| Monday, November 26th, 2007 | |
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    I found a copy of an oft-cited source in my dissertation area: "Speech Signals in Telephony" by A. Lloyd James; it's one of those sources that you always cite based on indirect references in other sources because it doesn't really have much to say, but it was one of the first publications to say it. Anyway, I do try to make an effort not to cite stuff that I haven't actually read even though sometimes is necessary, and in the right context totally OK; so I found a cheap copy online and ordered it. It was published in 1940, specifically concerning wartime communications. It's a brief volume and reading it left me with two strong impressions: one heartening and one disheartening. The man is quite clearly an expert on the subject -- at least for his time -- and there are definitely some astute observations. However, by current standards it's vaguely quaint. Stylistically, it reads like a paper written by a really bright high school student; content-wise it isn't as sophisticated as you'd likely find in a modern high school report. I don't mean to be condescending -- obviously, the fact that at the time, the information he's presenting isn't widely available and that a lot of it are his original observations and insights makes all the difference in the world! But we do know a lot more about speech now, and the things that he's talking about have been formalized beyond observations and insights. Which on the one hand emphasizes to me that we really have made progress. Not only do we know more, but culturally our science and our writing has matured. In an abstract way, we all know that, but you don't really think about how that manifests in something as ubiquitous as writing styles. And I think that's pretty cool! (Yes, I notice the irony of that last statement imbedded in commentary about maturing writing styles!) But on the otherhand... it's equally true that because we have made progress and matured, the book is a concrete manifestation of how much more difficult it is to make a contribution to that process now. In 1940, A. Lloyd James was able to be an expert in his field and write a book that contributed to human knowledge when today, while it isn't precisely common knowledge, it's within our expectations of a high school level research paper. Although, I guess it's inevitable that anyone in my position -- working on my dissertation yada yada -- get angsty about this fact, it's not for myself that I find this disheartening. I'm passed doubting myself in that way. I worry about what it means for us culturally... long gone are the days when any half-way smart person can learn something new and valuable through their senses or introspections alone. All advances these days must be made through assistive technology (machines, statistics, increasingly vast bodies background research) which requires further and futher effort and expertise to get to the edge of. Like wealth, expertise is so much in the hands of an elite now, what hope does someone who wants more out of their life than the relentless pursuit of knowledge or technique have to contribute something new? At some point, they must just give up hope... especially youth. When I was growing up, at least I could maintain the illusion that I was having new thoughts and new observations because I was limited in what I knew other people knew; but these days when a simple web-search will turn up a dozen sites devoted to your "new" idea, its that much harder to sustain the curiosity and inspiration. I've seen it with my Shads who get disheartened when they find every one of their product ideas available online; and even myself more recently -- I gave up on my "specrogram reader" when I found someone had already done it online, and have certainly become less inspired by some of my SL ideas having found other people already doing them. Which ultimately, is counter-productive because who knows? My approach or my Shads' ideas might have been totally different, even better (*if* you put in enough effort)... But recreating just isn't as much fun as creating. So we just sit back down on the couch. | |
| Comments | |
It may be true that research in some areas are becoming saturated, but I don't think thats true for all of science. Even fields that have been around for decades (or centuries!) undergo huge revisions, and when they do there are plenty of low hanging fruit ripe for the picking. I suppose these revisions are pretty rare though, but there are lots of people who argue that there is a cycle that includes maturation and revision for all fields. I don't know if I agree, from my little view of neuroscience, that expertise only belongs to the elite. It may be that a select few are making the biggest contributions to the field, but that doesn't mean that the others are not experts. In fact, I would say that the experts tend to be those who are very narrowly focused, and their contributions simply aren't broad enough to make a huge impact. I'm glad you mentioned the improvement of writing in science, that really was heartening for me! (Reply to this) (Thread) Girl! I didn't even know you were alive still! Well, no, I did know that, but it's been a while. It's nice to hear from you. I'm certainly glad that you don't feel this way. Although at the risk of convincing you otherwise, my only response is that when I'm thinking of the "elite", I was pretty much including you and the scientists that I think you're talking about. And me for that matter. I was thinking more about the growing division between a) the public at large and b) people educated in different (even related sometimes though) fields and c) kids coming into it all. I.e. groups where there is a big difference in knowledge base. And I suppose it's not even to do with academia necessarily. Even say specialized skills like cooking... or dog-breeding or dance-judging... Maybe it causes me more anxiety because I'm far more breadth-oriented. One of the things that drew me to cogsci really... Every time I start becoming interested in a subject, I have to come to grips with the fact that even though I could likely become a familiar with the subject, even an authority, there's no way that I'd really be able to contribute meaningfully to it without dropping everything else. Which is sad, because people like me play a really important role (in all humility -- certainly not *the only* important role) by connecting diverse areas of knowledge which is a necessary form of cross pollination. I think of someone like Hofstadter -- obviously brilliant, and a very astute observer of language. But when you take any of his language-oriented classes he talks about phenomena that are specialties in and of themselves as though he were the only one to have ever observed it. So linguists don't really take him seriously, and he has a chip on his shoulder about linguists... and we lose that opportunity for something really interesting to happen for the simple fact that he doesn't have the time/patience/will to get to a point in linguistics as a field that he can speak their language (if you can pardon the pun). I suppose the answer is that we have perhaps evolved past the point where one person can be enough of an expert in more than one field to be able to pass ideas from one to the other; so it has to be a tight relationship between individuals working in a coordinated manner. But those kinds of relationships are seriously hard to foster. | |
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