Last week was the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas and what struck me most was the fact that he lived only 800 years ago. That’s 200 years short of my thousand year ‘message’ project. So I decided to get a handle on the sweep of history to get a better idea of what sorts of information last.
Even though our species, homo sapiens, appeared 100,000 years ago it wasn’t until 4,500 B.C. that what we term civilization began in Sumer (now Iraq) and a bit later (4,200 B.C.) in Egypt. The Jewish Calendar begins with 3,760 B.C. and the first city state, Sumeria is dated 3,000 B.C. The Chinese, Indus Valley and Stonhenge civilizations began around the same time. That is an interesting fact since there was no (possible?) contact among these groups.
From 2,000 to 1,000 B.C. things picked up a lot in the Mediterranean area as well as India and China. We have a lot more information about these times. Much of it is about the rise and fall of kingdoms and lots of wars. The same continues for the next thousand years but in greater detail and with more participants. The Greeks and Romans were especially warlike. The Mayan Civilization flourished in Mexico during this time.
The Roman Empire ended half way through the next thousand years. Islam was born, Europe connected with China and Buddhism arose in Japan during this period. The Dark or Middle Ages began with the fall of the Roman Empire (476) and lasted for a thousand years.
The just completed thousand years, 1,000 - 2,000 A.D. started with the First Crusade (1095) followed by seven more over the next 200 years. The Magna Carta was signed in 1215. The Renaissance began a hundred years later. The Age of Discovery began around 1400 and the rest, as they say, is history. The second milennium ended with a century of war with World War II being probably the most horrific humanity has engaged in.
It seems that civilizations, kingdoms, religions and wars are classes of information that persist over the millenia. Maybe this blog has to deal with such things to have a chance of lasting (joke time).
January has been a rough month for helicopters in Iraq. Four of them “crashed” in a two week period and 18 Americans were killed. If that happened anywhere else the press would be yelling for an investigation into safety and inspection procedures relative to helicopters.
But we all know (wink, wink) that the headline “U.S. Copter Down in Iraq” is not your ordinary accident. The suckers were shot down by enemy fire.
We also know that the Shrub crowd hates bad news so it changes it to sound like a normal accident. Soldiers “fall” and helicopters “go down” and don’t bother your little head about it.
Even when video was on the Internet and Al-Arabiya TV reported that “a copter was hit by a rocket and exploded into flames before plummeting to earth near Mishada, 30 km north of Baghdad,” a U.S. military spokesman said, “A task force Ironside helicopter did go down this morning at 8:20 am. The status of the two-man crew is unknown at the moment. The cause of the accident is under investigation.”
It warn’t no fucking accident, sir but hey, we don’t want to upset the folks back home, do we? The war is going so well and we are winning and democracy is on the move in the Middle East.
“Glory, glory halleluiah, His truth goes marching on,” or does it?
U.S. Copter Down in Iraq; 12 Believed Dead
Copter Crash Kills 2 U.S. Pilots in Iraq
US helicopter crashes north of Baghdad
US helicopter down in Iraq
In today’s Washington Post there is an article titled “A Life Wasted” written by the father of a Marine who was killed in Iraq. Mr. Paul E. Schroeder writes what clearly took courage and pain to say:
Early on Aug. 3, 2005, we heard that 14 Marines had been killed in Haditha, Iraq. Our son, Lance Cpl. Edward “Augie” Schroeder II, was stationed there. At 10:45 a.m. two Marines showed up at our door. After collecting himself for what was clearly painful duty, the lieutenant colonel said, “Your son is a true American hero.”
Since then, two reactions to Augie’s death have compounded the sadness.
At times like this, people say, “He died a hero.” I know this is meant with great sincerity. We appreciate the many condolences we have received and how helpful they have been. But when heard repeatedly, the phrases “he died a hero” or “he died a patriot” or “he died for his country” rub raw.
…
I am outraged at what I see as the cause of his death. For nearly three years, the Bush administration has pursued a policy that makes our troops sitting ducks. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that our policy is to “clear, hold and build” Iraqi towns, there aren’t enough troops to do that.
