A Sumtyme Blog of Knowthing

During the past 100 years or so, technology has increasingly enabled us ,individually and as a society, to remember more things in different ways— ways which have become commonly adapted as normal life. Everywhere we have documents, images, and sounds digitized and the amount of record(ing)s seem to grow in an ever growing rate. Increasingly we are not allowed to forget our past and perhaps are condemned to live with it our whole life.

The ones that bother me  are those that reflect the “(mis)opinion” of some expert, usually in something associated with education and psychology. Sometime in elementary school I took some tests and it was decided thatI had no artistic talent or natural artistic abilities and each time I expressed an interest in art,the “education professionals” would magically pull out these test results and “knowingly with the hand of  professional wisdom and authority,  guide me towards what was good for me no matter what I wanted. After leaving graduate school where I studied Sociology and kind of wandering around for a few years, I returned to school, studied graphic design and for thirty years  I had a graphic design business doing marcom for high tech and biotech businesses.

Now we have a bunch of records following us around all day everywhere, we rarely get to see them, often someone wants to charge us to see them. Yet others who make important decisions about our lives without ever meeting us, just by simply looking at some numbers or answers to some questions which for the part seemed  unrelated to our lives when we answered them and times as well as our lives have long since change,  get unfettered access. Maybe the only way to get away from them is to shut off the electricity if I could remember where the switch is located.

How we know history is influenced by the technology of the times which functions as an extension of our memory—recording devices. The ability of the technology to produce a more consistent experience across a broader range of society should increase the possibility of an increased common view of history and increased social cohesiveness.

Pre-writing people were dependent on memory for recording and personal interaction for transmission, and developing symbols and the ability to create them and store them would increasingly play a part until they coalesced into writing.

With writing but still pre-print meant that at best a small number of each record would be individually made with some variations between the “same items,” increasing the common the experience slightly and perhaps irregularly.

When print developed, the graphic arts, where graphic refers to multiple reproductions of the same image, enabled a consistency of information in multiple copies qualitatively increasing the opportunities for a common experience to be available to a large number of people, enabling a more common view of history implying a more cohesive society.

However it appears the opposite is a better description of what has happened. Older traditional societies which rely more on memory and personal interaction to remember and transmit history are more closely bonded than contemporary societies, where with an abundance of more accurate historical records, which increasingly not only include print, images and audio but with computer the ability to transmit it instantly and ubiquitously, are found in contemporary societies where the bonds of a common culture are less cohesive. Better records results not only in a more accurate memory but in more criticism of that memory.

So when “Uncle Remus” stories might have been handed down orally with no “critical questions” asked, when they appear in print 100 years later they are actually not revered for their historical accuracy but disgraced as representing something unacceptable in our history.

The technology of the transmission plays a part in this. In oral society the individual learning is only allowed to learn with a personal commitment to the teacher that is part of the face to face interaction—the information and recording device are one and the same thing.

In contemporary society the records themselves, such as a book, are separated  and the person doing the learning, with the ability to read,  is not required to have a personal commitment to another person but to the process of decoding the information, i.e. in the case of a book the ability to read.

Learning is separated from the face to face interactive experience and its prison of obligations.

In the case of  “Uncle Remus” stories which may well be very accurate and perhaps unique records of  historical human experience would probably not be allowed in our common educational process , say k-12 and even at university only in a very specialized class, along with a cautionary statement, because of our contemporary view that the use of the “n=word” ( and its very prevalent in these stories) would negate its value to society—a line is drawn.

(On the other hand we see another line drawn with “Hucklebery Finn” in which the word is sometimes used, and despite the attempts of a few to censor, is still commonly considered acceptable.)

Yet when I read in Uncle Remus, “N(-word)s is n(-words) now but the time waz we was all n(-word)s  together,” I cannot help but think of the National Geographic tv show I saw a few years where using  a DNA and Y-chromosome based scientifically gathered empirical data, presented an argument that human life began in Africa and from there spread around the world. We all began in Africa, all the same. Still who knows what our common skin color was at that time, it may have been green but we did all begin at the same place with the same skin color  and Uncle Remus seems to have gotten before science ,and the Bible which begins there, maybe its good to remember a little wisdom of common sense.

For what its worth the answer, according to Uncle Remus, to “I-doom-er-ker–kum-mer-ker!” is “Jug-er-rum-kum-dum!” and I thank Bobbie McFerrin and James Joyce for helping to keep sound a tool for knowing.

I would guess that Shakespeare’s history is about as inaccurate as any of the film maker’s in Hollywood and the response of the audience is probably on par. except, lately I have been watching “Naked City” reruns while I do some floor exercises. This TV series was made in the latter part of the 1950’s.

When  I watch this I think of all of the social critics who so easily find fault with the political incorrectness of  1950’s tv.  Its not just that they miss the historical time, but rather that they try to build their own career on the backs of  someone else’s efforts—instead of making their own line longer, they  make someone else’s line shorter.

First, “Naked City ” regularly had African Americans actors in regular parts, I have yet to see an African American typed cast as as a gangster, which is very common in our enlightened shows of today., but I have seen  factory worker,  secretary in an office,  police officer and students in school as well as a guest starring role by Diahann Carroll as a teacher  in a program in which there was not even a hint of race, just a teacher.

Secondly, during my life I have met many people from minority families whose parents were like the Cleaver Family, or The Donna Reed show, i,e, their parents were kind, supporting, had rules and restrictions and were concerned about politeness,  manners and responsibility. Maybe they did not have all the middle class material benefits, but I am not a person who thinks that growing up around more expensive things makes one a better person.

Plus the stories themselves on “Naked City” were and are still superior  quality for TV.. Maybe they don’t have a bunch of killing and sex, and women detectives with big breasts almost popping out of  low cut tops running in 3″  high heels while in one  hand aiming a Glock 45 at some escaping bad guy 50 yards away and scoring a direct deadly hit.

Plus, “Naked City” had  outstanding guests,  some who appeared in multiple starring roles  such as Jack Klugman, and  Peter Falk who actually danced  an irish jig for about 30 seconds, and in 1958, Tuesday Weld and Rip Torn in an episode very similar to her role in Pretty Poison, a movie to appear about ten years later.

The images which are posted here seem interesting to me, maybe or not to others. Sometimes I wonder  if I am just fooling myself and then I start to think that I should have some words along with the images to show how smart I really am. After I read the words I wonder if I am fooling myself and so I put an image along with the words to show you how great a designer I  really am.

Reading the words is the price to see the images or seeing the images is the price to read the words. Which ever one its cheaper than watching the elected employees not doing the job they have and getting paid for it , running around asking for a higher level job public job. If they won’t do the job they have due to personal ambition and to them this is perfectly alright, why would anyone think they would do a higher level job when struck by the rational of personal amibition.

Remember Bob Dole?  When he ran for president he resigned as senator because he thought thast was the proper thing to do when you were looking for a new job. What would happen to you if you went to your boss and said “I won’t be coming to work next year because I will be looking for a higher level job but I still expect to get paid for the year.”?

Elected employees see this as an entitlement; it seems to me that it is an empirical observation that such a person lacks a basic qualification for the higher level job.