By William R. Jones
To the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify, we give the name "knowledge." Writer Ambrose Bierce said that sometime before 1914 when he suddenly and literally disappeared, never to be heard from again. Although his era set the stage and launching, the sum of human knowledge in his era was almost nothing compared to today's sea of information available on the World Wide Web and internet and, especially, the proliferation of professional journals.
When we speak of information overload, at the same time we are speaking of a large quantity or flood of knowledge, whatever kind it may be. Even before Bierce's time, Englishman John Newman (mid-1800s) said, "We must make up our minds to be ignorant of much, if we would know anything (at all)."
Without getting into arguable semantics, herein I define knowledge as what is or can be known by an individual or by mankind, or simply how much information (the quality or accuracy of which may be another story) one knows whether or not one understands it. Thus, I'm somewhat equating the two descriptive nouns.
Frances Bacon said, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." And, I daringly did too. Not rejecting difficult things, I was not impatient to research. As Michelangelo said, "Ancora imparo," or "I, too, am still learning."
In a previous contribution ("A need to know," Thoughts of the Times, Oct. 4, 2022) I mentioned the furniture of earth (shelved books) that was dear to me, which provided a remedy to rise above the dross of everyday life and for my insatiable curiosity. I let the books go, for I feared my perused access to the publications may have in some degree diminished my knowledge of the world, which has limitless dimensional aspects.
Yes, I am still learning, but it has dawned upon me of late, now, how one's lifespan is limited and knowledge is limitless. Asked to present a seminar on English as a second language, I googled "ESL" for internet material sources and received 141 million websites. "Conversation English" produced over 3 billion results and "English grammar" approached 10 million websites. Obviously, we have time to look at only a few, although Google's PageRank is completely automated and displays page rank importance and popularity. Usually I go through the first 10 pages as the Google search engine has billions of webpages indexed.
Much info and knowledge is stamped by opinion; I realized quickly that as far as methods and materials for teaching go, that if there are 50 million ESL teachers, then there are 50 million procedures.
In computer science and IT, there is ongoing specialist knowledge. There's no endpoint. Just when you begin to feel comfortable with a process, something changes. There is increased specialization in every field or subject which challenges our cognitive control when we try to filter the saturation. It has opened up a whole new field of "Personal Knowledge Management."
The author (wrjones@vsu.edu) published the novella "Beyond Harvard" and presently teaches English as a second language.
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When we speak of information overload, at the same time we are speaking of a large quantity or flood of knowledge, whatever kind it may be. Even before Bierce's time, Englishman John Newman (mid-1800s) said, "We must make up our minds to be ignorant of much, if we would know anything (at all)."
Without getting into arguable semantics, herein I define knowledge as what is or can be known by an individual or by mankind, or simply how much information (the quality or accuracy of which may be another story) one knows whether or not one understands it. Thus, I'm somewhat equating the two descriptive nouns.
Frances Bacon said, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." And, I daringly did too. Not rejecting difficult things, I was not impatient to research. As Michelangelo said, "Ancora imparo," or "I, too, am still learning."
In a previous contribution ("A need to know," Thoughts of the Times, Oct. 4, 2022) I mentioned the furniture of earth (shelved books) that was dear to me, which provided a remedy to rise above the dross of everyday life and for my insatiable curiosity. I let the books go, for I feared my perused access to the publications may have in some degree diminished my knowledge of the world, which has limitless dimensional aspects.
Yes, I am still learning, but it has dawned upon me of late, now, how one's lifespan is limited and knowledge is limitless. Asked to present a seminar on English as a second language, I googled "ESL" for internet material sources and received 141 million websites. "Conversation English" produced over 3 billion results and "English grammar" approached 10 million websites. Obviously, we have time to look at only a few, although Google's PageRank is completely automated and displays page rank importance and popularity. Usually I go through the first 10 pages as the Google search engine has billions of webpages indexed.
Much info and knowledge is stamped by opinion; I realized quickly that as far as methods and materials for teaching go, that if there are 50 million ESL teachers, then there are 50 million procedures.
In computer science and IT, there is ongoing specialist knowledge. There's no endpoint. Just when you begin to feel comfortable with a process, something changes. There is increased specialization in every field or subject which challenges our cognitive control when we try to filter the saturation. It has opened up a whole new field of "Personal Knowledge Management."
The author (wrjones@vsu.edu) published the novella "Beyond Harvard" and presently teaches English as a second language.
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