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June 1, 1996
San Francisco
Dear Friends:
Stepping into San Francisco is always strange, just like the city. We get the extremes in training on the Internet. The audience invariably has a small percentage with far too much knowledge of the Internet combined with a majority with far too much fear of the Internet. Let one control, and the other gets angry. Try to appease both and both sides attack. A good teacher is always the balance between these two extremes.
The problem I face isn't with the audience, but with the way they have been taught to learn. Think about that, taught how to learn. Most of us have been raised in an educational system that was influenced by the Prussian model of the late 1800s; the student is a blank slate. The teacher draws the knowledge onto that blank slate, filling in the blanks with the proper knowledge. To learn, you have to learn how to be a blank slate, to memorize materials, and to spit them out as the right answer. In this model, the student regurgitates the past.
But now we face the age of change, when knowledge is outmoded overnight and learning means adapting, always adapting. The student isn't the blank slate; the knowledge is now the blank slate. The student has to draw on it, watch other drawings, be guided by the teacher, and never expect to understand everything.
The more you understand, the less you get it. We have to learn to unlearn. Intel Corporation has a great saying for it in its business approach; self-cannibalization. Eat yourself before the other person does. Consume your knowledge and advance or be thrown over.
Knowledge in the new model is like earnings to a stock price; knowledge is old news, something we already know. What is going to happen is unknown, but the current state is the discovery process of merging what is known (remember, this is the old knowledge that was taught; learn from the past and memorize it to your present) with what might be.
Before you think this is another advertisement for the psychic network, let me fill you in. The knowledge is not changing, it is our way of dealing with it. We can't consume the past and memorize it; that holds us back. Trying to control and own knowledge is fruitless.
So my job is to provide balance and show that not knowing is good; that knowing is questionable and egotistical. That the old way of learning is plain old wrong with this rapidly changing economy. In the economy of change, knowledge just whittles down to what you do, your action, with what you know and what you are trying to become. The present is what you should be studying, drawing on the blank slate of knowledge.
Can I get more esoteric? Actually, I think I can but I won't, which is my challenge. Philosophical understanding has to be mixed with micro applicatons with hands on experience. I don't know if I achieved it with the two audiences.
I don't know if I was the proper balance this time; the level of apprehension was high. Understanding this apprehension and calming it is part of my job. But if they try to memorize, they will get overloaded quickly. I wanted so much to share what I knew and to have them brainstorming, that I didn't adapt well enough. I have to take my own lesson.
I made the mistake of trying to draw on the blankslate. Time to step back, ease up, and use a bit of humor and a bit more interaction. After all, it's all about participation.
I've got next week off, then I'm onto San Diego and Los Angeles, two of my favorite places to teach. I'll let you know if I dropped the slate and picked up the fun again.