Obsolete In Two Years - Useless In Four

Computers bring out weird instincts.  One of the instincts, oddly enough, is a noble one.  To learn.  To know more than is currently known.  To know how to DO something.  Learning is hard.  I admit that I am impressed when someone expresses an interest in learning more.  Unfortunately, reality is a harsh mistress, and most everyone learns enough to scrap by when it falls outside of what they already know and have grounded themselves in.  Harder still is the deep desire to learn and then move forward with that knowledge.  There’s a wrinkle there.  A smile line.  A crack in the surface.  I try to  hold back, but I cannot.

Whatever you learn today will be obsolete in two years and useless in four.

It is discouraging.  The first step, though, is to admit defeat.  You can’t win this battle.  You can’t know enough today to use new technology tomorrow.  Because this battle isn’t about technology.  It isn’t against technology.  It is about you.  It is against yourself.  It is battle of time and ideas.  Your own ideas wanting to stay static and other people’s ideas wanting to move forward.

I know, I know… it seems like such a good idea to take a class.  To go learn something new.  To spend some time. Some money.  To invest in yourself.  It work in college, didn’t it? In grad school.  The post doc. That all worked… didn’t it? (DIDN’T IT!? OH GOD! SURELY IT WORKED! MY LIFE ISN’T A LIE ALREADY, IS IT?)  The idea is so good.  To learn something new.

There’s an important part of learning something new.  Something we forget to do, which is rather ironic.  We forget to forget.  Don’t forget this: you need to forget what you already know.  What you know now may be useful now.  And tomorrow.  And a little bit after that.  Not forever.  Not even a while.  A while.  What you know now may may not be useful in a short while.  How frustrating.  How daunting.  How… humiliating.

It’s ok, though.  You will make it.  Now you know this.  You still want to learn the new thing I bet.  Frankly, you’re going to have to learn it.  So go ahead and do it.  Learn that thing you need to know.  It’s fine.  Oh, uh, remember this before you go in to learn it though: Don’t overlearn it.  It isn’t gospel.  It isn’t truth.  It’s just, you know, now.  It’s what you need to know to get by.

Technology is a fickle.  It changes a lot and it changes often.  We desperately, desperately want to learn the technology and use it and move forward and then succeed.  We want to learn that thing and go forward.  And once learned, it stays learned, yes?  Surely we all have enough knowledge to get by.  To succeed.  How fast we forget.  We forget that once we listened to albums.  To records.  1/2 at a time.  1/2 from start to finish and then flip the record.  The record!  Yes, then flip the record and complete it all.  We forget that we used to type dir to know what was there.  We forget FF/REW/PLAY used to take some time.  We slowly forget.  We slowly forget when we should quickly forget.  We passively forget when we should actively forget.  Forget the white elephant.  Please.  Just forget it.  FORGET IT!  PLEASE STOP WHAT YOU KNOW NOW!

Admit it.  We are packrats, the whole lot of us.  We are information packrats, sure.  Backups and archives galore.  How far back does YOUR email go?  But we are also knowledge packrats.  Learning packrats.  Skills packrats.  It is so, so hard to determine ahead of time what we will send to the rubbish bin.  What if we NEED that knowledge?!  What if we need that skill?  Forgetting is so hard.  Throwing things out is so hard.