The third wave: Age of knowledge

Are you talking about the time being or a specific age as in my age?

Oh Gee... Duuh!

Brain fart. sorry!

Time... I attended this conference where this dude explained about the different ages of man...the industrial age etc....but he claims that we have entered into the age of knowledge...gave examples that in our current college educational systems are very outdated. He claimed that every four years in human progress humanity learns the same accumalitive information that they learned in the last thousand years...so therfore a college student after he graduates basically has to enter again to catch up with what he lost in his college career...so my question is more directed as the age we are living in rather than the age of the individual...

One result that can be both "pro" and "con" is that people are now able to access more and more raw information directly. That allows us to filter and sort things ourselves and see how the raw data pans out but it also can lead to people coming to more and more conclusions that are wrong.

For centuries we've relied on professionals and experts to filter that raw data and tell us what it means. Now, everyone can be the "expert" but if they aren't famaliar with the area of study they may miss other important factors when coming to their conclusions because they are unaware of them.

(IMO, we've already seen a bit of this with this years US Elections and all of the blog sites that are claiming to analyze the election data.)

I think some of these "Ages of Man" refer to a rather small group of "man". But I digress.

Your friend is assuming here that you can't learn anything besides what you're taught in college. There's nothing I'm learning now that I couldn't find anywhere else (and indeed, and good deal that I'm learning now that I never took a class on in high school or college). The main purpose of college is social, not for its informational value.

Also, this brings up what you mean by "humanity". Clearly, "humanity" is the collection of all human beings, and yet our poor college students who are having to retake college are for some reason not part of "humanity". If one researcher in one lab discovers a cure for cancer and shares it with no one, has "humanity" discovered it? And if he publishes it, and college students read it, what have they missed?

Re: The third wave: Age of knowledge
I think all historic ages are ages of knowledge. Unless you define knowledge as we define it in the present.
There are different kinds of knowledge. Perhaps, today, we could speak about scientific knowledge, but, even here, that depends on the concept of science you have.

So, my answer is: according to the modern conception of science we live in an "age" of scientific knowledge.

I think our present is a very swell time to live.

Think about just 20 years ago, if you wanted to find out something about ants or something... or if you couldn't remember what movie some quote came from, it was slow going! You could learn selected bits about ants at the library, or if you owned encyclopedias, but now just google any word or phrase and you've got a million hits. Order printer cartridges without ever getting up off your butt!

The communication revolution that is taking place right now is going to drastically change things... beats me exactly how, but I can smell the smell of major changes on the wind (no, I didn't mean wing )!

Re: The third wave: Age of knowledge


I think the intended meaning is more of an "Information Age" than a knowledge of any specific subject.