What Is The Information Explosion Doing To Us?

With the bombardment of data being fired at the average person daily how much of it is valuable to you? What per cent of the info. is usefull? How much social media trash talk do we concentrate on versus perhaps a great philosopher's words? (Are there any great philosophers left?) What would you call this era or time compared to "The Age of Enlightenment? Is the info. explosion good or bad for you, example (and a small one) you are looking at a TV screen and you see how many different info. blocks? Perhaps two running tapes at the bottom, one block in the left hand corner and another on the right, more than one person talking. Isn't this like being a a room with several people talking at you at the same time? How many websites do you visit in one day at work and at home? How many apps on your phone? How many radio stations do you have to choose from? How many TV channels do you have to choose from? Is it weird to walk in to a club and see a dozen TVs on at the same time? Everywhere we go there is active media on the streets, the buildings, store windows, in peoples hands, buses, airplanes, trains, cabs, trucks. People walk with head phones on while watching their cell phones.

Do you ever want to just throw the circuit breaker switch and say "STOP"! We used to be able to take vacations to "get away from it all" but how often can we do that now days and if you attempt to don't forget your cell phone!!

rhinefire said:

Do you ever want to just throw the circuit breaker switch and say "STOP"! We used to be able to take vacations to "get away from it all" but how often can we do that now days and if you attempt to don't forget your cell phone!!

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Each year we try to go camping at least 3 times for about a week or two each time. From the start of the trip, the phones go in the glove comparment of the car and don't come out unless there is an emergency. We don't even use them for navigation, we use paper maps.

I'm a real geek when it comes to technology so its hard for me in the beginning, but after a couple of hours into it I'm enjoying myself.

Having grown up as this all happened, I'm 99% sure it's had a negative effect on my attention span. At any point in time, I'll have multiple ways to access information going on at the same time. There might be the TV on in the background, and then a few windows on my computer with my work emails, personal emails, maybe a spreadsheet or two, then a browser which may have tabs open on the news, on twitter and on some blogs. Thanks to the regularity of information I can usually get some kind of 'notification' every few minutes or so, and you'll find me switching between all these things.

I'm so used to multi-tasking and having instant access to all this information, that when slowing down and focussing on one simple thing (e.g. reading a book or cooking a meal) it actually takes a fair amount of cognitive effort not to get distracted and open up my laptop or iphone or whatever.

I genuinely fear for how it's going to affect the generation that as toddlers had access to ipads and kindles, I've heard some horror stories about children getting addicted to that stuff. It's gonna be a pretty fascinating social experiment to behold and I'm sure there will be unforeseen consequences, some good and some bad.

I believe also part of the consequence is how people now talk over each other, examples are when you watch several people on broadcasts. Listen how a questioner will listen then interrupt the reply long before the reply is complete, Chris Matthews is the king of this. I was watching a group a couple days ago and four of four were all talking at the same time. I see that often on investment shows on CNBC and MSNBC.

Today we have tons of information at our fingertips. We have more than the worlds best encyclopedia at our immediate disposal. We can search and find almost any info, technical , historic, scientific.

And yet ironically, there is too much information. It is not easy to search through the vast list to find the specific info you are looking for. Additionally, some of it is lies. The information can be manipulated by people who benefit from spreading falsehood. Or just those who want to spread anarchy and damage the system. "Information" does not necessarily mean good info.

Despite that we should be smarter in some ways, technically, we are also dumber. My son will never learn to make a fishing knot, or take a wrench and change a flat tire on his bicycle. Because the mind is addicted to getting information from the internet, which becomes almost like a drug that is difficult to get off of, and makes the person a lazy underachiever. Physically harmful, socially harmful. It weakens us.

For every Yin, an equal and opposite Yang.

Manny said:

Despite that we should be smarter in some ways, technically, we are also dumber. My son will never learn to make a fishing knot, or take a wrench and change a flat tire on his bicycle. Because the mind is addicted to getting information from the internet, which becomes almost like a drug that is difficult to get off of, and makes the person a lazy underachiever. Physically harmful, socially harmful. It weakens us.

For every Yin, an equal and opposite Yang.

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The same could be said of the first generation to own cars as opposed to a horse as their daily transportation. "My son will never learn to properly shoe a horse, to correctly attach a buggy, or to repair a wooden wagon wheel...technically, we are dumber."

OR, let's go back further..."My son will never learn to read a sun-dial now that we have clocks....technically, we are dumber."

"My son will never learn to make fire by spinning twigs together now that we have matches...technically, we are dumber."

Each generation which sits at the end of one technological age looks at the next generation, who lives at the beginning or at the height of a technological age, as "dumber." But, that isn't the case. All it is, really, is the older generation saying "my son won't value the same things I value because the world in to which he was born no longer has a need for some of those things." This isn't society getting dumber, it is society progressing.

Take a look at the Flynn Effect. Every generation that comes along scores measurably higher on IQ tests than the generation that preceded it.

Flynn effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Koros said:

Each generation which sits at the end of one technological age looks at the next generation, who lives at the beginning or at the height of a technological age, as "dumber." But, that isn't the case. All it is, really, is the older generation saying "my son won't value the same things I value because the world in to which he was born no longer has a need for some of those things." This isn't society getting dumber, it is society progressing.

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That's debatable. Not all progress, or change, is good. We make progress to the point of having weapons that can destroy the whole world. Or use up all its energy in a few hundred years. Pollution is a very serious problem. Extinction of species. yada yada yada.

As we become more dependent on technology, people get smarter in some ways but dumber in others. You have to look at the balance to get the whole picture, to predict what the effects are on the future of society.

Loss of skills, which I implied leads to dependence on technical specialists. People used to know how to fix their cars, now this knowledge is more obscure to the common person and so they depend on automotive specialists. The result is a society that depends on high tech and exchange of commodities and services in order to survive. This is the foundation of consumerism, and is terribly wasteful. Not smart

Manny said:

That's debatable. Not all progress, or change, is good. We make progress to the point of having weapons that can destroy the whole world. Or use up all its energy in a few hundred years. Pollution is a very serious problem. Extinction of species. yada yada yada.

As we become more dependent on technology, people get smarter in some ways but dumber in others. You have to look at the balance to get the whole picture, to predict what the effects are on the future of society.

Loss of skills, which I implied leads to dependence on technical specialists. People used to know how to fix their cars, now this knowledge is more obscure to the common person and so they depend on automotive specialists. The result is a society that depends on high tech and exchange of commodities and services in order to survive. This is the foundation of consumerism, and is terribly wasteful. Not smart

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While you are correct that not all progress is good, that isn't what you were talking about. You said that your son's inability to tie knots they way you can made him technically dumber. That is just patently ridiculous.

I think it has made people incredibly stupid, unfocused, and ungrounded from reality. There are more people spewing random facts now than recanting personal life experiences because people are plugged in all the time now.

Really, the information age has not changed the average level of wisdom. It takes someone with intelligence that is innately above average to use something like the internet to do important fact finding and achievement of wisdom. Everyone else is just using it for mass consumption of utter foolishness.

I've seen the whole world six times over.