Sbagliando s'impera

Stasera sono stato al Festival delle scienze all’Auditorium di Roma (Roma, Auditorium Parco della musica, “Tra Possibile e Immaginario” Festival delle Scienze 2010, giovedì 14/01/2010 Sala Petrassi ore 21:  La Cattedrale di Turing e l’universo digitale. Conferenza con George Dyson, John Brockman, Vittorio Bo).

George Dyson è uno storico della scienza, figlio del fisico Freeman Dyson e fratello di Esther Dyson (quella di Release 2.0). John Brockman è uno scrittore e agente letterario, curatore tra l’altro di Edge, una rivista online che consiglio vivamente.
Ogni fine d’anno Brockman fa una domanda a una platea di intellettuali. La domanda di quest’anno era: “In che modo Internet ha cambiato la tua vita?”

La risposta di Dyson l’ho trovata bellissima:

KAYAKS vs CANOES

In the North Pacific ocean, there were two approaches to boatbuilding. The Aleuts (and their kayak-building relatives) lived on barren, treeless islands and built their vessels by piecing together skeletal frameworks from fragments of beach-combed wood. The Tlingit (and their dugout canoe-building relatives) built their vessels by selecting entire trees out of the rainforest and removing wood until there was nothing left but a canoe.

The Aleut and the Tlingit achieved similar results — maximum boat / minimum material — by opposite means. The flood of information unleashed by the Internet has produced a similar cultural split. We used to be kayak builders, collecting all available fragments of information to assemble the framework that kept us afloat. Now, we have to learn to become dugout-canoe builders, discarding unneccessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.

I was a hardened kayak builder, trained to collect every available stick. I resent having to learn the new skills. But those who don’t will be left paddling logs, not canoes.