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May 26, 2005 As long as we have had news, there have been news carriers. I suppose the first of these were the Town Criers who first appeared in the 16th century in England and the 17th century in North America. Originally, the Town Crier’s purpose was to bring news from the King. In the four hundred years since, as technology and the means of communication have grown, so have the ways and means of spreading this news. We have come to a time in American…no, in World History, a time of news and information overload. Every second of every day we can, if we so choose, learn of some new news story. We have the 24-hour a day seven-day a week news channels such as CNN and Fox News. Of course there is also the Internet where through such sites as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, we are inundated with an overwhelming array of news information. This outpouring is both good and bad. Good because we are more aware of worldly events instead of our views of the world being confined to local events and stories. We therefore have more knowledge of the world we live in. However, this wide array of exposure also has its negative side. Since we are constantly bombarded with news and information from all over the world, it has created a disheveled attention span, one in which as we are trying to absorb the happenings of some worldly event, another event comes along and overtakes our attention before we can fully comprehend the previous one. On the other hand there are those who only think they are aware. I’ve known people who think of themselves as being unattached and free, but were instead just fooling themselves. To give an example, I will relate what I observed to be the characteristics of a fellow student when I was an undergraduate. Without naming names, I can tell you that one student in particular had fooled herself more than all others. She professed her enlightenment, her knowledge of the ways of the world, and her non-attachment to it all. She also bragged about the fact that she hadn’t in years been aware of current and newsworthy events. And this she called ‘being unattached’. Was it? NO! Instead, she was so attached that that the worlds events had become unbearable to her…it was too much. Too much death and destruction…too much bad news…essentially too much reality. So instead she had wrapped herself in a shell of her own reality, one that was a mediocre and false replica of the real world. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. The 24/7 news channels are invaluable, the Internet even more so. However, we have to limit our exposure to these things, too much of either of them and instead of informing, we will be overloaded and all newfound knowledge will be nothing more than useless and desensitizing jargon. Technology is not the enemy. The enemy is, in a sense, the mind of the observer. If the observer is informed yet remains objective and unattached, the truth will be revealed among the deluge of information rabble. To do this…to put oneself in the midst of the onslaught and still be unaffected is not as simple and easy as some might think. To surf between these two extremes, that’s what we need. But to do this requires not only discretion, one also has to have the intelligence to know the difference. ------------ About the author Eddie McCracken: I have a BA from Vermont College of Norwich University and am currently applying for a teaching position in Japan as a teacher of English as a second language. I'm also intend to apply to a graduate school in the very near future. Email: eddiemc_827@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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