Knowing: Savoir and Connaître.

I read an interview somewhere before of one prominent Japanese economist saying from this digital age on, knowing something by heart is an act of in fact of a useless relic old-fashioned education.  If you rely on knowing there could also be a chance you could be wrong because you are relying your memory that is a lot less capable and smaller room of computer or resource in Internet.  Knowledge gained in youth while schooling, how sure are we of the accuracy?  Besides there is a lot more discovered or progressed since our education days anyway (how many of us were taught dinosaurs had feathers on their bodies?).

So his argument was instead of knowing or memorizing by heart you should have a good skill set to reach the correct source immediately online.  That way you have an access to the accurate resource instantly.  He also emphasized what we need to have is not knowledge on its own but knowing how to utilize such knowledge. 

OK, probably.  But are we all suddenly going to bog our heads down to smart phones when talking to each other every time some words or issues we don't know come up?  There is a rhythm to our conversations, there is a comfortable pause to our exchanges of words.  So, it's not so simple.  

But what he said about utilizing the knowledge should be valued more than the knowledge is very interesting.  

When I think about knowing I always go back to the differences in "Savoir" and "Connaître" in French, meaning "to know".  For Savoir has a meaning of ability, being able to do something, whereas Connaître involves knowing the knowledge of things as subjects. 

My stance on this issue is that, Yes I agree we should take a greater importance on how to utilize (Savoir) rather accumulating the knowledge (Connaître ) for its knowledge sake.  

But it is not just about Savoir we need to equip ourselves for without Connaître there would not be Savoir.  For example, "Je sais cette chanson" (Savoir) would mean I know how to sing this song.  But in order to do that you should be able to say "Je connais cette chanson" (Connaître ) to begin with that you have heard it and know of this song itself.  They are complimentary to each other, very much linked. 

So then what is the purpose of studying and learning in era when you could have instant access to Wikipedia or Oxford University Dictionary by the finger tips? 

My opinion is that it is to gain the the folds on a mountain. 

The Mountain which to make the right judgement, right choices in our lives.  That is Savoir and in order to make the Savoir, there is a lot of Connaître to fold on each other to make the mountain. 

That is why it is still beneficial we go back and read a book for example like "Le Rouge et le Noir" by Stendhal when you could read a summary off the internet so easily.  Only by going head to head, at loggerheads with those old sentences of classics we could gain the feel of 19th century, what it is like to get up in the world making the advancement in the society fighting the class struggles then.

This is all in the process of Savoir but it is also the process of gaining Connaître.  The journey of knowing never ceases.