Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Perhaps we have become a bit too smart for our own good. Time to swing the pendulum back to practical, in-real-life activities.

Yet another pendulum swings back and forth. We are in the 21st century and harnessing the power or our brains and augmenting our brains with AI and all such marvelous things.

Hey, could you fix the leak in the toilet so it stops making noise and I can sleep at night? Uh, oh, well, you see… flashback to the Big Bang Theory episode where the scientists can’t change a flat tire.

We live in a world of publications and published thoughts, i.e., the PDF file. I am so smart. I dominate here.

And then there is in-real-life or IRL. Fix the toilet or the lawnmower or remove the green stuff that forms on the north side of the vinyl-sided house. And how about wire the wires that bring power to that new datacenter? Yeah, instead of a degree with $300,000 debt in college loans from fill-in-the-blank-with-your-least-favorite-private-college, what about a year at a trade school to learn Ohm’s law and where the white, black, and green wires go on the outlet?

Knowledge is good (wasn’t that in some movie?). There are many types of knowledge. Some are in real life, not publications. Time to adjust.