Hello all -
Happy Sunday!
A visit this week to Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, got me thinking about the concept of ‘tacit knowledge’. Bletchley Park is the home of the Bombe, the machine which helped to decipher encrypted messages from the German Enigma machines throughout World War II, made famous by the film The Imitation Game featuring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley.
The Bombe was primarily Alan Turing's brainchild, but let’s not forget that the actual Enigma code was originally cracked by three Polish mathematicians—Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki, and Henryk Zygalski. I was pleased to see the fitting memorial at Bletchley Park to their work, which significantly shortened the length of WWII and saved countless lives. I’ll certainly loop back to these incredible minds in later newsletters.
The Bombe is the main attraction at Bletchley Park. It’s a large, rudimentary, part-electrical, part-mechanical device designed to reveal the settings for the Enigma Machine on any given day, to enable the decoding of all Enigma-encrypted messages. The following day, the Germans would change the settings and the Bombe had to start all over again. (In fact, by the end of the war, there were over 200 Bombes in the UK and more than 100 Bombes in the USA.)
User Messybeast on en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The point is that time was of the essence. The longer the Bombe took to work out the Enigma settings on any given day, the more likely important decrypted information would be lost.
Turing worked out that processing time could be shortened if humans made a few guesses at the start of the day as to what some of those settings might be. This time saved could be significant. A ‘crib’, i.e. a potential word or phrase, was input to the Bombe to give it a head start. Once the Bombe had completed its task, the information gathered was then passed over to more humans, the crypto-analysts, who used intuition and experience to complete the deciphering.
So, back to tacit knowledge;
tacit adjective
[tas-it]
"implied or indicated but not actually expressed"
The word 'tacit' comes from the Latin ’tacitus’ which means ‘to be silent’.
It was fascinating to learn how humans worked alongside the grunting processing power of a rudimentary computer to produce a result greater than the sum of their individual efforts. Those humans, admittedly very bright, relied on their own personal store of experiences, learnings, interactions and observations to win each day. In other words, they relied on their tacit knowledge.
Tacit knowledge is effectively our personal intellectual blueprint. It is unique to each of us and difficult to pass on. That’s why smart organisations (like MI6 at Bletchley Park) employ people with wide-ranging backgrounds to maximise the benefits of that tacit knowledge. It’s also the reason we parents nag our children to read behind a subject, not because it will help them pass a particular exam but because it will top up their reservoir of tacit knowledge for the future.
Polymath Michael Polanyi, in the 1950s and 1960s, realized that humans “believe more than we can know” and "know more than we can say". He contemplated the idea of tacit knowledge as a basis for problem-solving, invention, leadership and decision-making.
I think this is why we still have a long way to go before AI machines topple humans. As it is hard to pass on tacit knowledge from humans to humans, so it is also hard (so far!) to pass on tacit knowledge from humans to machines.
So many thoughts came home with me from that day at Bletchley Park, but let me spotlight two in particular:
Firstly, it highlighted how important storytelling has been throughout the generations as an effective attempt to short-cut the process of acquiring tacit knowledge, by sharing rich, colourful and timeless stories.
Secondly, the thought of unique, individual blueprints reminded me why I have gained so much pleasure from interviewing the guests who have appeared on the Batting the Breeze podcast so far and why, I hope, you enjoy listening to them so much.
I would love to hear your thoughts on tacit knowledge.
Podcast episode... a look back
Episode 28. Honeybees, Herbalism and Humans
Tomorrow, May 20th, marks World Bee Day. It was first celebrated in 2017 and is designed to remind us how important the ongoing health of the bee population is for our ecosystem. It’s also just over a year ago that I met up with Paula Carnell, a bee consultant creating a buzz about health. As Paula said, “Bees are Mother Nature’s way of connecting nature with humanity”.
Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music or just about any other. podcast player of your choice. Check out the show notes and transcript to learn more.
Paula is actually a naturopathic beekeeper, i.e. looking after bees in a way that is more sympathetic to their way of living, which, in turn, produces higher-quality and environmentally sustainable honey.
Prior to meeting Paula, my only knowledge of beekeeping and honey production was through a conversation I had with a friend of a friend several years ago. He was a beekeeper. He collected oodles of honey from his hives. I asked him what he fed his bees with, and he told me he used jam that he bought from the supermarket. I left the conversation a little confused; you buy jam, give it to bees, and end up with honey.
