{"id":99,"date":"2011-08-30T09:35:04","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T08:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/?p=99"},"modified":"2011-08-30T09:35:04","modified_gmt":"2011-08-30T08:35:04","slug":"eric-schmidt-and-labels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/eric-schmidt-and-labels\/","title":{"rendered":"Eric Schmidt and Labels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his MacTaggart lecture Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, criticised UK education and the tendency to split into two camps luvvies and boffins.<\/p>\n<p>This neatly follows on from my last post (jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/who-are-the-scientists) where I talked about human beings habit of nominalization or labeling.<\/p>\n<p>This is an extremely bad habit as it not only tends to divide people into groups but also leads to people self limiting themselves.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t understand the science &#8211; I&#8217;m not a scientist<br \/>\nI don&#8217;t really know much about art &#8211; I&#8217;m an accountant.<\/p>\n<p>If this was not bad enough there are also those on the sidelines (the media) who sneer at anyone how dares to stray out side their role or label.<\/p>\n<p>But there are people active in both science and arts,\u00a0 a few names that come to mind are<\/p>\n<table border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"100\">Brian Cox<\/td>\n<td>physicist musician<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Brian May<\/td>\n<td>physicist musician<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Fred Hoyle<\/td>\n<td>physicist author<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Graeme Garden<\/td>\n<td>doctor comedian<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Hank Wangford<\/td>\n<td>doctor musician<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Jonathan Miller<\/td>\n<td>doctor comedian director everything<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>In reporting this story the Guardian says<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Schmidt&#8217;s comments echoed sentiments expressed by Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, who revealed this week that he was stepping down. &#8220;The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians \u2013 who also happened to be excellent computer scientists,&#8221; Jobs once told the New York Times<\/p>\n<p>It is a bit strange to quote Steve Jobs in this way as though he is supporting Eric Schimdt&#8217;s points as\u00a0 Jonathan Ive, Apple&#8217;s chief designer, is English and Arm (based in Cambridge England) design the processors in iPods and iPads.<\/p>\n<p>Eric Schmidt talks as though all British success is in the past.\u00a0 Which is strange as British people enjoy world wide success in many areas, some are<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Music<\/li>\n<li>Cinema<\/li>\n<li>Theatre<\/li>\n<li>Science<\/li>\n<li>Fashion<\/li>\n<li>Cookery<\/li>\n<li>Engineering<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Perhaps someone needs to point out that the World Wide Web was invented by an english computer scientist, Sir Tim Berners Lee, who choose to give his idea to the world.\u00a0 And Google&#8217;s profits are entirely due to this invention.<\/p>\n<p>The word education from the Latin word educatus, past participle of educare which means &#8220;to bring up&#8221;, and educere &#8220;to lead out&#8221; or &#8220;to draw out&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>As anyone who has watched the film Thunderbirds will know, one of the principles of eastern martial arts is to use your opponents strength against them.<\/p>\n<p>If you try to get people to learn by drilling or cramming facts into them it will be a struggle.<\/p>\n<p>But if you can inspire them,\u00a0 create a sense of fascination and wonder then you work is pretty much done as their own curiosity will drive them on to find out more.<\/p>\n<p>So try encourage any or all of these<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lets have a go and see what happens<\/li>\n<li>What would happen if<\/li>\n<li>I wonder<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I am confused as to why Eric Schmidt is keen for British schools should teach computer science.\u00a0 Surely the history of startups\u00a0 in the US is of people tinkering in their garage, basement or college dorm.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1970s and 80s we had computers like Spectrum and BBC and many of the people who used them tended to program them.\u00a0 Unfortunately today many people just tend to use computers for email, web browsing and office.\u00a0 This is not the complete truth as there many people working on open source projects.<\/p>\n<p>Two products that aimed at encouraging people (and especially children) to have a go are<\/p>\n<table border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"100\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.raspberrypi.org\/\">Raspberry Pi<\/a><\/td>\n<td>a complete Arm computer on a board for about \u00a315<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"http:\/\/www.arduino.cc\/\">Arduino<\/a><\/td>\n<td>an Electronics and Programming prototyping system.<br \/>\nStarter kits cost about \u00a359.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>which are described in more detail in this Guardian article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/technology\/2011\/aug\/28\/ict-changes-needed-nationalcurriculum\">Kids Today Need A Licence To Tinker<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lest we forget there is still <a href=\"http:\/\/maplin.co.uk\">Maplin<\/a> mecca to several generations of electronics hobbyists and tinkerers.<\/p>\n<p>Today Charles Darwin is recognised as a genius who pretty much created a new branch of science, Evolution. But Charles Darwin not a scientist he was country gentleman of independent means. He was driven by curiosity and a need to know and explain. He didn&#8217;t need any label or anyone&#8217;s authority to do what he did, he just did it because it interested him and he wanted to. And if he had not followed his curiosity he would never have discovered anything.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone can do this, you for example, providing you are interested enough to be motivated to have a go. It does not need to be your job, you do not need a degree or training and you definitely don&#8217;t need a &#8220;label&#8221;. If you are interested you will learn as you go along.<\/p>\n<p>One person who has followed his interest is Richard Steward from the Blyth Estuary Group.\u00a0 Richard has spent 6 years studying investigating and learning about sea levels and salt marsh.\u00a0 This was not his job, he has retired.\u00a0 He was just interested and wanted to learn more, he was also sceptical of the SMP proposals of the Environment Agency and the claims they make to justify these schemes.<\/p>\n<p>Richard has documented the results of his research.\u00a0 Why not <a href=\"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/downloads\/BegCritiqueV56.pdf\">download a copy<\/a> and read what he has to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his MacTaggart lecture Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, criticised UK education and the tendency to split into two camps luvvies and boffins. This neatly follows on from my last post (jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/who-are-the-scientists) where I talked about human beings habit &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/eric-schmidt-and-labels\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}