“A Plethora of Information, a Paucity of Wisdom?”

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“A Plethora of Information, a Paucity of Wisdom?”

January 9, 2012

When I was growing up in the mid part of the Twentieth Century, it was generally assumed that the level of information doubled every ten years. In 2004, the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD) estimated that, with the advent of the Web, information was doubling every eighteen months. Two years ago, IBM predicted that by 2012 information would be doubling every eleven hours.

In 1988, Russell Ackoff, a former professor of management science at Wharton, described the process of data to wisdom as a pyramid, with data on the bottom, above which would be information followed by knowledge and at the top, wisdom. While data and information have grown exponentially, and knowledge has perhaps grown in a linear fashion, wisdom, if anything, appears to have retreated.

Radicati Group, an organization that collects data and provides research on messaging and collaboration, estimates that in 2010 two hundred and ninety-four billion e-mails were sent out daily, more than forty e-mails every day for every man, woman and child on the planet. They are about eight hundred million active members of Facebook. An estimated two hundred and fifty million people tweet four hundred and sixty thousand messages every day. As of a year ago, Wikipedia estimated that there were a hundred and fifty-six million public blogs on the internet. Information is readily available on virtually any subject, some of which we search for and other that shows up unsolicited in our in-boxes.

While we have greater access to more information than ever before, the responsibility for determining the accuracy of the information is ours. Judgment is not necessarily an adjunct of information. Politicians have taken steps to use social media to connect with citizens. President Obama has an estimated nineteen million “friends” on Facebook. He is the first President to regularly use Twitter to communicate with millions of people. Such activity raises the specter of an omniscient and omnipotent Big Brother. The ability of elected officials to stay connected has never been greater, and that will have consequences. It used to be said about political candidates that we don’t know enough about them. In some prominent cases, that still seems to be true, not because the information is not out there, but because someone has worked to cover it up. Nevertheless, over the past several months the trivial information we have learned about Republican candidates for President risks drowning out the more important information needed to make sound judgments. When a bombardment of data from those campaigning for re-election, solicited or unsolicited, true or false, takes precedence over the perpetuation of the Republic that suggests we have approached a dangerous situation.

The question of information overload is the subject of a recent book, Too Big to Know, by David Weinberger, a senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Professor Weinberger believes we have entered a new “golden age” in which technology has finally caught up with human’s endless curiosity. Can the brain, though, handle the reams of data? Professor Clay Shirky of NYU has said, “There is no such thing as information overload – only filter failure.” Perhaps? Digital filters don’t remove anything, they simply reduce the number of clicks to get something. The information still resides somewhere in the system, on a remote server or on a cloud. The digitization of information raises the question of control. Who becomes the gatekeeper? Will government restrict or limit access? Will people become robotic and less contemplative?

Futurist Ray Kurzweil addresses some of these questions in his recent book, The Singularity is Near, and concludes optimistically. The singularity representing the border we will cross when our species breaks the shackles of genetic legacy and we achieve far greater longevity. He writes of the union of man and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will combine with the greater capacity, speed and sharing ability of the machines that man has created, enabling people to transcend biological limitations and to amplify their creativity. In essence, he believes that technological development will allow us to greatly extend our lives. Kurzweil, who is both a cosmologist and hypochondriac (according to Gary Wolf of “Wired Magazine”, he takes 180 to 210 vitamin and mineral supplements a day) believes that artificial intelligence will render biological humans obsolete, but will not make human consciousness irrelevant.

We live in an exciting and dynamic time. The amount of information will continue to grow exponentially, but that does not assure that wisdom will keep up. Staying “connected” has distinct advantages. But there are risks to this inevitable change. The desire for power is inherent in some. It is possible that bad men and women may use the vastly increased connectedness to manipulate the people. Man’s most distinctive and non-replicable feature is an ability to make judgments – to show wisdom based on a moral sense. That must not change.