Reading Dewey’s Liberalism and Social Action. Great book.
While making a larger point about how it is generally a mistake to view intelligence solely as a an individual matter of capacity, Dewey goes off on an interesting tangent about how scientific learning (and it’s concrete manifestation, technology) are largely cooperative social phenomena. Good point. Even the most way-out, novel invention is usually still little more than a tiny victor’s flag planted on the summit of other peoples’ labor. As Newton said, "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." Smart guy, that Ike.
Our lives are shot through with collective, social intelligence. A small example: The good old all-American automobile. I’ll confess, if you dismantled my car and spread its thousands of parts out in front of me, I’d never get it back together. Its a safe bet to say that no single person possesses the in-depth knowledge of metallurgy, chemical engineering, electronics, etc. that it would take to fashion the parts themselves, never mind the skill and learning required to extract, refine, or engineer the raw materials needed to make the parts in the first place. But our considerable ignorance about what it takes to make a car from scratch doesn’t slow us down one bit as we hop in the Family Truckster and drive to the store. Your cheesy beaded seat covers rest upon the shoulders of giants. See? You’re just like Isaac Newton!
Dewey’s point was that we tend to ignore the social and environmental factors when assessing intelligence. We say this person is smart or that one is stupid without taking into account the concentrated social intelligence embedded in (or or missing from) that person’s environment. Obviously, someone who grew up and lives in an environment that is rich in embedded learning is going to be more intellectually productive; the problem is that we treat that productivity as a matter of individual capacity and ignore the rest. Ultimately, this is why I.Q. tests are so massively full of shit.
What I’m interested in here, though, is the implied inverse: that we can become "smarter"ourselves– and help to make others smarter– by adjusting the the amount of embedded intelligence in our environments. Obviously, continuing personal or formal study is a crucial part to this, but there’s another dimension: seeking out (and providing) the tools that allow us to make the most efficient use of the socialized intelligence already available in our culture.
Returning to the car example, all the labor and intelligence embedded in the ol’ Truckster in the driveway doesn’t do me any good unless I know how to use it. That time and effort floats in the ether unless I have the means and opportunity to put it to work. Fortunately, the interface provided by the car’s makers and designers– plus a few lessons with a patient instructor– is all it takes to unlock the thousands of hours of study, research, and labor that it took to make the car. And there’s the point: being able to drive a car gives me enormous power but I don’t have to learn how every little bit of it works to be able use that power in my life.
There are massive amounts of social intelligence available on the Web generally and it community sites like dKos in particular. I’ve benefited greatly from the knowledge and expertise of those who post here, and don’t even get me started on the wider Open Source Software community. I’d probably have a different career– a different life– entirely if it weren’t for the GNU/Linux and Perl communities and the millions of hours of socialized intelligence and labor that each groups various members have contributed.
Yet, there’s still often a barrier between we who contribute and those who could benefit most. Its not enough to make the knowledge and work available– as useful as that is– We have to make it accessible; we have to make it easy to apply; we have to put the tools and intelligence we create into the hands of those who need it most and help them practice with them until they become second nature.
Do you want people to contact their members of Congress on a given issue? Don’t just say "Call your Congressperson!", give your readers a link to look up who their Member or Senators are and how to contact them. Avoid jargon unless you know for certain that you’re communicating with an expert audience. In all cases, do whatever you can to make things easier for your audience/users to take advantage of the intelligence that you’re sharing because that’s how the World changes.
And so, here is my pledge and my plea: I promise to take whatever tiny bits of victory I build upon the effort of others and work to get them into the hands of those who could benefit the most. I promise not to lecture but to teach. I promise to try to make those around me more powerful by sharing what I know and make in a way that doesn’t require them to know what I know.
And I ask you to join me.