in the world is built on the fact that we are all happy to sacrifice curiosity and flexibility for plain convenience. The inventor of the computer mouse himself, Doug Engelbart, believed that Apple’s approach was overly simple when he compared it to a tricycle: “You don’t need any special training to operate a tricycle, and that’s fine if you’re just going to go around the block,” he said. “But if you’re trying to go up a hill or go a long distance, you want a real bike. The kind with gears and brakes — the kind that takes time to learn how to steer and balance on.”

If you drive around using gears and brakes, you automatically start asking important questions like “how does that work?”. Those lead to understanding, knowledge and eventually improvement. But if your bike is “consumer only” and you are not allowed -or able- to look under the hood you won’t grasp what is actually happening. Over time the knowledge disconnection grows, and you lose interest, because you “don’t understand it anyway”.

The downfall of our society will eventually happen if the lack of available know-how has crossed a threshold where it is no longer possible to maintain the ever-increasing array of infrastructure, systems and dependencies. Due to our highly globalized supply chain, we are also prone to losing access to critical components (think processors, batteries, rare metals, etc.) that we aren’t capable of building or producing ourselves anymore.

#modernTimes

Legend has it that one of the worst setbacks in the history of mankind was the burning of the library of Alexandria. Luckily, the modern internet is much more resilient and accessible by design. It helps our society every second to close that knowledge gap while providing instant access to any type of information: From simple facts listed on wikipedia, to educational videos on how-stuff-works, to entire university courses and the latest scientific publications.

It also dramatically improved the broadness and quality of educational material. Most importantly, the internet democratised knowledge and learning. Once you are connected, you are no longer dependant on having a good teacher or a well-stacked library nearby. Using modern search engines and platforms, the most popular content automatically bubbles to the top — and you can also find even the most niche topics easily within seconds.

While it is not possible to put a number on this explosion in productivity, it also comes with a great danger: “why bother learning, if any fact can be instantly produced using any smartphone?”. Also, many people blindly accept the content of the top 10 search results as uncontested truth and definite best answers to given questions — despite the fact that such systems are far from perfect and easily susceptible to manipulation. But who is there to teach us how to deal with this?

Sadly, in my own personal experience, our school system does a poor job adapting to these changes. It is simply not built to digest the enormous amount of available knowledge or the blazing speed of technological advancement. Instead of helping students navigate the maze to find their passion, they are rushing everyone through a standardized body of knowledge. Everything is setup to consume and reproduce other people’s patterns and ideas. What would be needed instead are teachers who craft a guided experience of individual knowledge discovery.

As Elon Musk recently said: “I think most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying. One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”

#callingForAction

So if we want to save the human race from a knowledge disconnection downfall in the future, let’s make sure that we raise kids who are explorers and adventurers, not only consumers. Kids who are curious, who want to take things apart and understand how the world works. Who don’t accept the next best answer from any app, but want to get to the bottom of things. Let’s help them figure out early on what they are good at and encourage them to pursue their career paths in a practical way. Let’s build products that are not dumbed down or closed up, but open and accessible.

And since knowledge is constantly evolving, be a good sport: document your findings and revelations, or any obstacle you did manage to overcome. Even if it’s only how you got your old Apple Macbook to run Windows 10 :-)

_ Bastian

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