Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Exploring the Ten Percent Myth: Literacy, Libraries, and Learning with New Media

Smackie, a fellow blogger, comments on a recent post:

What i find difficult about new media that it is overrun with information. All kinds of information. I[t] might be difficult for educators or the user to make a selection of information on its own. Yes i find the web a great database to educate yourself and by that others. But i see the web as a brain, we, you, all of us using only 10% of the entire web database to learn, educate and for leisure.

How you guys feeling about that?

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To think of the Web as a metaphor for the human brain seems like a logical step. It is an idea many people can clearly grasp. However, I am willing to bet we know more about the Web than we know about our brains.

A cognitivist perspective, that is, one that believes that mental functions can be explained via experimentation and applied scientific method, tends to look at the world in terms of reducing quanta to meaningful chunks that have an explanation. A romantic notion, no?

While I see a place for such a stance, this perspective often brushes aside what Heidegger calls being in the world, that is, the personal meanings one gleans through experience. The idea that mental functions can be described through information processing models has been openly criticized for years and becomes all the more sticky when we introduce notions of language and cultural relevance.

Nonetheless, figuring out how to tap the Web’s infinite informational resources meaningfully is a wonderful dilemma for educators and non-educators alike. In this sense, the Web is more like a super-library with tomes and tomes of texts of various shapes, sizes, and perspectives.

I must admit, I have always loved going to the library. As a child I remember this sense of power I felt when I was taught how to use the card catalog. If I could imagine it, I could browse through dozens of 3 X 5 cards cataloging subjects and authors and book titles designed to draw my attention. Then, with the proper code scribbled on a scrap of paper, I would head to the stacks of books where my initial quest would be constantly diverted by hundreds of other choices. God I loved it!

So, while the Web started as a virtual media repository/shopping centre, it has become enhanced by the opportunity to not only browse but to engage and participate with other people like sellers, writers, family, friends, etc.

I have often heard of the brain described as a neural network. This image is easily transferred to the notion of the World Wide Web as a collection of nodes connected by an invisible tissue of binary code. Yet, I think such a metaphor still lacks telling the whole story. The Web is not like a human brain because the human brain (and its accompanying transporter) has situativity, it has context and culture, it has heredity and social capital. Thus such a metaphor reduces the complexity in a manner that fails to capture both the human brain and the Web’s dynamic grandeur.

The 10% Factor

I have always been suspect of the easily bandied mythology that suggests that we, as humans, only use ten percent of our brain. Research has since proven otherwise, yet, very few people seem to bother to check this out.

Similarly, I believe that the suggestion that collectively we are only tapping into ten percent of Web also rings false. But to make this argument more interesting, let’s try this brief thought experiment (which, by the way, is my attempt to be absolutely reductionist): Given the diversity of human interest, let’s say I only explore ten percent of the Web that catches my fancy. My neighbor, who has completely different interests, explores a different ten percent. My neighbor across the street explores yet another ten percent, and so on and so on. Even with a certain amount of overlapping interest, over a relatively brief amount of time (given the millions of Web surfers) I am willing to bet that collectively, we are tapping into nearly ninety-nine percent of the Web. We also might consider that particular persons create the content that fills the Web at a particular time, thus somebody is tapping into the reaches that many of us are completely unawares.

Interestingly, this line of reasoning brings me back to my humble library. As I grew older, I began thinking of the library differently. As I strolled through the stacks, I began to feel sad for all the books that never seemed to receive any attention. I imagined these books to be written with care. I imagined the author’s life and the blood, sweat, and tears that he or she might have poured into their work; the hours and days of agonizing over syntax or the arrangement of ideas, trying so hard to get everything just right. Then there are the editors, typesetters, bookbinders, and the myriad of people whose lives touched this text both directly and indirectly. And here this book sits, sandwiched in between hundreds of others, and nobody is paying it any attention. The library then served as a museum or worse, a morgue or cemetery, where people’s ideas go to rest in peace.

So perhaps, this is where the notion of ten percent seems credible, that is, the historical nature of information is often left aside as new and perhaps more interesting/relevant ideas surge to the fore. As such we can only pay attention to a small percent that washes over us, leaving say, ninety percent ignored.

So, to get back to the initial question framed by Smackie: how are we, as educators, supposed to teach children and adults how to sort through the beautiful tangle of media and information housed on the Web? Perhaps the best place to start is to consider your own interests, to find what excites you and begin working your way through the stacks until you find something that fires your senses.

As an educator I believe it is incumbent upon us all to teach and model skills that provide individuals the ability to question authorities, to understand the responsibility we have towards each other, and to be able to articulate and synthesize what we learn in ways that are open, honest, and allow for debate and revision. This approach is not new, nor is it unique. New media allows us to have this very discussion where anyone with access, interest, and intention can chime in (the issue of access is a whole other topic for discussion, no?).

For me, while I enjoy closure on many levels, I recognize that the concept is human and ultimately bound to disappoint. I have found that looking for answers often leads me to more questions, thus learning is this never-ending process that I try to model for others.

So, to quote one of my favorite existential philosophers, Woody Allen, retelling a great cosmic joke:

“Could it not be simply that we are alone and aimless, doomed to wander in an indifferent universe, with no hope of salvation, nor any prospect except misery, death, and the empty reality of eternal nothing?”

The uncle replies, “You wonder why you’re not invited to more parties.”