They’ll Learn Much More

 I hear babies crying, I watch them grow.

They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.

-Bob Thiele and George David Weiss

My own experience with these lyrics is hearing Louis Armstrong sing them over the visual carnage accompanying of the opening scenes of the searing Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, movie Good Morning Vietnam.  For my generation it is a very, very emotional montage. I used to show the movie to my media criticism classes so have watched that scene many times over a couple of decades - in the company of 18 to 20 year-olds for whom the film increasingly became a history lesson. 

I would look out over their faces - some riveted, others bored - and wonder what they will be doing with the awesome opportunities that a university education would provide. There are times when it is easy to despair, what with global warming, NRA enabled school shootings, and the raw megalomania being revealed in Putin’s war on Ukraine and, shockingly, exposed in the reports stemming from various investigations into the Trump inspired January 6th riots in our own capital. 

However, recently I have been regaining some of my natural optimism as I forsake the “if it bleeds, it leads” bias of the most news programs on commercial networks and programs whose bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Instead I am paying more attention to documentaries that demonstrate how various collections of fresh-faced youngsters, removed not many years from those in my classroom, are rolling up their sleeves and reimagining, redesigning, and rebuilding this “third rock from the sun” in wonderful ways - if we; their parents and grandparents don’t trash it beyond redemption first.

For example, Elon Musk wrote a paper in 2013 conceptualizing a mode of transportation now commonly referred as the “hyper loop” which features people/product pods zipping around in enclosed tubes at speeds surpassing “bullet trains” and approaching those of jet aircraft. Then in a seemingly “un-Musklike” move he threw a white paper clarifying the idea out for public development, and sponsored a contest for the best designs. Hundreds of teams of young engineers, designers, and dreamers from all over the globe took up the challenge, resulting in several new start-ups building green, working prototypes of what could be a hugely significant evolution in transportation. 

The Hyperloop story is cause for optimism, not simply because of its potential impact on transportation and the immense knock on implications for the climate change impact on that traditionally “dirty” industry - think SUVs as the single most polluting vehicle in the world - but more importantly as a model for enabling and encouraging young, energetic students in all disciplines to focus on and pursue issues they simply have not have time to think about or encounter. Set a target and turn the amazing power of human thought and creativity loose!

I’m going to break with my normal Wall posts here and stick in another piece that I have been working on for awhile. It was designed to be a separate post but seems to fit nicely here as it could be one of those “unimaginable ideas” that the “amazing power of human thought and creativity” might address. So here it is:

My Marvelous Toy

There are any number of rabbit holes

Ripe for the tumbling down these days.

Dug by youthful techies 

Raised on science fiction,

A plethora of these

Hopeful Hogwarts wannabes 

Have jumped the requisite hoops

To claim labs of their very own.

At MIT, CERN, Google, Meta, and the like.

Not surprisingly these big-brained

All-but-babies have come 

To focus on the brain.

Or some artificial version of

Intelligence creativity artistry 

AI, AC, AA, AWhatever

They are the magicians of the impossible.

Intellectual descendants of those

Who built Steven Hawking’s awesome

Array of prosthetic devices that freed

Thought from his compromised body

To unimaginable rainbows of insight.

They enable the knitting of 

Shattered spines back through 

Silly-putty wired silicon so

Legs could again march about

To the myriad directions 

Of that maestro of intention

The brain.

But even as I read of 

Entrancing marvels ready made,

I cannot help but wonder

Will I live to see the day -

The month, the year, the decade

When the toy I most desire

Finally makes the 

“Name that Brain Game Hit Parade?”

The desire strikes most predictably 

When I suddenly find myself

Caught up in drawing a pattern -

Leaves, or dots, or swirls bright.

All that such and such 

Tedious but vital whatnot

When the brush needs a 

Sewing machine-like repetition.

Dot dot dot dot dot dot dot

Visible if you take your 6X

Magnifying glasses to a 

Carpet painted by Vermeer.

A sleeve stroked by Rembrandt.

And as my mind grows fuzzy

It occurs to me to wonder

What was Vermeer thinking 

As his brush went dip dot dot

Dip dot dot dip dot dot dip?

What was Rembrandt thinking

As his palette knife went

Scoop slap slap scoop slap slap?

What wasÉlisabeth Le Brun thinking

As her brushes went 

Dip soft stroke dip soft stroke dip?

What was Pollock thinking, ever?

What were any of them thinking

In those mindless meditative

Moments when planning is 

Replaced by artistic instinct

In the mind of a genius?

My toy with a marvelous 

Brain would tell us.

All we would need to do

Would be to capture a hi-rez

Image of any picture by anyone

From any place or time now

Floating around out in digital-land.

Free to be clicked upon for

The menu for “reveal thoughts.”

We could then choose

“Text” or “Talk” or “Other” or “Immerse”

And our device would select

The most appropriate modality

To reproduce whatever 

Had been going through 

The artist’s mind/brain/heart while

Creating the image we had chosen.

Now before falling victim to counting the

Unbelievably number of advances

Looming between my marvelous toy

And the experience I chose

Remember, time was when

Symbols required stone

Or clay or skins or paper or screens

When only birds 

And small dinosaurs flew

When we got electricity from lightning 

When phones where tethered to

Permanent cords

And could only reproduce sound.

When cars only ran on gasoline 

When you were only either male or female

When you got music from bones 

Or carved reeds, hollow skins

Or hand cranked record players

When you could have heard

A Nobel prize winning poet sing

“The times they are a’ hanging.”

When the prescient Bard scribbled 

There are more things in heaven and Earth, 

Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Right now I’m dreaming of my own

Marvelous Toy.

As you can probably tell, the old clock on the wall, or more accurately the clock here on my laptop has made its way into the tiny hours after midnight when my thoughts, while still seeming clear and rational to me, tend to make their way into the land of “What the Heck is He Talking About?” So I will bid you goodnight, and see what other dreams might creep into my philosophy.