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LEARNING

                                Some revisions: April 2000  
				(lost original text) 
									      
In Ted Nelson's _Computer Lib/Dream Machines_
there's a side bar on strategies for learning.
One of his points is that magazines & journals are
more up to date than books, and usually deserve
more attention.

Frequently I start out searching
the current papers published on a 
topic, and if I'm not already 
really familiar with the field 
(and for me, it's rare that I 
am) I find them bewildering.  

Okay, you did this that and the 
other thing, but what for?  Why 
were you bothering to look into 
this anyway?  

"Introduction" sections are 
ubiquitous, but they always 
seem reluctant to just spell 
out what the "holy grails" 
are in the field.  Even "Review" 
papers aren't much better. 

The point I'm leading up to: you
can't just rely on recent
magazines & journals.  They tend
to tell you the minutiae of
what's going on, but never
describe the larger concerns.

Even recent text books in a 
field are often a problem: 

   (a) Western culture appears to
   have lost the ability to write 
   clearly some time around the
   mid-60s. 

   (b) Publisher's like to have
   "new" textbooks out on a
   subject, even if the subject 
   hasn't changed in decades.  
   Ask yourself: would you take 
   on the job of writing a book 
   like this for any reason other 
   than the money?  How good a 
   job would you be likely to do 
   on it?  


Sometimes older is better.  
The papers don't cover the
"elementary" stuff in the books,
and the older the book is, the
more detail and enthusiasm is
lavished on the stuff that today
is considered old hat.
                                   


                              (And perhaps in context it's       
                              worth mentioning that in a more    
                              Xanalogical world, the             
                              disadvantage of the old being      
                              "out of date" would be             
                              ameliorated...  follow-ups to      
                              to what you're reading would       
                              always be only a few clicks away.) 
                              



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