Isaac Asimov on Science and Creativity in Education

What vintage science fiction has to do with the future of self-directed learning.

We’re deeply fascinated by how the past envisioned the future. Previously: retrofuturistic artwork, Orson Welles’ Future Shock techno-paranoia, a vision for the iPad 23 years before the iPad, Marshall McLuhan’s “global village” concept, and a living timecapsule of futurism by cultural luminaries.

Today, we cross this retro-fascination with your keen interest in the future of creativity in education and turn to legendary sci-fi author Isaac Asimov, the quintessential futurist, interviewed here by Bill Moyers in 1988. Recorded upon the publication of Assimov’s 391st book, Prelude to Foundation, this three-part interview offers a rare peek inside one of history’s most fascinating minds. Asimov shares invaluable insights on science, computing, religion, population growth and the universe, and echoes some of own beliefs in the power of curiosity-driven self-directed learning and the need to implement creativity in education from the onset.

Eventually, Asimov predicts not only the very birth of the Internet, but also a number of today’s digital darlings, from standbys like Wikipedia to hot-shots du jour like Quora, as well as recently buzzword-wrapped concepts like Clay Shirky’s “cognitive surplus” — the notion that advances in technology are freeing up more human thought to be put towards creative, pro-social endeavors.

Once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries where anyone can ask any question and be given answers, be given reference materials, be something you’re interested in knowing, from an early age, however silly it might seem to someone else… that’s what YOU are interested in, and you can ask, and you can find out, and you can do it in your own home, at your own speed, in your own direction, in your own time… Then, everyone would enjoy learning. Nowadays, what people call learning is forced on you, and everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class, and everyone is different.” ~ Isaac Asimov

Sound familiar?

Moyers: But what about the argument that machines, computers, dehumanize learning?”

Asimov: As a matter of fact, it’s just the reverse. It seems to me that, through this machine, for the first time we’ll be able to have a one-to-one relationship between information source and information consumer.”

Sound familiar?

Science does not purvey absolute truth, science is a mechanism. It’s a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature, it’s a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match.” ~ Isaac Asimov

For more of Asimov’s cunning insight on the role of science and creativity in education, we highly recommend The Roving Mind — a compelling collection of 62 edifying essays on everything from creationism to censorship to the philosophy of science, in which Asimov predicts with astounding accuracy not only the technological developments of the future but also the complex public debates they have sparked, from cloning to stem-cell research.

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How to Write a Sentence: A Manual for the Art of Language

This week has been a mecca of publishing gems: From J. D. Salinger’s highly anticipated biography to a priceless collection of Kurt Vonnegut’s unpublished fiction to an innovative modernization of Gogol’s Dead Souls for the Facebook age to TED’s bold entry into publishing with the freshly launched TEDBooks imprint. But perhaps most notable among them is Stanley Fish‘s humbly titled yet incredibly ambitious How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One — an insightful, rigorous manual on the art of language that may just be the best such tool since Strunk and White’s legendary 1918 classic, The Elements of Style.

In fact, in many ways, Fish offers an intelligent rebuttal to some of the cultish mandates of Strunk and White’s bible, most notably the blind insistence on brevity and sentence minimalism. As Adam Haslett eloquently points out in his excellent FT review:

[Pared-down prose] is a real loss, not because we necessarily need more Jamesian novels but because too often the instruction to ‘omit needless words’ (Rule 17) leads young writers to be cautious and dull; minimalist style becomes minimalist thought, and that is a problem.”

To argue his case, Fish picks apart some of history’s most powerful sentences, from Shakespeare to Dickens to Lewis Carroll, using a kind of literary forensics to excavate the essence of beautiful language.

How to Write a Sentence isn’t merely a prescriptive guide to the craft of writing but a rich and layered exploration of language as an evolving cultural organism. It belongs not on the shelf of your home library but in your brain’s most deep-seated amphibian sensemaking underbelly.

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Democratizing Publishing: TED Launches TEDBooks

Yesterday, we were thrilled to hear that TED is launching TEDBooks — an imprint of short nonfiction books. Using Amazon’s freshly released Kindle Singles imprint for books under 20,000 words and designed to be read in a single sitting, the $2.99 books are available on the Kindle and Kindle Reader apps for iPad and Android.

The project launched with three promising all-star titles:

The Happiness Manifesto by Nic Marks of Happy Planet Index fame debunks the notion of using economic factors to measure a nation’s well-being and instead explores how people and nations can build real, lasting foundations for well-being — a timely addition to our selection of 7 must-read books on happiness released earlier this week.

Homo Evolutis by Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans is a bold vision for the next human species, portraying mankind as a species in transitions not only through a life science map of evolution but also through a compelling discussion of how the core principles of our civilization — government, religion, social structures — are shifting.

Beware Dangerism! by Gever Tulley takes on the culture of fear perpetuated by mass media and often embedded in parenting, which he terms “dangerism,” with surprising statistics and insights indicating that play and pursuit of curiosity — something we’re big proponents of — is the better model for raising kids to be high-functioning, entrepreneurial, creative, successful, happy people.

The effort is an “idea worth spreading” in more ways than one — it serves not only as a powerful vehicle for some of today’s most compelling thinking, leveraged by the TED brand, but also bespeaks a new frontier of publishing that bypasses the stagnant traditional model of the industry to democratize how authors’ ideas reach their audience. Bravo, TED.

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