The Information Age

If we are so smart, then why are we capable of so little?

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Information Age

You probably know the various ages of human history.  We’ve had the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial Age.  There are countless ways to divide and subdivide human endeavor over the ages, but these are a few of the more significant ones.  We’ve gone from ‘cavemen’ of perhaps ten thousand years ago to our modern technologies of today.  We’ve gone from flint tools to steel tools and efficient machinery. All told, life has become increasingly more comfortable and safer. We can expect to live about twice as long as people did just a century or so ago.

None of this was accidental.  Various civilizations have developed various materials and processes.  Romans developed concrete.  Various civilizations developed irrigation, allowing large populations to live in dense areas.  Man has gone from hunter gatherers who rummaged for food, to farmers, who raise and maintain their food source.  Man learned to domesticate animals to do much of their work.  That includes oxen, dogs, and horses.  Then we had windmills, water wheels, and finally, steam engines.  Today, we have internal combustion engines.

All of the above is one VERY brief history of the development of man’s technological abilities.  Those technologies were developed to make us physically more comfortable, to give us a physically easier life.  None of them, by themselves, served to make us better people, more intelligent, more compassionate, wiser or more knowledgeable except regarding physical technology.  That’s not to say that we haven’t become fundamentally better people, but there’s no reason to think that the technology has made much difference in that regard.

Now, we are in what we call the Information Age. Let’s consider:   Not so many years ago, I had little chance of having very many people read this.  Now, my, and everyone’s, chances of being heard are far greater.  The moment I push ‘the button’, this will be visible everywhere in the world.  Any and all ideas are available (unless censored as ‘disinformation’).  And what does this cost me?  Essentially, nothing.  Information, for all intents and purposes, is free.

And that’s a first.  Flint was free, sort of.  It was available, right there on the ground, in some places.  But it still had to be laboriously worked into useful tools, and then transported by foot, or by dog, horse, ox or donkey to wherever it was needed.  That made it very ‘not free’.

When you think about it, all the materials from all the ages came from out of the ground.  After flint, it was bronze. Bronze is an alloy of copper and various other minerals.  It’s amazing that bronze was ever developed.  Ultimately, prehistoric people had to learn to melt rocks and combine various minerals to get the results they desired.  How good would you be at that?

Iron, and ultimately steel, had to be developed in similar ways.  Chances are that, to you, a rock is a rock.  But ancient peoples knew which ones contained the elements they needed, even before they understood what elements are.

And, what did it take to domesticate wolves into dogs?  How about oxen and horses?  And people developed strains of crops that we take for granted today.  Neither wheat nor corn, as we know them today, is naturally occurring.

Aqueducts, steel, and steam engines were and are essential to the urban life that exists today.  How much of any of that could you handle, if it was up to you?  Yet, you may think that we are the smart ones! 

I’d like to point out a major difference between these other ages and the Information age.  All those other ages represent man’s achievements in manipulating physical reality.  It matters not what a person’s beliefs were, whether they were a ‘good’ person or a ‘bad ‘ person, fair or unfair.  What mattered was, could they comprehend physical reality and succeed in manipulating it to our advantage.  Most people lived directly, or very close to directly from the land.  They were farmers and fishermen, primarily.  Clearly, improved ability to manipulate physical reality was very desirable.

Today, we can take that all for granted.  Today, we can count on food being available, even if we’ve never met a farmer.  We really don’t need to know about  technology.  We don’t have to cut wood in the summer to get heat in the winter.  The heat just ‘appears’ thru wires and pipes. Today, a person can have a nice life while knowing nothing about survival.  We expect it to all just happen, on our behalf.  If it fails to happen, someone else must be blamed.  Surely, we can’t be expected to see after ourselves.

Yet, we think we’re the smart ones.  This is the Information Age, the age in which we like to believe that Information is the be all and end all. I can send this around the world instantly.  Could they do THAT a hundred years ago?  No.  So?

We are legends in our own minds.  Most of us can accomplish very little by way of physical survival. Yet we think we are so smart.  We’re so smart that, if the people who keep us alive and make our lives so easy don’t do it in accordance with our desires, we find THEM at fault.  Make our lives easy and make them easy on OUR terms.  If not, we will have hissy fits and carry on, and act like we are the ones who know best when, in fact, we know least.

This is the Information Age, the age in which knowledge of physical reality is of no consequence.  The age in which whatever is in your imagination can be construed as reality.  The age in which reality is whatever you imagine it to be.  The age in which hubris is king, and reality is debatable.  The age in which we think that reality is up for a vote.

We have not attained a higher level; we are going backwards.

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