In our last conversation, Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was “less and less worth it,” because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places. Marine commanders in the field say the same thing. Without sufficient troops, they can’t hold the towns. Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha.
I am humbled by the strength of conviction and the honesty that Mr. Schroeder expresses in this article. I join him in his request:
Though it hurts, I believe that his death — and that of the other Americans who have died in Iraq — was a waste. They were wasted in a belief that democracy would grow simply by removing a dictator — a careless misunderstanding of what democracy requires. They were wasted by not sending enough troops to do the job needed in the resulting occupation — a careless disregard for professional military counsel.
But their deaths will not be in vain if Americans stop hiding behind flag-draped hero masks and stop whispering their opposition to this war. Until then, the lives of other sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers may be wasted as well.
The Bush-Cheney Iraq War was and is unjust. Get out of Iraq now.
Here’s an article from CNN that I came across when I started looking into information overload.
Age of information overload Monday, December 26, 2005; Posted: 12:14 p.m. EST (17:14 GMT)
Here are my comments on some of its contents:
(AP) — Books are being scanned to make them searchable on the Internet. Television broadcasts are being recorded and archived for online posterity. Radio shows, too, are getting their digital conversion — to podcasts.
With a few keystrokes, we’ll soon be able to tap much of the world’s knowledge. And we’ll do it from nearly anywhere — already, newer iPods can carry all your music, digital photos and such TV classics as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” along with more contemporary prime-time fare.
Will all this instantly accessible information make us much smarter, or simply more stressed? When can we break to think, absorb and ponder all this data?
“People are already struggling and feeling like they need to keep up with the variety of information sources they already have,” said David Greenfield, a psychologist who wrote “Virtual Addiction.” “There are upper limits to how much we can manage.”
Not all of the items mentioned are information. Much of the above is entertainment. Clearly, the amount of “instantly accessable information” will not make anyone smarter or dumber and it shouldn’t make anyone more stressed. Greenfield notes that trying to “keep up” with information sources is a struggle but that depends on an individual’s choices. For example, if one tries to keep up with every implication of bills that are introduced in the U.S. Congress then I’d agree it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to do. One must rely on groups or individuals who specialize and take their word for what’s going on. As Greenfield says, “there are upper limits to how much we can manage.” As for lower limits? Perhaps the adjective “upper” is understood and therefore unnecessary, yes?
It may take better technology to cope with the problems better technology creates.
Of course, if used properly, the new resources have vast potential to shape how we live, study and think.
Consider books.
Nicole Quaranta, 22, is a typical youth. The New York University grad student in education does most of her research online. She’ll check databases for academic journals and newspaper articles — but rarely books, even though she acknowledges an author who spent years on a 300-page book might have a unique perspective.
“The library is daunting because I have to go there and everything is organized by academic area,” Quaranta said. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
Were books as easily searchable as Web pages, she’d reconsider.
Otherwise, they might as well not exist.
The first two sentences are almost meaningless cliches. The word “technology” is becoming so abused it should be on life support but the interesting statement is that Nicole is a “typical youth.” Sorry, a graduate student at NYU is not typical. She’s at least one in a thousand or more. Her comment on libraries is classic - “I have to go there” (couch potato’s lament?) “everything is organized by academic area … I don’t even know where to begin.”
So if everything is organized and the Internet is anything but organized what is your problem? I think the answer is “easily searchable.” Perhaps Nicole prefers to type in “classroom management” and get enough to write a paper on it. I hope NYU’s librarians don’t get wind of this young woman’s opinions about their profession. Same goes for her professors who probably have a number of books and articles tucked away in the “daunting” library’s stacks. And then there’s the card catalog which almost certainly is on a computer and easily searchable.
Meanwhile, television shows formerly locked up in network or studio vaults are starting to emerge online. “Before, once it has been aired, it’s gone, and it doesn’t really contribute to our knowledge space,” said Jakob Nielsen, a Web design expert with Nielsen Norman Group.
For the past year, Google has been digitally recording news and other programs from several TV stations in the San Francisco area (although Google has limited display to still images and closed-captioned text until it settles copyright matters).
