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Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Most Important Posting of the Year

If you were to read only one article online this year, the article on Traveling Without Seeing by Frank Bruni at the New York Times is it.

Bruni writes about how the Internet, digital gadgets, and modern technology - rather than expanding and broadening our views - surprisingly promote selective cocoon-like encapsulation from the real world, especially while traveling.

He also includes discussion of blinders donned in political thinking, quoting e.g. Jonathan Martin at Politico:

“It’s the great irony of the Internet era: people have more access than ever to an array of viewpoints, but also the technological ability to screen out anything that doesn’t reinforce their views.”

And screen out they do. How many people do YOU know who do anything else?

And we include here the paragons of academia who kid themselves into thinking they are clever by using selective searches such as "Scholar" as if screening, tunneling, and encapsulating your views to peer-reviewed and similarly "authoritative" publications would give you "better" knowledge than examining ALL the evidence and ALL views, also those not found there. Men are sheep.

Hat tip to CaryGEE.