Big knowledge and small tribes

[miriam_e]

We are probably already far beyond the ability of any one person to understand all areas of human knowledge. We nevertheless have a small number of experts, and hope that covers things well enough to keep knowledge manageable. But we have already passed beyond human ability to catalogue all the information we could use, and depend upon computers to do that -- they are no longer a convenience, but a necessity; we require them in order to keep track of what is known. As soon as we realise this, and not just in a detached academic fashion, but in a day-to-day taken-for-granted way, then society will banish a strange constraint that many today are just not aware of. We each work best in a small, tribal, circle of friends, but many situations require us to form large groups in which we are apt to feel lost and isolated. Student class-size is often an example of this. It has been known for a long time that it has regularly far exceeded the optimum number of students. Computers can help if we abandon any pretense that we can control what people learn. We can open up all human knowledge to millions of small tribes, each pushing at the boundaries as they desire. All knowledge being catalogued and coordinated by computers would feed an explosive growth in knowledge.