Information and Experience 7 comments

7 Dec 2002 @ 16:50, by Flemming Funch One thing John Perry Barlow pointed out is that people today often are unable to differentiate between information and experience. For example, the murder rate has been plummeting all over the U.S. for the past 20 years or so, and it is statistically very, very unlikely that you will be murdered. But the news media is reporting as if it is an all-pervasive problem. And a great many people will act as though it is, walking around every day being afraid of being murdered, despite that they live in a peaceful neighborhood, mowing the lawn and going to the store like everybody else, and nothing violent ever happens there. Their experience is totally different from the information given, but yet they believe the information, because it is delivered with a certain intensity. Same thing with war in Iraq. Most Americans are in no possible way actually endangered by whatever weapons Saddan Hussein controls half-way around the planet. But the news tells them that it is a very real and imminent danger. So they go around being concerned about it, trying to think of solutions, as if it were really a part of their lives. The information is taken for real, even though their experience doesn't back it up in any way. People forget to validate the information. I'm not just talking about validating and verifying the sources of the information, in terms of being good information sources. But simply that you check with your own life whether it fits with your experience. Does it match what I'm seing in front of me in my life? Not what I'm seeing on other channels, not what I hear people talking about, but what I'm actually seeing, hearing, feeling as actual events in the real world in front of me. In all my life, I can only think of one person that I met, superficially, who later on got murdered. In that case by a family member. That's a very, very low percentage based on all the people I've met. It doesn't match up with the information the TV news gives me, that it is one of the biggest problems in my world. Another side of the issue is that for many people, the information in the media might be preferable to the real thing. My 16 year old son is quite inclined to express that he finds it pointless to go to some event that he can watch on TV. Why go to the circus or to the Grand Canyon, if a TV show can get all the best shots, and edit it into a snappy format that never is boring, and where you don't have to drive for hours and stand in line. Is information better than experience? I think not, but many kids in the video game generation might have a different idea about it.

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