That confusion remained up until my enlightening chat with Paula. If you haven’t listened to this episode, settle back now and see how naturopathic beekeeping is important to us all, not just honey-lovers.
My favourite quotes from Paula:
“There are 22,000 species of bees in the world, and 11 of them make honey. Here in the UK, we have 275 species of bees, and only one of them makes honey.”
When I asked Paula about the habits of the male drone…
“The drone could leave the hive and go off to a drone congregation area. So it's like a big pub for male bees where they all hang out quite often near a landmark like a tall tree or hillside…. They [the drones] sense the pheromones of a queen, they'll chase the queen and mate with her. If he's successful with mating, as he goes to pull away, his genitals are ripped away from him, and he falls to the ground to his death.”
And Paula’s final thought:
“"Look at what you are doing. You cannot be killing us, all the bees, without also killing yourself". And that's why my mission is to create a buzz about health because the bees are teaching us about our environment. And if we're sharing that same environment, what's happening to the bees is inevitably happening to us as well.”
By the way...
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a conversation I had with Bill Murray, son of Edmund Murray who was Winston Churchill's bodyguard for his last 15 years.
Since it's thirty years to the day, 19th May 1994, since Jackie Kennedy/ Onassis died at the age of 64 in her New York apartment, I thought I would rekindle a delightful and previously unheard event mentioned by Edmund in his book Churchill’s Bodyguard and told to me by Bill during Episode 13.
Churchill was good friends in later life with Aristotle Onassis, and they spent much time together on the Christina O, his superyacht. If Sir Winston was there, then so was Edmund. One evening in 1959, while Churchill (and Edmund) were on board, Aristotle Onassis was joined on the yacht by John and Jackie Kennedy and Maria Callas with her husband Giovanni Battista Meneghini. At the time, John F. Kennedy was gearing up for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination while Maria Callas was at the peak of her international operatic career.
So what, I hear you ask?
Well, consider this: Onassis’s wife Tina was also on board; Maria Callas would become Onassis’ lover that year until 1968 when he started to pursue, and win over, Jackie Kennedy, later to become Jackie Onassis. All three ladies on board at the same time. Ouch.
Dates with History...
Today...
Episode 46 saw Chris Moon captured by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and at the mercy of their tyrannical leader, Pol Pot. 99 years ago today, 19 May 1925, Pol Pot was born in Kompong Thom province, Cambodia.
Ironically, 35 years earlier to the day, 19 May 1890, neighbour and adversary Ho Chi Min, the revered Vietnam leader who liberated his country from colonialism to establish the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, was also born.
Also today….
19 May 1536, Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded for trumped-up charges, including adultery and treason.
19 May 1935, Thomas E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, renowned for supporting the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I, died following a motorcycle accident near Bovington Camp, Dorset.
Later this week...
The Brooklyn Bridge opened in New York on 24 May 1883. At the time, it had the longest suspension span of any bridge in the world.
And finally, on 25 May 1961, less than two years after that trip on the Christina O, John Kennedy, now 35th President of the USA, announced to Congress, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
Question of the week...
On 19 May 2014, a great Australian racing driver, three times Formula One World Champion, died at his home in Queensland at the age of 88. Who was he?(answer at bottom of newsletter)
And finally...
A little more tacit knowledge might have helped here…
A company accountant returned home from work and was sitting with his 6-year-old daughter, trying to explain the concept of infinity. “What is the biggest number in the world?” he asked her.
After some consideration, she replied: “5,324”.
The father said, “What about 5,325”?
She sighed, “Oh, I was so close”!
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Thank you for joining me. Have a great week!
Steve
HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER
P:S: Incidentally, I am always keen to receive your feedback to help me continuously improve this newsletter and the podcast. Just hit reply to this email and...... let it rip! I respond to every email that I receive.
Answer to Question of the week: Sir Jack Brabham, knighted in 1979.
Eric Koch for Anefo/neg. stroken, 1945-1989, 2.24.01.05, item number 919-3863, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL, via Wikimedia Commons
Attribution for feature image - The Enigma Machine : crudmucosaz, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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