Again we need to start with a trip in the WayBack machine. Dates: 1955 - 1958. Location: The ABC television network. Target: The Mickey Mouse Club TV show. Specific Target: The Encyclopedia - Curiosity Song. And here we go! Wheeeeeee!
Well, for those of you for whom this is a familiar landscape, you get in free with your AARP membership cards. For the rest of you this is where the familiar Mouse got his major introduction to kids all over America. His international fame was still only a gleam in Walt's eye. The MM Club show was "must see TV" for kids back in the day. It had different themes for each day of the week:
- Monday – Fun with Music Day
- Tuesday – Guest Star Day
- Wednesday – Anything Can Happen Day
- Thursday – Circus Day
- Friday – Talent Round-up Day
And there were some repeating "teaching" tunes, which is where we are heading - to The Encyclopedia Song, sung by Jiminy Cricket:
I worry about the current state of curiosity in today's world. Oh, there is still curiosity - that is not the problem. Rather, I worry about how easy it is to find answers that previously required days, months, years of dedication and research. Let's not even think about how the various screens on which you may be reading this post came about. Instead let us consider the lowly light bulb that is probably burning somewhere in the area.
So, let us imagine the world before lightbulbs. The world of Thomas Alva Edison in the late 1870s. Electricity was already around, and would become the center of "the current wars" where Edison [who favored "direct current" DC] and Nicola Tesla [who favored "alternating current" AC] contested for dominance in the emerging technology. Tesla, who had previously worked for Edison, won.
The problem facing Edison was that the light bulbs of the time would only last a few short hours before the filament would burn out. So Edison set about testing hundreds of different materials including platinum and beard hair. Eventually, Edison and his team found that a carbonized cotton thread filament, perfected in October 1879, lasted for 13.5 hours - way beyond the life span of the other extant filaments. Problem solved.
The problem facing Tesla was that the existing DC power systems were unable to send current over long distances and so to expand electricity to neighborhoods would require a power plant on every corner. Eventually Tesla developed a polyphase AC system (motors, generators, transformers) allowing efficient long-distance power transmission, greatly reducing number of power plants necessary to bring electricity to entire cities. Eventually AC became the global standard, and the one that led to the ubiquitous lightbulbs and the incredibly complex systems that allows them to perch so quietly in our lives, waiting for us to flick them on, pushing back night and allowing our 24/7 world to become possible.
The point is that both men invested thousands of hours in researching the answers for the questions prompted by - yup - their curiosity. And the same is true of all those curious minds we used to study in history class: Ford and his Model T, Curie and her work in radiology, Carver and his work with sweet potatoes and peanuts. All were shining examples of Edison's contention that "genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." And, I would contend, is motivated by a driving curiosity.
Satisfying curiosity was hard work. It took time, dedication, the ability to work through repeated failure, and yes, that perspiration.
How do we deal with curiosity in today's world? When we wonder about something? When we are confronted with a problem we need to solve? Well, duh! We casually "google" it - a strange verb that we all understand. We go online where the greatest challenge to our creativity is deciding which search engine to use and how we construct our search terms.
Mind you, I'm not knocking it. I'm as guilty as the next guy when it comes to pulling out my phone to settle dinner table debates. But I'm an old guy. For cryin' out loud, I watched The Mickey Mouse Club when it was new! I am not at the point in my life where I am looking to invest a few decades in calming my curiosity. But besides - and this is really important - I'm not ready to assume that what I read online, what may be constructed by AI, is true.
Everything that appears on our screens is created by someone - or, increasingly these days, something. The President's "Truth Social" is his truth - not some incontrovertible "truth" writ large. It presents "truth" as he sees it - at that moment. Subject to his uniquely swiftly shifting perspective and mood.
This post - all of Schrag Wall - is my truth. Based on my perspective and mood. You need to consider it's truth as closely as you would Truth Social. And that is true of the entire online world. What was it that President Reagan said? "Trust, then verify."
These days when considering the internet we might invert that, "verify before trusting," the old "sez who!?" test. But that is not the major problem. The concern I have is for the generations who have always had the internet. Who seem inclined to casually trust it, not only with their personal lives, but also with the answers it provides in response to their curiosity:
"Hmmm. I wonder if there is a ninth planet out beyond Neptune? If so, will its orbit eventually destroy earth? I guess I'll go online and see. Wow! A lot of different "truths" out here. Maybe I'll choose one. Or maybe instead I'll just check my Facebook page. See what's happening with my BFFs."
No. Maybe one ought to spend a decade or two studying astronomy, telescopes, optical, digital, radio, terrestrial, space-based, maybe on Mars? Interpretation of resultant data, and come up with a system that better addresses that curiosity.
We have obviously progressed far beyond Jiminy Cricket's encyclopedia, but hopefully the cat is as curious as ever. And just as hopefully, those young internet-savvy curious cats out there will distill methods that allow them to peer through the increasingly dense thicket of varying online perspectives. And, in doing so, provide us with better science, better medicine, better art and literature, better politics, better truth - better lives.
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