As We May Think

       The future of higher education is always at the limit of our approach, which in turn, is driven by the rapid evolution of information and technology. There is so much information being produced, rewritten, recorded, and digested today that it has become a challenge to effectively communicate this knowledge for tomorrow. To address this challenge, there are individuals that have their own approach to this. Claude Shannon believes that if all symbols could be universally interpreted, it would allow for information to be transmitted without misinterpretation. Michael Joyce’s idea is just the opposite where rich, detailed information will find itself repeating into different areas of knowledge such as math repeating in many fields of science. Vannevar Bush believes that a mixture of universal symbols and complex recordings of information will be the best approach for the future. Out of these approaches, I feel that Bush’s idea will be the way of higher education simply because you cannot have extremes work for everyone. What I mean by this is that Shannon and Joyce both contemplate on opposite sides of the spectrum, specifically the ends of the spectrum when it comes to simple and complex communication. Not all people will have the ability to grasp complex streams of information while, on the other hand, there will be those that are concerned with a lack of information since so much more could be accomplished with a higher frequency of information. As Bush notes: “There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.” 

       I have been told by numerous employers that higher education seems to suffer a two to three (or even more) year lag in information when comparing it to the professional world. What a person learns in their college career is of course extremely valuable, yet more often than not, may or may not apply to their career in terms of up-to-date. Naturally, this is subjective to their field but that is not my point. My point is that the future of higher education needs to address this lag in the best way possible while not sacrificing any part of learning information. Bush’s idea of using simple and complex approaches is what I would envision 20 years from now for higher education at least. Yet, I also believe that this avenue can work for essentially any professional, scientific, or academic setting to allow for quicker absorption and more specialization. Bush is very concerned with the amount of time information is written and information is not just read but digested.

A Nervous System for the Earth

As we can imagine, the discovery of electricity was as momentous as the invention of the wheel and electricity alone expanded, yet refined, protocol into a more technical term. In the opening pages in chapter 5, Gleick explains the creation of the telegraph and how the responsibilities for which are relatively low since, at least in this instance, the clerks in the Ferry House of Jersey city only managed one “end” of a pair of wires leading from Baltimore to Washington D.C. Around the same time, the Electric Telegraph Company installed an electric clock in their rented Founders’ Hall building, where they referred to its inner workings similar to the workings (or protocols) of the brain. The current definition of protocol is as follows: a protocol is a method for accomplishing something. In practice, protocols typically refer to a standard form of conduct or etiquette: or simply, a set of specific rules. The purpose of these rules is to ensure the effective communication between parties without conflict or misinterpretation.

Another historical example that embodies the definition of protocol is the railroad system, even though it was only briefly mentioned in the section on chapter 5.  Here we have a huge system that survived entirely on protocol because the logistics of the train system must adhere to strict rules of timing and communication or the system will crash, literally. Looking closer, the railroad system behaved fundamentally similar to how email works. You have information, or cargo, being sent to and from locations and each location must communicate based on time, language, and destination.

Gleick describes trials the Chappe brothers went through to establish the first instance of the telegraph, before it went electric. Their process of building towers, using line of sight, and synchronizing pendulum clocks all went into the process of creating the first telegraph. The way it would work was the towers had to be connected through sight and sound so that the “sender” and “receiver” would be able to document the timing on the pendulum clock of when the signal was sent and received. Even though this system eventually failed, it can be considered a form of protocol since there were rules to accomplish communication.