Monday, March 9, 2009

Sex and Love in the Information Age

By now it's cliche to call ours the Information Age. And yet, the cliche like all cliches endures, because in a few small words it encapsulates a very large truth. However, today's exponentially exploding information from our PC's (1 billion), cellphones (85 million), cable channels (10,700),and newspapers (3,900), needs to be distinguished from education. Not unlike sex from love...!

Information is always transient, education is always transformational. This unprecedented surge of 24/7 information ranges from the innocuousness of celebrities to the precariousness of calamities. And while the first are like empty calories, the second are always ready to become ravenous cancers. Especially now when in the last six months our nation's immune system has been shattered right down to its deepest foundations.

Banks that stop banking, jobs that stop existing, schools that stop functioning, health-care that stops caring, energy that stops working. Trouble is, what good is this incessant drone of unnerving information unless it can actually educate us to find our most transformational options?

The options before us are neither right nor left, rather forward or backward. Forward always has the taste and the tang of our most advanced scholars. Disciplines like economics, sociology, and biology which promise to marshall the finest answers from our finest minds. Such knowledge, we are told, is the ultimate magnet and mission of our species. Once equipped with all the answers, we are destined to resolve all the questions.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century. Just as we were finalizing all the answers, they changed all the questions. The irony continues as each new study or committee or delegation or Sunday Morning talking head seems to contradict the others. We, the little people, are left to watch the important people drown us in information, but rarely agreeing how to swim our way to safe shores.

This is where the wisdom of education distinguishes itself from the chaos of information. And who are these wise ones among us...? Traditionally they seem to come from places and positions rather removed from the daily assault of information and knee-jerk reaction. Often they are found in isolated college campuses and research labs... hunched over keyboards or doodling at workbenches...speaking in their churches and temples of their god. While billions of frenetic words are written and spoken via hundreds of millions of informational venues, this quiet legion of quiet seekers is educating, each in their own chosen way.

Almost 200 years ago another seeker tried to escape the din of information by spending a year alone in nature. His name was Henry David Thoreau (that's right, the guy you had to read in English class). His spot was Walden Pond. His goal was to navigate through -- not drown in -- his world's information. A kind of Himalayan monk right in our own New England woods. Did he find the right answers there? Would we? I suppose, Like Thoreau, that would still depend on what we really believe the right questions are.

Here's a hint. You usually won't find them in the news

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