Bbc Calls For Data Diets

A summary of:

BBC News Magazine (2011). A Point of View: Does to a greater extent than data hateful nosotros know less? BBC News Magazine. 14^th January. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12191104. [Accessed 22nd Jan 2011]

Postman’s starting fourth dimension shout for most technological alter is echoed inward this recent article from the BBC, which argues that improvements inward data engineering scientific discipline guide keep inward plow caused a reject inward knowledge.

First of all, the article rightly points to our declining concentrations every bit the starting fourth dimension hurdle to knowledge. This really occupation is belike the ground I got interested inward this theme inward the starting fourth dimension place. In basic terms, I intend we’re getting dumber. A lightbulb went off when I saw Ellen Degeneres’ standup inward 2003 inward which she said: “We guide keep all these buttons: speed dial, redial; you lot programme numbers inward thence you lot never guide keep to retrieve them anymore, too thence you lot don’t, you lot know? Use it or lose it, I’m losing it. I don’t retrieve anything anymore because of the buttons that are remembering things for me.”

But I suppose this is to a greater extent than to produce alongside the devastation of our mental capacities; whereas the article is getting at some other worrying affair most our technologies, which has to produce alongside the really nature of the medium; namely that it is non a path to knowledge. Knowledge has no house inward a infinite dominated past times the idolization of information.

One of the problems pointed out past times the article is that nosotros tin never truly operate along upward alongside the flow of information. Ellen had some other insightful comment on this predicament (see or thence 5:15 – 6:45):

The article points out that in ane lawsuit upon a time, a mortal was non knowledgable because of how many unlike things he knew (i.e. the breadth of this knowledge) simply how good he know ane book, similar the Bible (i.e. the depth of his knowledge). It seems strange to us today to intend of reading ane mass over too over again. Who has time, starting fourth dimension of all!? But thence nosotros don’t come across this every bit the agency to knowledge. We constantly search for it past times consuming every bit much data every bit nosotros mayhap can. And if the destination is to larn it all, nosotros are doomed to fail. Perhaps nosotros shout for a novel goal, then?

But thence of course of educational activity this gets dorsum to Postman’s point, that the role of data technologies is non to inform thence much every bit to entertain. The article hither talks most data existence exciting because of its novelty. Yes, this is the other ground nosotros don’t read the Bible over too over again: because it’s thence boring! The article suggests nosotros ‘elevate’ ourselves past times aiming for a depth of interpretations of a smaller ready of books, developing “our intelligence too sensitivity.” Wisdom, they argue, does non come upward inward reading more, simply inward reading better. (But this is a mutual confusion is a consumer society: isn’t More the same affair every bit Better???) This is their suggestion:

“The shout for to diet, good accepted inward relation to food, should last brought to touching on our relation to knowledge, people, too ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.”

And if this isn’t a telephone telephone for spiritual technology, I don’t know what is (and it’s from the BBC!!!): “It is thence nosotros mightiness realize that – inward attempting to follow the narrative of man’s ambiguous progress towards a the world of technological too political perfection – nosotros guide keep sacrificed too chance to remind ourselves of eternal, quieter truths which nosotros know most inward theory, too forget to alive past times inward practice.”