Early next year, America Online Inc. and Warner Bros. will offer free access to dozens of old television shows, including “Welcome Back Kotter.” And Apple Computer Inc. recently started selling episodes of shows old and new from ABC and NBC Universal for $1.99 each — viewable on computers and its newer iPods. The catalog includes “Lost” and “Law & Order.”
I think “knowledge space” is cute, don’t you? Thank you for sharing that thought Mr. (Web design expert) Nielsen. Some news shows may contain some information but the rest of the TV fare is entertainment which although it is good for us is very low density information. Those who own the rights to shows and music want to make more money on them so they will become available and will increase the amount of data available via the Internet but it isn’t information.
Steve Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says centralization and easy access could make people smarter: Instead of wasting time finding information, they can focus more on assessing its worth.
But there’s the danger, he says, that people will simply take information for granted: Assuming that whatever pops up first is the best.
Worse, people may simply tune out.
Field research by Jennifer Kayahara, a sociology graduate student at the University of Toronto, shows people are overwhelmed as it is.
“For people who don’t search extensively online, that’s the reason they give: ‘There’s too much,”‘ she said, adding that people worry they might miss something yet don’t have the time to seek it out.
Centralization (concentration? distillation?) and easy access to information do not make people smarter. At best, it can make someone more informed on a topic. I agree that the easier it is to get information the more time one has to think about it but the element of judgement must be applied at each step of the process. Both Jones and Kayahara point to a common problem with “easy” information - many people are not disciplined enough to spend time comparing, judging and integrating multiple information sources. That is, humans are a bit on the lazy side and no technological improvement is going to change that. I suggest that education can do it and perhaps that’s what education is essentially - intellectual discipline.
“Social networks, search engines and things yet invented are critical as we bring millions of movies, books and musical recordings online,” said Brewster Kahle, a search pioneer who created the Internet Archive, a nonprofit preservation group.
Even more important will be good research skills — infoliteracy, if you will. That means knowing where and how to look, and evaluating what you get back.
And that’s crucial as people get inundated with electronic information 24/7 — not just at their computers. Cell phones are being transformed into search and browsing tools, and iPods are becoming small television displays.
Kahle’s job as an Internet archivist will certainly become more difficult as terabytes of entertainment data is dumped on the Internet but so little of that is information that it may not matter. Good research skills (see ‘education’ above) have always been necessary for evaluating data sources. The Internet and its search engines (love that word, it’s so Newtonian) bring us a large number of sources that are yet to be ranked according to some integrity scale. Again, much of the above is the problem of entertainment and communication overload, not information.
Rachel Edelman, 21, an NYU junior in communications studies, finds her vintage, music-only iPod enough of a distraction.
“If I’m listening to music, I’m not going to be thinking about other things, about school work, friends, family or relationships, even just noticing things on the street and noticing changes in the city,” she said.
And with wireless Internet access creeping into every niche of life — it’s even coming to airplanes and taxis — we’ll have to carve out retreats from the information age.
“If you fill every waking minute with more media, you never do any independent thinking,” Nielsen said. “You may have all the specific pieces of information, but the higher level is knowledge and understanding. You don’t have time for that reflection if it’s being thrown at you at never-ending streams.
“All you can do is duck.”
The closing paragraphs muddle information overload and the “noise” that various kinds of electronic appliances generate. We need retreats from the noise, not from the information age. Mr. Nielsen returns with a truism about filling your waking life with “media” vs thinking but rather botches up the tag line.
I believe he’s trying to say that one needs time to synthesize information into knowledge. That is also what education should be - how to put two and two together while the ipod is playing your song and you’re on the phone with your current flame. If you can’t do that then hang up and think.
What a difference a day makes. Well, at least in the final digit of the current year.
Read a few “year that was” and “year to be” articles. We’ll see.
Best news of the day is the story about the British student who created a 1000 x 1000 pixel page and rents pixels at $1 each. He has made a million dollars! His blog shows he’s also been all over the place as a celebrity. I can understand it and am happy for him.
Alex Tew’s Blog is described as “The website of Alex Tew, a 21-year-old entrepreneur, who hopes to pay his way through university by selling 1 million pixels of internet ad space for $1 each.”