I was reminded elsewhere that "The poor pollute less because they have
no choice - it has nothing to do with their 'wisdom.' [There's] no way
around formal education and it would be best not to console ourselves
for the lack of it." I also recognize the contributions by Tom Abeles,
and Perry Morrison.
Groups that would recognize creativity, embrace it, and nurture it,
would be the ones to increase their intellectual capital and be winners
in a competitive field; mediocrity would be concealed for only so long,
because the 'market' is made up of people with needs. Adverts could make
someone try a product but the choice to stay with one would depend on
the product satisfaction, hence major coroprations are spending large
sums of money to learn about and avoid churning of customers. The
services of the 'e' world are to address needs, and those
products/services that addressed the needs best would be propagated.
Assuming that the needs are real, then product satisfaction cannot be
faked; no amount of product packaging would conceal real performance.
If the uneducated would copy some unsafe features of modernity, it would
be because the educated failed to inform and educate them, not because
they want to pollute.
Education is important. The uneducated are aware of this need, hence
parents, who may be uneducated, endeavour to send their children to
school. It depends on what the educated do with their enhanced
knowledge. In the current context, it is expected that the educated are
technology intelligence personnel, watching and informing those who
depend on their knowledge to make transitions from one technological
state to the next. In real situations, several governments in developing
nations have had PhD's, MBAs as "presidents" and legislators; most
communities now have PhDs and MBAs as "chiefs."
So far, much of the 'knowledge economy' activities in many countries
have been about adding an 'e' to every word, i.e., e-this, e-that,
creating Web pages, bringing tv and radio onto the Web, etc. This is
good except the contents have remained the same (which may not be so
good).
Perry's message about "in your face media" is real and deals with the
clash of cultures, as television programs are beamed from one
techno-cultural environment to a different one. We have to exchange
experiences but if a local community created a vacuum, others would fill
it up - because humans abhor vacuum. We were recently referred to an
article by James L. Morrison and Carol Twigg (1): "For the most part, ..
we are using information technology tools as a marginal enhancement of
the status quo. ... We are resistant to change and rarely look for
creative, innovative approaches to new opportunities. In the same way
that scientists try to 'save the theory' (Thomas Kuhn), we ... stick
fast to ... the ... method and look for old solutions to new problems."
Reference: 1) "The Pew Learning and Technology Program Initiative in
Using Technology to Enhance Education: An Interview with Carol Twigg."
The Technology Source, May/June 2001.
http://horizon.unc.edu/TS/default.asp?show=article&id=859
Regards,
John
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