From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Wed Jun 18 2003 - 06:12:19 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote,
> Robin Hanson wrote:
> > There are many things that I do not like about academia, but on this
> > point I have internalized the academic priority given to intellectual
> > modularity. In academia, different people work on different
> > topics, and hope to combine their results later. When discussing
> > each topic, one tries to minimize the dependencies of results in
> > this area to results in other areas. Of course there will have to
> > be some dependencies, but avoiding unnecessary dependencies allows
> > more rapid progress, just as modularity aids the design of most systems.
> Deliberately strive for modularity? In a consilient universe?
> This is one of the reasons why I am not an academic...
I am not sure this is really academia's strategy. More likely, I think it
is simply a side-effect of the ever-increasing amount and complexity of
technology. There is too much information for us to be able to know it all.
The Renaissance Man is dead.
Today, people specialize into fields because they are already working more
than 40 hours a week in their particular subspecialty and still don't have
enough time. Some focus on AI, some Security, others Star Dust. I do not
think these specialties are smaller endeavors than scientists of previous
generations worked on. Instead, I think the total sphere of technology has
grown such that these areas are now defined as modular, subsets, and
specialties, even though they are individually huge areas.
As technology continues to escalate, I think all technology experts will
have to specialize into more and more modular subsections. AI will
eventually fragment into various computer specialties. Cryonics will
eventually fragment into various medical specialties. Nanotechnology will
eventually fragment into various manufacturing specialties. This seems to
be a natural side-effect of any advancing field, and not a strategy that can
be accepted or rejected.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISM, CISSP, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified InfoSec Manager, Certified IS Security Pro, NSA-certified InfoSec Assessor, IBM-certified Security Consultant, SANS-cert GSEC <HarveyNewstrom.com> <Newstaff.com>
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