Page 29 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

Our Learning Systems:28 1. Our Senses
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In a recent lecture at Harvard University neuroscientist Jeff Lichtman, who is attempting to map the human brain, has calculated that several billion petabytes of data storage would be needed to index the entire human brain. The internet is currently estimated to be 5 million terabytes (TB) of which Google has indexed roughly 200 TB or just 0.004% of its total size. 29 David Schilling
Our senses and how we apply and store sensory data is our first learning system; one we share with many other species. Our senses stimulate the creation of memories that allow us to recall and leverage those experiences later. Our senses provide us with the raw data that our brain then interprets, and that in turn informs and incrementally changes our worldview. It is how we interpret what we sense that results in us all having a unique worldview.
We process enormous amounts of data with our eyes, snapping a new image field every 200 milliseconds, equivalent to hundreds of millions of pictures, by the age of 3 years old.30 Much of the interpretation of our senses happens via the emotions we attach to those sensory inputs. This process creates even richer data that can inform our learning.
Even trying to remember a shopping list alters our worldview. Just the thought of the ice cream on the list, changes our attitude towards shopping. Strictly, just remembering a shopping list would not constitute thinking if there is no emotion; but that it is highly unlikely. Our senses and our emotions are inextricably linked to each other and our thinking. Once we start thinking about the order in which we would buy the items on our shopping list, it has become a thinking task as we are talking to ourselves about the possibilities and this invokes our emotions.
What we have done here is separate remembering without any emotion, feeling or contextual application and thinking into two quite distinct tasks that the brain carries out. As can be seen from the quote at the top of the page, the amount of data that our senses process is extraordinary. New research31 indicates that our brain processes all the sensory data in a single data stream, rather than that being processed in specific locations in the brain. We will not remember this data unless our senses sense data that is unusual or something we did not predict or expect to happen.
We can now define thinking as any experience that alters our worldview.
The number of senses we have is debatable but the list includes our five accepted senses along with our sense of balance, pain, temperature and some additional sub senses. Our senses provide the data that allows us to make sense of our world, form memories, and subsequently learn. Sensory inputs (including sight, balance, touch, pain, smell, hearing and taste), combine to create a complex concept framework of our world that then becomes our revised worldview. By cognitively reflecting on our thoughts, this alters our worldview, which also constitutes learning, creating revised and sometimes, new memories. Interestingly, the recall or re-experiencing of a specific combination of sensory data can initiate the recall of emotions and previously formed memories.
28 The chapter 3 summary video can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW2gFvEYNy4 if you are reading the book otherwise click on the video icon at the top of the page
29 Schilling, D. R. (2014). Knowledge Doubling Every 12 Months, Soon to be Every 12 Hours. [Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/knowledge-doubling-every-12-david-russell
30 Fei-Fei Li. (2015) How We're Teaching Computers to Understand Pictures. Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab and Vision Lab.
http://bit.ly/2bB82LP
31 Maó, Menorca; (2003), Computational Methods in Neural Modeling: 7th International Work, Conference on Artificial and Natural Neural Networks Part 1, Springer; Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2b7BKaD
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