- UNIVERSAL LIBRARY

Information handling in a peace technology.

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Transcript

WORLD WAR COVID
From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
Learner, begin

 - UNIVERSAL LIBRARY -

“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” American Library Association. 

[Author’s note: This may sound irrelevant to some people (What, no libraries? Who cares!); but bare in mind what “no library” implies: medieval primitivism and social chaos.  Recall the Chinese proverb: “A year of tyranny is better than one day of chaos.” Plus, as old hippies recall, this motto once dealt with smoking good old weed, Cannabis Sativa: a Sanskrit honorific reserved for rice and a few other valuable plants. 

Neither an art nor a science, library science is wreathed in classical obsolescence. Outmoded routines are maintained in libraries — not because they are particularly valid but because funding for better systems outstrips the pittance they’ve been authorized. 

It is quite a chore to scan and digitize books once they've been printed on paper. It would be better to distribute them in a cheap (or free) digitized format and then publish them on paper as a luxury souvenir on demand.

We could have invented a comfortable set of digital reading glasses (Google Glass?) — reading glasses like sunglasses, that displayed pages of easy-to-read text beautifully inscribed as if on fine vellum: font optional, lit controllably, keyword searchable, indexed and magnified on demand. Those digital sunglasses could display a virtual keyboard and screen, and a pair of virtual typing hands wire-guided from ring-fingered or gloved-hand input leads. A belt-mounted CPU controller with docks for portable memory and other hardware connections; an EEG helmet, the fingers, the glasses and their CPU connected by optical cable or wireless. Some superior technology could duplicate those capacities with less hardware.

Finally! No more painful reading sessions on my back and holding a book over my head or sitting up in bed. Images from these sunglasses could be projected onto a darkened ceiling or wall. They could become transparent and perhaps magnify the outside world, or register different frequencies of invisible light, or project data fields as if in three dimensions. The possibilities are endless. 

There is none of that. Instead, we must admire our genius at aiming long-range weapons across gloomy battlefields. In Vietnam in 1969, the average infantry squad was issued infrared night vision goggles. Forty years later, most firemen hadn’t yet been issued a set to search for survivors in a fire. What warped priorities!

Libraries work better on a subsidized and cooperative basis (as do most public utilities and other functions not yet recognized as such, like healthcare.) Instead, they must generate entrepreneurial profits, as if they were peddling soda pop, private automobiles, strip mining, fracking, runaway genetic engineering or some other corporate drive-by. 

Most librarians are altruistic helpers instead of gladiatorial power brokers. They would rather provide excellent service than acquire wealth and power for themselves. Given the vampire temperament of weapon bureaucracies, information managers get afterthought consideration at best. They are among the first to expose their necks to the economizing ax and the last to benefit from budget windfalls. 

This liability is very obvious in the Library of Congress. It houses one of the largest book collections in the world, yet is a Swiss cheese of lost and stolen books. As each term of Congress expired, defeated incumbents and their family took their favorite books home as a consolation prize for legislating the rat race. Worse yet, rare book collectors paid huge sums to bribe clerical staff and abscond with irreplaceable titles.

Let’s turn from the Masters of Greed to their apprentices. College students have always been assigned reading lists for their courses. The most ambitious ones hoarded key university texts set aside in library reserve, so that their grade-point competitors couldn’t consult them. Nowadays, computerized book tracking foils their petty schemes. But not so long ago, crooked over-achievers carved up the competition, got better grades and graduated to become life-and-death decision-makers. In this way, several generations of shady reactionaries managed to take over our courts, legislatures, universities, corporate and media boards. 

These ne'er-do-wells recruit morality-crippled subordinates as protégés and replacements. It turns out that psychopaths are the only people who enjoy working under very bad bosses while everyone else hates them. Plus their bad example, advice and career “guidance” corrupt ethical fence sitters in majority within those professional communities. You wind up fired out of hand if you are too honest. This buildup of bad habits saps the leadership of orthodoxy.

Librarians aren’t competitive to begin with; they tend to be all around Learners. They restrict their studies to one “major” topic (another crippling constraint of weapons education) only once their employer demands this sacrifice. Their “service” mind-set facilitates weapon management’s takeover of their resources. Masters of Business Administration consider information gathering a secondary, service function. When crunch time comes around, corporate libraries and research facilities are the first to suffer budget cuts. 

