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Of course, social media’s unbelievable reach and influence isn’t the only thing going on in the human world right now. But the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn’t the only thing going on in October of ‘62, either. Just the most important.
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The Missile Crisis was the result of humanity’s partially-competent grappling with nuclear technology. We just about snuffed each other out.
Today, it’s the nearly-instantaneous transfer of information from any idiot to nearly everyone on the planet, true or not, helpful or not, balanced or not, that has us at the brink of....well, another Civil War, except probably less violent. Russia and China are next, perhaps.
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quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: Perhaps research in how we learn and accept information will accomplish similar things biology has in regards to the immune system.
Perhaps new techniques for vetting information will be developed and made part of our upbringing.
The difficulty is multiparted:
1. There’s a LOT of BS out there on any even remotely politicized topic. People are trying to get attention, money, etc., and lies about politicized/hot-button topics are in proportion to their level of hot-buttonness. Sometimes I like to look at old encyclopedias from a time before some topics were politicized to get a more accurate, less-spun take on something
2. There are a LOT of topics to be aware of these days to be considered “well-informed”. The list grows yearly, it seems.
3. Skills and knowledge have a shorter and shorter shelf life. This is especially true in technical knowledge areas and professions, or knowledge areas and professions that are really affected by technological advances, especially ones related directly to Moore’s Law and its many corollaries.
4. There are only so many hours in the day.
5. We are slowly realizing that most jobs are going to be automated fairly soon, like in 20 years or so, and it’s harder to build the motivation to learn skill sets and knowledge sets that will get taken by automation soon. This applies to areas of knowledge too.
6. Video games and streaming and social media get more and more distracting as time passes, taking us away from more substantive research and learning.
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