Hayter for Feb 26, 2023
“Okay, we’re going somewhere with this.”
I’ve been mulling over some deep thoughts this morning. Unfortunately, they won’t stick with me long, so I thought I’d write ‘em down just in case I need ‘em later.
It started with “orange”. The word entered my noggin without being summoned. What are you supposed to do when something like that happens? Well, instead of trying to figure out why orange appeared, I thought -- Which came first, the name of the color or the name of the fruit?
I know I’m not the first one to ask that question,
but the question was new to me. Had the question hit me back during my high
school days, there is no telling how long it would’ve taken me to find the
answer. This morning it took me 11 seconds to pull up google and type in “which
came first “orange the fruit or orange the color?
Before I could count to two – poof! I got the answer as well as an explanation of the answer. -- “Orange the fruit came before orange the color. Orange originated from the Sanskrit word nāraṅga, meaning “orange tree.’ Only later in the 16th century was it used to describe the color.
I’ve always had quite the imagination, but
no vision. I never saw the personal computer doing the stuff it can do now. I
thought I’d be dead before that much information could be made available in so
short of a time. And right here at my house!
Of course, after watching Blade Runner,
which was filmed in 1982, depicting life as it might be in 2019, I began
thinking that Kay and I might live long enough to be speaking an Asian language
and have a home that hovered 500 feet off the ground.
There have been right at a zillion advances
in science and technology during my time on this planet. At the moment, I view
the most valuable advancement to be in the amount of accessible information and
the speed at which we can obtain it.
During my stint at Sam Houston University, I took about 114 classes and had to complete about 1026 research papers. (The numbers are merely a guess.) Eighty percent of my time at Sam Houston was spent in the college library looking for info on the topic of the day. I learned more about how to use the library than I did from skimming all the information I located.
Go forward a few years, and I’m teaching
at Oak Ridge, where I was invited to take part in a project involving the gathering
of information from universities, Public and Private libraries, and a few other
places that had info to share. The information was delivered over telephone
lines to what, by today’s standards, would be an ancient computer linked to a
landline telephone.
The process required me to use computer language to locate info. I’m dumb as dirt when it comes to technology. I’m fairly sure that’s why my friend Bob Ezell chose me. Bob is among the best teachers and communicators I’ve ever known. And he’s sharp as a tack. You see, I believe his logic in choosing me was, “If Hayter can do this, anybody can.”
I’m sure we all know that Hayter isn’t just anybody. I failed miserably at the job of finding information that would help me in teaching. In preparing lesson plans, it took me hours to come up with a partial plan for a one-hour class. I had less trouble finding information in the Sam Houston Library than I did in using the early stages of the Internet. Bob would’ve been better off had he asked a student to take my place in the program.
That was 30-plus years ago. Now the Internet is EZ PZ, and you find more stuff as fast as all get out. How can you possibly improve on something like that? The answer is “Wi-fi”. While the early Internet required phone lines, WiFi can connect your computer or television to towers as well as satellites. The information is sent from towers to satellite(s) 20,000 miles up. The information is beamed down in a computer language to any place that a magic code sends it. All of this happens in nano-seconds.
Tell you what, I’m going to use my computer to see if there is a Pizza Hut in Peru. – Excuse me a second. – (11 seconds later) There are two Pizza Huts in Lima, Peru. And, I could place an order for a large thin-crust Pepperoni to be delivered to a friend in Lima, if I had one.
You wanna know what can really mess with your mind? -- Pretend you do. --
In 1969, A Saturn 5 rocket shot three astronauts to the moon. Two of them set foot on the surface, while the third kept orbiting the moon until the other two left the surface and returned to the space capsule. Two days later the Apollo 11 capsule fell into the Pacific at a place previously mapped out. – And all of that was done through the use of slide rules.
While in high school I had no idea how a slide rule functioned. Hundreds of numbers and markings on three pieces of wood, when aligned perfectly, could tell you something. Once I could add, subtract, multiply, divide, and calculate the sine and cosine of stuff using a slide rule. I never had any idea how a sliding stick managed to do all of that. Nor do I know what a sine or cosine is.
The point is, after high school, college, and teaching I researched enough material to get by on. Now I’m retired, and I have the time and ability to learn more than I ever knew in all my previous years on the planet.
If you ask me, it’s time I (we) take advantage of the ease of learning. So much stuff out there that’s just waiting to bounce around in space until it reaches your house. I will continue with that thought later. At the moment, I feel the need for a thin-crust pepperoni pizza. Extra sauce. – Next time.
end
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