Kayaks vs Canoes: George Dyson on how media literacy has really changed

The Edge has some brilliant essays from brilliant minds, on how the internet has changed them and will continue to morph our brains over the next decade. George Dyson explains with more clarity than I’ve ever seen the principal difference in how we deal with information properly in 2010:

In the North Pacific ocean, there were two approaches
to boatbuilding. The Aleuts (and their kayak-building relatives) lived
on barren, treeless islands and built their vessels by piecing together
skeletal frameworks from fragments of beach-combed wood. The Tlingit
(and their dugout canoe-building relatives) built their vessels by
selecting entire trees out of the rainforest and removing wood until
there was nothing left but a canoe.

The
Aleut and the Tlingit achieved similar results — maximum boat / minimum
material — by opposite means. The flood of information unleashed by the
Internet has produced a similar cultural split. We used to be kayak
builders, collecting all available fragments of information to assemble
the framework that kept us afloat. Now, we have to learn to become
dugout-canoe builders, discarding unneccessary information to reveal
the shape of knowledge hidden within.

I
was a hardened kayak builder, trained to collect every available stick.
I resent having to learn the new skills. But those who don’t will be
left paddling logs, not canoes.