Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Why do we forget our childhood?. Today's research psychologists typically don't think much of Sigmund Freud. His theories, which tended to be based on literary analysis and interviews with his patients rather than controlled experiments, have been largely discredited (though they continue to be influential in the field of -- you guessed it -- literary analysis). However, he did discover an [...] [Cognitive Daily] 1:07:26 PM      Google It!.

Tacit knowledge and cortical algorithms. When I had dinner recently with InfoWorld Contributing Editor Phil Windley, he put his finger on something I've been trying to nail down for years. Like me, Phil works mainly in a home office, is married to a nongeek, and is often called on to deliver spousal tech support. From his wife's perspective, Phil said, it looks like he knows how to do everything. But his own, subjective experience is very different. He doesn't really have detailed procedural knowledge of most tasks. He's just very good at discovering that knowledge. "What I'm actually doing is figuring things out on the fly," Phil said. That's what all IT adepts do, all the time. We do it in such a rapid, fluid, and automatic way that we don't seem to be constantly learning or relearning. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] The title of this column, The Tacit Dimension of Tech Support, refers to The Tactic Dimension, a 1967 book by the scientist/philosopher Michael Polanyi. One of his touchstone phrases was: "We know more than we can tell." ... [Jon's Radio] 10:58:35 AM      Google It!.