While libraries attract less competitive professionals to begin with (though no less competent ones), weapon managers sponsor the best-paid research for military applications. Weapon technology is the intellectual Super Bowl, if you will; whereas creative intellect is viewed as a “Trivial pursuit” throwaway hobby to be exploited and nothing more. 

The natural curiosity of Learners draws them into the intellectual anarchy of libraries. These beehives of comprehension convert the pollen of curiosity into knowledge honey. This seedbed of new ideas suffers from blatant neglect, shortsighted exploitation and disregard for true values, despite the desperate optimism of frontline librarians. If weapon science is the prince of modern resources, library science is the pauper. 

Institutional degeneracy has a lot to do with the law of diminishing returns. In most cases, the first effort produces the greatest end-result; those further down the line require a lot more effort. 

Libraries get a lot less funding than they would on PeaceWorld, and are nowhere near fulfilling their full potential. On the other hand, over-funded weapon technologies catapult themselves beyond the twilight zone of diminishing returns into insatiable limbo. Obsessively, compulsively, repeatedly and endlessly, we polish our killing systems at the expense of learning systems, and optimize the threat formula to the exclusion of the armchair formula. 

Learner Networks could confirm or deny new hypotheses much more readily. Learners fixated on their topics of passion will share them with like-minded enthusiasts. In a great many small-scale production facilities and labs, inventors will design experiments, prototypes and working models of recent invention, seconded by Learner engineers whose topic of passion will be their assembly and manufacture. Local three-D printing, my Learner friends. 

There will only be one opportunity to summon this incredible wealth. Current institutions are locked down in their own incompetence. Short of bloody revolution, they enjoy the stability of official monopoly, no matter how squalid their results (actively by rotten ethics or passively from inexcusable outcomes). New Learner Networks must confirm their superiority immediately. Otherwise, as usual, wastrel “conservatives” will wreck them as usual. 

Until talented contributors rally to Learner Networks, reasonable solutions for our worst problems won’t replace the wasteful industries that caused those problems to begin with. First priority: the Network itself and how best to handle this avalanche of new data. 

Embarking on serious study at the earliest possible age, most Learners will earn one or more doctoral degrees by puberty. This said, there will be no timed “race” to achieve personal goals. Late bloomers (like me) will get all the time they need; faster Learners, condensed Learning. It will take most people a third of the time to become productive Learners, that it takes current candidates for tiny info elites. 

 “Doctoral degree” is our crude yardstick of cultural achievement. Seniority and faculty tenure will no longer influence this system. Peer privilege and senior approval will become mere honorary ornaments. Arbitrary performance criteria will no longer dictate financial security nor will they limit access to the Network. Everyone will escape their misery and accelerate their Learning as much as possible, regardless of provenance, productivity and credentials. 

Cities will broadcast a complete video collection of local drama, music and art, along with guided video tours of local museums, conventions and stores. Detailed analyses will cover every regional craft, hobby and industry. Complete university curricula (from elementary topics to post-graduate coursework) will be on-call for private review at any hour. Other cities’ equivalents will appear on demand. All this will be free, free, free! Indirect profits from these activities will be exponentially greater than those gathered directly by current “educational” institutions.

Nowadays, it is illegal to audit, record and rebroadcast most classes and performances. The control of content emanates from a few toney skyscrapers rather than every living room and study cubicle. A handful of centralized TV networks, movie studios and elite universities dictate the content of pop culture. No wonder their output is so dull, dumb and irrelevant! 

Soulless monologue blares on without letup. There is too little contrapuntal crosstalk to refine our public reality. A few media moguls “control” almost everything in broadcast and in print. They act like surveyors blinded because they aimed their theodolites into the mercantile sun too long. Their error-strewn maps, published in millions of confusing copies, only mislead us further. 

“What would you do with yourself if you became extraordinarily rich? Researchers studied a sampling of the newly rich and concluded: you’d probably change jobs to learn something you’d always wanted to learn, and turn yourself into a genuine expert in your new field.” From Mike Mailway (pseudonym for LM Boyd), Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 04/6/92.

What most people seek out once rare good fortune smiles on them, society should mass-produce. Mass Learning will replace the no-win alternatives of empty “entertainment” and the boring torture of competitive schooling. Economies of scale, children. Plus every dollar spent on this lavish project will generate many more dollars in new discoveries. 

As we make our way a little bit further down this road, PeaceWorld will roll over the horizon and bid us welcome. 

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COMMENT?  markmulligan@comcast.net