By playing with information, especially abstract subjects the material assumes more meaning. I am tempted to take up Negroponte's theme of play, but I have done that in other talks. Just visit my website. But let's look at another wrong book. It is another kind of comment on what we do in liberal arts education.
Specialization is for insects.
I now have a bill pending before the faculty legislature to reform the curriculum to allow not only for sonnet writing but hog butchering and pitching manure. Majors are one of the worst distortions we perpetrate in the liberal arts. And I also hope that, if Sewanee has done its job while you are here, that when you come to your senior year, you have at least half a thought that you majored in the wrong thing and perhaps ought to change. Now, I know that some of you have been primed and preened by well-meaning adults to select a certain major since about the sixth grade and you come here already specialized in your minds. And on occasion, a cosmic match is made at an early age.