Us, Robots. Are we losing our Minds?

I read an interesting post by a student writing for his school newspaper, today. It prompted all kinds of thoughts.

The post inspired me to write a long comment to it, which you can also read at the above page (if you’re bored).

Combined with having watched the great Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot” on the tube last night, I was prompted, once again, to consider what computers, calculators, the tube, etc. are doing to us, as a global society.

Obviously, considering the medium we are using, I am not a Luddite. Far from it. I like tech. But I like it to further my understanding and appreciation for life, not to nullify it.

It reminds me of drugs back in the 70′s. Some (most) of them were taken to tune out, but some were used to tune in.

Tech can be like those drugs (only it doesn’t usually give you the munchies). Both drugs and tech are sorely abused. Which leads me to the following thoughts (partially paraphrased from my comments to the post):

“It’s often expressed that “… technology seems to have all the answers….” That may be true. Tech sometimes seems to have them.
I love that word, “seems”. It’s a warning flag.

“Also, consider that however many answers tech has, or seems to have, it seldom comes up with any meaningful questions, does it? That may be the key to why I, others, and maybe you, too, have reservations about our present level of (mis?)use of technology.”

Later on in the day, I was reading one of my “new favorite books”, The Art of Mathematics by Jerry P. King. Part of the book’s main thesis is that we don’t teach enough about real (pure) mathematics. If we did, children’s natural curiosity and enjoyment would carry them further than the applied mathematics that we stress, and practically club kids over the head with.

Here’s a quote from page 205 that I found particularly salient: (By the way, I find something on almost every page from that book “particularly salient.” I’ve marked it up more than I marked up my copy of Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet” when I was a freshman at college in the ’70s.)

“Unfortunately, the present trend of undergraduate mathematics instruction – particularly calculus instruction – which shows no slacking of the proliferation of meaningless techniques and trivial applications at the expense of mathematical ideas and theory indicates clearly that the education process will continue to fail.”

Just some stuff to consider. It sounds bleak, but as long as kids are writing cool articles for their school papers, and people are being inspired by people like Isaac Asimov, and as long as some mathematicians do care (and a lot of them do), we have great things to consider.

Just for fun, here’s a list of writers who write about math, for laymen. It’s in no particular order. It’s a short list, because it’s late and my fingers are tired of typing, but if you want more, leave a comment, and I’ll put together a bibliography.

What’s coming up at The MathMojo Chronicles and MathMojo:
I’ve decided that I’m going to create the “Ultimate Guide to Multiplication.”

My main interest in math is to get everyone to understand basic arithmetic from at a deep level. My best asset is the set of ways I’ve discovered/developed to explain and explore multiplication, and streamline methods for doing it.

I’ve been doing research and writing for years, but have never been sure of the best way to go about “getting it out there.” I’ve fooled around with podcasts, flash-movies, and some videos, but I still think the best way is with the written word and pictures, as in booklets and e-books.

If you have any thoughts about how you’d like to learn a deep , useful method of multiplying whole numbers (large and small), please let me know. In the meantime, the next posts will be about the project. I’ll be HAMMERING multiplication for you, to get everyone who decides to learn it up to an amazing level.

’till then, g’night, MathMojo-ers and MathMojo-ettes, wherever you are.

Brian