\n<\/p>\n
For fifteen or twenty years, this question is relentlessly answered, whether or not we ask it.<\/p>\n
After we learn fractions, the teacher moves on to decimals. After we read O\u2019Connor, we\u2019re handed Faulkner. In music history, Debussy follows Brahms. Chemistry after biology. <\/p>\n
It persists in some places after school\u2026 the museum hangs Picasso in the next room after Braque.<\/p>\n
And in the old days, the newspaper editors spent a lot of time organizing their stories and their pages.<\/p>\n
But now\u2026 nothing.<\/p>\n
Random access. No attention paid to what we need to know now, what follows from where we are, what\u2019s about to be important.<\/p>\n
Not at work and not as citizens.<\/p>\n
Instead, it\u2019s a random-access blizzard of emails, meetings and alerts. A mob screaming about the emergency of the moment without lining up the context first. Part of our dislocation and ennui come from the lack of a shared curriculum.<\/p>\n
Choosing what\u2019s next might be the most important decision we make today.<\/p>\n