Due to the internet and web there is now a great deal of difference between how we can learn about things that already exist in our scientific and artistic culture and how we used to - it is a difference as great as that between the library of Alexandria and the World brain of H.G. Wells.
What kind of mind is needed to make sense of the way we can access this interconnected and sometimes unreliable information? In the book Five Minds for the Future Howard Gardner calls this the “synthesizing mind” :
The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons. Valuable in the past, the capacity to synthesize becomes ever more crucial as information continues to mount at dizzying rates.
The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons. Valuable in the past, the capacity to synthesize becomes ever more crucial as information continues to mount at dizzying rates.
