Will it rot my students' brains if they use Mathematica? (2002)

Re:Will it rot my students' brains if they use Mathematica? ... by taneq on Friday November 05, 2021 @08:30AM (#29118244)

“Yeah well you won’t always have an encyclopaedia… you won’t always be able to ask your friends…” I think the single biggest and most overlooked change in the past 20 years has been the creeping ubiquity of knowledge. It may not be as sexy as Trinity downloading a helicopter piloting program but the ability to pull a datasheet for almost any piece of equipment literally out of thin air is damn near as useful.

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Re:Will it rot my students' brains if they use Mathematica? ... by blackbear_ on Friday November 05, 2021 @08:49AM (#29118453)

> creeping ubiquity of knowledge.

I'd rather call it "information". Knowledge is one level above that, knowledge is information integrated in a coherent whole. Nowadays it's very easy to find information about anything, but most people still know very little about most things. Confusing information with knowledge and knowing nothing at the same time is why misinformation spreads so easily.

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Re:Will it rot my students' brains if they use Mathematica? ... by taneq on Friday November 05, 2021 @09:17PM (#29126587)

I see it as information being the 1s and 0s, while knowledge is what you do with it.

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Re:Will it rot my students' brains if they use Mathematica? ... by scionthefly on Friday November 05, 2021 @01:55PM (#29122608)

I think it is relatable to the way that Archer has access to mission dossiers. "Yeah, but I never read them."

People have access to limitless information but have little interest in actually looking for and using it.

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