Imagination and Knowledge

After my last post I decided I want to write another one this month, since I like to cool off and give any readers I might have a break when I go on tears about technology, law, and society.  I didn't have a good topic that I wanted to talk about, though, so I asked my wife what she thought I should write on.  She provided a one word prompt: imagination.  I decided to go with this, but having something so broad I needed to keep looking.  A few internet searches later I happened upon some Einstein quotes around, Imagination is more important than knowledge."  In that way I have I said to myself, "¿Is it?" and then I realized I had a topic for a post.

I think considering imagination and knowledge more important than one another is actually a little misguided.  They're different entities that have different purposes and bring differing benefits to a person or society.  It's like saying hammers are more important than saws or potatoes are more important than chairs.  And we can often get by with only one.  But, these are two forces that gain the greatest power when working together.

Knowledge is a foundation.   Knowledge tells us how the world and things in it work, how to do things, and how things are connected.  Imagination gives us the capability to see how these facts could be different, improved, or superseded.  But using imagination rarely can make a strong impact if we're without the knowledge to back this up.  Knowledge lets us reasonably examine the ways in which the things we imagine might play out, so that when we try to put those things we imagine into reality the chance that we're successful is higher.

My love for Star Trek was recently re-kindled by a collection of online reviews of works in the franchise and one thing that's been striking is that one of the most impressive things about the franchise was its ability to imagine the future in a very different yet very reasonable way.  Social issues such as race, ethnicity, and sex becoming less important to a team that works together.   Also, amazingly, the science of instantaneous point to point transportation, faster than light travel, and futuristic weaponry (though it was changed later, the original meaning of the term "phaser" was "photonic maser" which, while actually redundant since the microwaves a maser produces are made up of photons, points toward the laser which does indeed exist and could be weaponized).  Many of the high points of the series' are when this works to add believably and a feeling of reality to the impossible,and failures of the series often occur thanks to imagination being backed up by too little knowledge.

Choosing Style & Convenience Over Principles

Consider which of the following philosophies you agree with more:

A central authority will control every aspect possible.

or

As much as possible will be made available in its entirety for public inspection and involvement.

With that in mind consider this: are you more willing to use Apple or Linux computers?  I know, I know "It just works."  "I'm not a 'techie,' and don't want to have to deal with all that complicated stuff"  "The way the little book opens is just so cute."  I've heard it all before.  I recognize that Apple has abstracted more of the functions for the user and produced very powerful, stable, efficient (though you wouldn't know if from their pricing) technology solutions, but you're missing the point.  I don't want to talk about Apple per se.  I want to talk about the choices we make, especially in technology.

Our choice in technology tends to be surprisingly shallow when we consider the depth of the effect technology has on us.  We decide based on what looks nice, has the coolest features, or sometimes (usually if we're a little more informed) runs well and has the most processing power.  For something that is so rapidly changing the way we interact, work, and quite arguably think this seems like pretty arbitrary criteria.  Will it cause me to seek large amounts of less intimate relationships more efficiently?  Will I ponder issues less in favor of looking up a quick and easy answer from a third party source in the most sleek and stylish way?  These are the kind of questions we're asking, when we could be asking ourselves questions like, "Will I be engaging in and contributing to a infrastructure that promotes openness and individual freedom?"

If I may be candid for a moment let me admit my smug tech nerd ways.  I used to be a little annoyed, mostly due to the immaturity one has early in life that others know different things than you do, when people didn't know how a computer's file system worked, the difference between a program and a text file, or why they couldn't get on the internet.  I'm quickly becoming less annoyed by these people, but that annoyance is being replaced by fear.

I'm afraid because I know that market forces drive technology, and it's terrifying to see the market choose flashy, easy, and restrictive items over empowering items that might make them work a little harder.  I'm afraid because working in tech support I've seen just how helpless people are when their technology breaks, how helpless many people are when it comes to fixing their technological problems, and how earnestly industry is working to make sure that problems may come up less at the expense of being fixable without being invited into a company's inner circle to error codes and access controls.  I worry about living in a world where a relatively small conglomerate of programmers, advertisers, and businessmen are making sweeping decisions on how people live their lives, and the people are relatively powerless to and even uninterested in changing that.

Many are afraid of the effect technology is having on the human psyche and sociological structures.  It's easy to blame the technology for this, but I feel that's misguided.  If our minds or societies are becoming corrupted it's not thanks to the internet, smartphones, or video games.  It's because we're using these poorly.  And why wouldn't we if most of us don't know how they work at all, and only know what they do as the company making it presents that to us?

Studying mathematics and physics where most modern research is done with the aid of computers I'm perhaps blessed to have been taught in a tradition that specifically points out where computers are helpful and where our own intellect should be applied.  Questions of what's computable and what isn't are addressed directly, as well as questions of the best way to compute that which we would indeed like to compute.

I worry a lot about my tone here.  As I recently found out when reading a book on obesity, it's sadly easy to dismiss those presenting information and ideas about something as, "Oh, they're one of those type of people.  That explains why they would say that."  It would be so easy to end up being that "smugly superior" guy who'll criticize folk for having different views on technology or not knowing as much as he does about computers.  As the comic below illustrates thouygh, sooner or later we'll be uncomfortable with how the technology we use works, and if unless we develop the appropriate infrastructure we'll be unable to change it.