Friday, February 1, 2013
Seeing Vs Observing
OK this seems like it could have been a great argument for why Google may or may not make us stupid. Now I'm a nerd, of the literature kind, and one of my favorite characters is Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Now the master of deduction makes a very keen point in "Scandal in Bohemia" when he tells Dr. Watson that he has seen but hasn't observed. He makes his point with stairs, now we all have daily encounters with stairs, like the WCC but do you know how many stairs there are from the bottom floor to the main floor? My point exactly, now we know that you can look up an answer on Google, but does this act of looking does not teach you anything else but what the answer looks like. To truly observe we have to know more than that. This exactly why Math teachers make us show the work, because then we have observed it.
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Nice connection - it's definitely an interesting contrast. It does seem like technology makes a lot of us worse at observing (ie. even texting while walking around outside rather than noticing or enjoying your surroundings), or in your math example, understanding the "So What" of things we're doing. Like you mentioned, with searching on Google we can get answers without necessarily understanding the "full" answer. Do you think this is making us more stupid? It sounds pretty disconcerting..
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