I think that the internet was started by the little kids who ask, “Why?” all of the time. And not the little kids who asked, “Why?” just to be annoying, in order to get a rise out of the adults in their lives, or just to hear themselves chatter, but the kids who really wanted an answer. And good answers. I can’t be certain, but I think I was one of those “enquiring minds want to know” kids.
“What is vacation constipation?” and “What does dreaming about bald eagles mean?” are questions that I have already looked up this morning on the internet and I have looked up the answers, at more than one website.
“I don’t think we should have less information in the world. The information age has yielded great advances in medicine, agriculture, transportation and many other fields. But the problem is twofold. One, we are assaulted with more information than any one of us can handle. Two, beyond the overload, too much information often leads to bad decisions.” – Daniel Levitin
I read the above quote and I thought about it a bit. It is interesting to me that social movements often beget other social movements. We are having renovations done on our home, and inevitably the one project has now been the impetus for 3-4 more minor projects that all stemmed from the “open can of worms” of the first project. In the same way, the last line of the above quote about the information age suggests that information overload can lead to bad decisions. Hence, we have the “Being in the Now” movement, where meditation and self-awareness have become mainstream concepts. The trick is to balance the amount of information that we are assaulted with on a daily basis, with a healthy dose of relaxation and counting our breaths. . . . and not acting on everything we see and feel and hear and read, impulsively.
“Advances in technology can be empowering, progressive and enriching. History has shown this across civilizations and societies. But it has also shown, and the present and future will continue to show, that it is foolish, risky, flawed and folly without us raising our individual and collective consciousness and mindfulness to accompany it – to ensure we use it shrewdly, kindly and wisely.”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru