Nick Carr: It's not what you know | Hacker News Reader

Nick Carr: It's not what you know

roughtype.com

21 pointsyarapavan11 comments

I'm reminded of folks who use IDEs that "help" them remember APIs via autocomplete dropdowns. It speeds them up initially but eventually leaves them completely dependent on their tool and incapable of writing code on their own. External knowledge is good, but internalizing that knowledge that you use regularly is even more important and will make you a better person.

Better person??? Basic and constantly used knowledge will become internalized: despite using an IDE I don't need Intellisense to navigate all of the most commonly used APIs. I think what will be important is knowing how to find and apply the correct information rather than just rote memorization of information.

It is an intellectual trap to believe that just because a skill you worked hard to achieve is no longer necessary, you are a "better person" than those who no longer need that skill.

Can you use a slide rule? I bet you can't. But when pocket calculators were invented engineers were scornful of a new generation who could only punch in numbers. Can you write in assembly? Probably not, but when higher-level languages first turned up you weren't considered a "real" programmer unless you could hack assembly -- and then again when Java overtook C, and then again when interpreted languages like PHP overtook Java.

Why does having memorized an API make you better than somebody who uses a tool that makes memorizing the API unnecessary? Unless you can show that one makes you demonstrably more efficient, it's immaterial.

I enjoyed the post. But I'd challenge anyone to google for the Paris Review interview between Frost and Poirier.

Frost was interested in James' old, difficult Harvard veritas and all that -- for about five minutes. Although he had a bit of a deeper classical training than he lets on in the article. Still, Frost's idea of truth is much more temporal and ad-hoc ('performance' being his big thing -- though this is a somewhat limited reading, if you ask me -- unless you take the idea of performance very, very seriously). I think he'd have encouraged evolutions of ways of thinking as long as they were original. As long as they struck you ('performed') originally.

When Mayer says her "mind has evolved" to the point that it can only recognize and process information that has been digitized and uploaded

Is it possible that too much Googling has led to parts of Mayer's brain to atrophy?

It's more likely that too much waxing rhetorical has led parts of Mayer's dopamine system to overproduce. :)

Actually, I've given this some thought. Here's a related essay from last summer: http://raisethehammer.org/blog/1486/

Thanks Ryan, your essay is very interesting. I like this:

We ARE "losing something important" by training our brains to act as indices (or creating personal habits, as you suggest) instead of the libraries themselves.

For some reason, this reminded me of a T.S Eliot quote:

  We shall not cease from exploration
  And the end of all our exploring
  Will be to arrive where we started
  And know the place for the first time.

The funny thing is, I vaguely remembered the quote. I had to Google it...

Essentially quotes Google's Marissa Mayer from her edge.org annual question on internet- "It's not what you know, it's what you can find out."

No, he's rejecting that thinking.

It's not what you can find out, Frost and James and Poirier told us; it's what you know.

I emphatically disagree with his standpoint, but I voted it up because it's a reasoned write-up of his belief.

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