Monday 6 May 2013

The age of information

People like to think we live in an age of knowledge with all the technology at our fingertips and google to answer our every question. I think we live in an age of information but where knowledge is sorely lacking. There is no knowledge without experience. We cannot learn without context.
I got thinking about this because I've been having some problems in different aspects of my personal life, nothing big or scary just stuff I'm trying to figure out. Unlike my exams, the answers i need are not online or in my notes, I can't email my lecturer and ask for guidance on these, Even the internet cannot help me.
My concern is that we are so used to being able to instantaneously acquire information that we no longer acquire knowledge-if we forget it we can just google it again. I feel this is slowly making us ill equipped to deal with issues we encounter in our lives. Sure you can google 'How do I tell someone I like them' or 'How do I break up with someone' or 'Should I get back with my ex?'. You can askjeeves why your parents are always on your back or why your friends seem to have changed since they started at their new college. Let's be honest though-the internet is full of information, but not a lot of knowledge about you, your situation, your feelings or what you need to know. The information age cannot make up for the ancient technique of simply figuring things out for yourself, and i apply this not just to personal lives but to research, learning, curiosity; we have become lazy where we were once, as a race, ambitious. Luckily, there will always be things that technology cannot do for us so we must always endeavour to acquire knowledge ourselves, and not try to learn information.

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