The fool on the hill

I agree with the feeling that its wrong and arrogant to assume that we are smarter today than man has ever been. One has to be very intelligent to figure out that rubbing sticks together or striking certain stones together will give you a spark to start a fire, or to figure out the wheel. We rely on both those basic inventions for almost every modern amenity we have...but are most of us smart enough to have invented the wheel. Can we really compare the genius of Tesla, Bell and Edison with Steve Jobs?  I don’t say this to undermine the modern day genius, but to undermine our sense of intelligence.  We laugh at early man who observed the sky and saw everything moving around the earth and made a reasonable assumption that the earth was the centre till Galileo came along with his telescope and observed something that changed that fundamental assumption.  Trust most of us would have gone along with the earth was the centre of the earth theory.  We know more because we came later and we’ve had time to learn from the few who actually do achieve ground breaking progression.

Thomas Edison

In my waking moments I realized this as I thought about a number of things, the fact is most of humanity couldn’t invent a sharpened stick, we’re creatures of what has come before us, and here’s  the challenge I tend to have with any theory that assumes we’re smarter today than we were yesterday because the observational evidence simply isn’t there.  (I will grant I’ve not done a certified scientific study on this) but you see it in small things.  I get plenty of credit in my place of work for problem solving and being creative…Truth is I’m not, I’m just smart enough to realize on a planet populated by billions its highly likely a good number of people have had the same problem and felt the need to post it on youtube and google.  If we were all as smart as the dude who figured out how to build a fire ask yourself how come its taken 5,000 odd years of written human history for us to make the super conductor.  Surely at that level of intelligence internal combustion should have been developed a few hundred years after the invention of the wheel and fire.  It hasn’t because most of us are only smart enough to work with the information given (which is all you need to survive really) meaning were it not for Galileo and the people bothered to research the heavens we’d probably still be content believe that the earth was centre of the universe.

Nikola Tesla

This isn’t a random rant, but rather I think we should realize having an education doesn’t give you any real right to call someone backward. Yes they may be ignorant but they’re working with the information they have as you are, because without education you wouldn’t have the wherewithal to rub two sticks together to make fire. I’m not calling modern man dumb, he’s just not as smart as he may think.  On a more practical level we should show a great deal more patience with those who’ve not had the same opportunities in education. Most of all it should stop us from taking condescending positions when it comes to dealing with people. Recently they discovered a Genius in the UK who at 4 years old has 1 IQ point less than Einstien and Hawking, its interesting that most of the geniuses found by Mensa are from the west. This would make a fool falsely assume that people in the west are smarter or more prone to genius.  My question to them is would the guy who discovered the wheel be considered an innovator today? As Africa our smartest people today may not be theorising the intricacies of quantum mechanics however they are doing plenty in addressing issues that close to Africa’s heart. This lot may not get the money of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates or the platitudes of Stephen Hawking however this will not undermine their contribution to humanity. After all, most of the world has no idea who Nikola Tesla is but we stand on his shoulders every time we flip a light switch.  

Genius

More about Kenya...

Alight I had promised one of my “Ma-fans” a blog entry which has been years in coming. Ok... not a fan, more like a dear friend but everyone is entitled to their delusions of grandeur.

Not quite how the request happened

I had an interesting conversation a while back where I argued that Kenyans need to be less political and more focused on the economy.  I also argued partly one of the reasons we’re so political is we’re idle.  Of course those statements had me feeling like a goat at Christmas but i still see them as true.   What I meant by this that firstly we’re not all that involved in politics, we’re at best “observer participants” who feel that voting once every 5 years makes us patriotic and doing something for national good. I argue that is the formula for bad politics (and we’ve seen the evidence). I think democracy is like a child, in that it requires a great deal of attention when it young and as it grows it requires less attention.  We still have a very young democracy, and to expect good leadership by merely showing up on Election Day is a bit like expecting a child who hasn’t bee socialized properly to behave well.  This demonstrates that we forget that we have a large legacy of bad leadership to overcome which won’t be done by being “active” for a day. The legacy and the infancy of the democracy demands more action on our collective part such that the leadership is truly held accountable on regular basis, no only after a few years when they have amassed enough resources to buy themselves out of any gaffes and indiscretions. Our expectations and standards must be at a level we accept responsibility for ensuring that day to day the leaders are held to account by those who chose them. Showing up on Election Day after 5 years of reading the newspaper and watching news isn’t patriotic, it isn’t even noble instead its lazy and counterproductive. Most of us wouldn’t give birt/sire a child and leave it to its own devices only to show up  one day every few years, so why do we do this if we really care about our democracy? We’re at an interesting cross-roads in our country but if we don’t start saying now, the elite political are going to consolidate and tell us who among them we shall “chose.”

will this really secure our future? 

Science tells us that planets are created when clouds of particles and dust orbiting around a star begin to pull together with larger objects attracting smaller objects until there a planet is formed.  I tend to presidential elections in this way. Where larger and more “attractive objects” are able to pull smaller object in to their gravitational pull thus making a viable challenge (planet)   Some parties are inherently unstable and are susceptible to collapse, as is the case with the asteroid belt in our own solar system. Its interesting in this political cycle that what we would have expected is the strongest candidates pulling together other players to make a strong case for candidacy.  Opinion polls aside we’re seeing instead is a super nova in progress where everything is falling apart.  I’m curious as to why nobody currently seems able to build at the moment. It makes me wonder if we’re really at the point of seismic shift in our politics where we may witness wholesale changes in the elite political landscape. If so what does this mean for us as we move forward?

Tangent!

On another tangent, I saw that the UK is developing a kit to get kids to start coding as early as standard 2 or 3.   As we try to “push” this Sillicon Savannah concept, we have to get on the ball early you can see what the competition is doing, trying to get a big head start, and if they succeed it will make our foray in to developing a substantive IT sector all the more difficult.  I appreciate what the leadership is trying to do with the Konza idea, but I insist there needs to be a parallel program ensuring that interested Kenyans at any age, have access for software and hardware development tools.  Remember that some of the most successful people in IT have done it by starting in their parents’ home trying to do things with little training.  Surely we can borrow a leaf and give our innovators the tools they need to innovate.

Those who are charged with policy implementation