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.The entire knowledge system in society is undergoing violent upheaval.The very conceptsand codes in terms of which we think are turning over at a furious and accelerating pace.Weare increasing the rate at which we must form and forget our images of reality.* Between 1882 and 1932, there were ten new world heavyweight boxing champions, each holding thecrown an average of 5 years.Between 1932 and 1951, there were 7 champions, each with an average tenure of3.2 years.From 1951 to 1967, when the World Boxing Association declared the title vacant, 7 men held thechampionship for an average of 2.3 years each.TWIGGY AND THE K-MESONSEvery person carries within his head a mental model of the world a subjectiverepresentation of external reality.This model consists of tens upon tens of thousands ofimages.These may be as simple as a mental picture of clouds scudding across the sky.Orthey may be abstract inferences about the way things are organized in society.We may thinkof this mental model as a fantastic internal warehouse, an image emporium in which we storeour inner portraits of Twiggy, Charles De Gaulle or Cassius Clay, along with such sweepingpropositions as "Man is basically good" or "God is dead."Any person's mental model will contain some images that approximate reality closely,along with others that are distorted or inaccurate.But for the person to function, even tosurvive, the model must bear some overall resemblance to reality.As V.Gordon Childe haswritten in Society and Knowledge, "Every reproduction of the external world, constructed and used as a guide to action by an historical society, must in some degree correspond to thatreality.Otherwise the society could not have maintained itself; its members, if acting inaccordance with totally untrue propositions, would not have succeeded in making even thesimplest tools and in securing therewith food and shelter from the external world."No man's model of reality is a purely personal product.While some of his images arebased on firsthand observation, an increasing proportion of them today are based onmessages beamed to us by the mass media and the people around us.Thus the degree ofaccuracy in his model to some extent reflects the general level of knowledge in society.Andas experience and scientific research pump more refined and accurate knowledge into society,new concepts, new ways of thinking, supersede, contradict, and render obsolete older ideasand world views.If society itself were standing still, there might be little pressure on the individual toupdate his own supply of images, to bring them in line with the latest knowledge available inthe society.So long as the society in which he is embedded is stable or slowly changing, theimages on which he bases his behavior can also change slowly.But to function in a fast-changing society, to cope with swift and complex change, the individual must turn over hisown stock of images at a rate that in some way correlates with the pace of change.His modelmust be updated.To the degree that it lags, his responses to change become inappropriate; hebecomes increasingly thwarted, ineffective.Thus there is intense pressure on the individual tokeep up with the generalized pace.Today change is so swift and relentless in the techno-societies that yesterday's truthssuddenly become today's fictions, and the most highly skilled and intelligent members ofsociety admit difficulty in keeping up with the deluge of new knowledge even in extremelynarrow fields."You can't possibly keep in touch with all you want to," complains Dr.RudolphStohler, a zoologist at the University of California at Berkeley."I spend 25 percent to 50percent of my working time trying to keep up with what's going on," says Dr.I.E.Wallen,chief of oceanography at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.Dr.Emilio Segre, aNobel prizewinner in physics, declares: "On K-mesons alone, to wade through all the papersis an impossibility." And another oceanographer, Dr [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.The entire knowledge system in society is undergoing violent upheaval.The very conceptsand codes in terms of which we think are turning over at a furious and accelerating pace.Weare increasing the rate at which we must form and forget our images of reality.* Between 1882 and 1932, there were ten new world heavyweight boxing champions, each holding thecrown an average of 5 years.Between 1932 and 1951, there were 7 champions, each with an average tenure of3.2 years.From 1951 to 1967, when the World Boxing Association declared the title vacant, 7 men held thechampionship for an average of 2.3 years each.TWIGGY AND THE K-MESONSEvery person carries within his head a mental model of the world a subjectiverepresentation of external reality.This model consists of tens upon tens of thousands ofimages.These may be as simple as a mental picture of clouds scudding across the sky.Orthey may be abstract inferences about the way things are organized in society.We may thinkof this mental model as a fantastic internal warehouse, an image emporium in which we storeour inner portraits of Twiggy, Charles De Gaulle or Cassius Clay, along with such sweepingpropositions as "Man is basically good" or "God is dead."Any person's mental model will contain some images that approximate reality closely,along with others that are distorted or inaccurate.But for the person to function, even tosurvive, the model must bear some overall resemblance to reality.As V.Gordon Childe haswritten in Society and Knowledge, "Every reproduction of the external world, constructed and used as a guide to action by an historical society, must in some degree correspond to thatreality.Otherwise the society could not have maintained itself; its members, if acting inaccordance with totally untrue propositions, would not have succeeded in making even thesimplest tools and in securing therewith food and shelter from the external world."No man's model of reality is a purely personal product.While some of his images arebased on firsthand observation, an increasing proportion of them today are based onmessages beamed to us by the mass media and the people around us.Thus the degree ofaccuracy in his model to some extent reflects the general level of knowledge in society.Andas experience and scientific research pump more refined and accurate knowledge into society,new concepts, new ways of thinking, supersede, contradict, and render obsolete older ideasand world views.If society itself were standing still, there might be little pressure on the individual toupdate his own supply of images, to bring them in line with the latest knowledge available inthe society.So long as the society in which he is embedded is stable or slowly changing, theimages on which he bases his behavior can also change slowly.But to function in a fast-changing society, to cope with swift and complex change, the individual must turn over hisown stock of images at a rate that in some way correlates with the pace of change.His modelmust be updated.To the degree that it lags, his responses to change become inappropriate; hebecomes increasingly thwarted, ineffective.Thus there is intense pressure on the individual tokeep up with the generalized pace.Today change is so swift and relentless in the techno-societies that yesterday's truthssuddenly become today's fictions, and the most highly skilled and intelligent members ofsociety admit difficulty in keeping up with the deluge of new knowledge even in extremelynarrow fields."You can't possibly keep in touch with all you want to," complains Dr.RudolphStohler, a zoologist at the University of California at Berkeley."I spend 25 percent to 50percent of my working time trying to keep up with what's going on," says Dr.I.E.Wallen,chief of oceanography at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.Dr.Emilio Segre, aNobel prizewinner in physics, declares: "On K-mesons alone, to wade through all the papersis an impossibility." And another oceanographer, Dr [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]