I work in a relatively high-tech field. In my library, electronic resources are the name of the game. My students and I have access to millions of individual resources on virtually every topic in our set of deep-web databases, and that's not even taking into account the open web, which has billions of pages (of varying degrees of veracity, of course) on any topic including some that you don't want to know even exist. Our job is to provide access to this information, wrangle it, and help students use and make sense of it. I am grateful for this wealth of information. It is a truly wonderful thing if used in consultation with a qualified guide (i.e. a librarian). Lately, however, I have been feeling that we have lost something important about ourselves in this overwhelming wash of information.
In the 70s and 80s, which encompassed the formative years of my childhood, information had an element of scarcity. If you needed the answer to a question, you couldn't just take a device out of your pocket and magically have the answer. Some effort was required. Printed materials had to be tracked down and consulted. Once you found the nugget of information, you could be relatively confident of two things: It was a precious accomplishment, and it was likely to be good (true, accurate) information. The scarcity of the knowledge, the selectivity of knowledge producers, and the effort required to get it made it a wonderful thing.
I am lucky to have grown up in a home with an encyclopedia (I just assumed everyone had one). My parents even subscribed to the annual updates for a while. I spent many happy hours keeping boredom at bay by browsing it volume by random volume. It was not, however, an exhaustive source of information. There was a great deal that was not available so I had to put my shoes on and head to the library down the street from my school (or maybe the one IN my school- remember those?) I really remember fondly tracking down sources in print or microform, with that all-important call number-bearing slip of paper in hand, I have a habit of relentlessly pursuing a needed tidbit of information, even learning new systems in order to do it (a colleague calls me "Miss Marple" for my ability to identify and solve problems in some of our computer systems). Now, of course, with most information, an answer is as close as that smartphone in your pocket.
The problem, of course, with instant access to that avalanche of information, is that a lot of it is just terrible- wrong, slanted, poorly explained or presented, etc. The bigger problem is that anything that pops up is OK with most people. There's a concept in survey research called "satisficing," that is, giving an answer that is probably good enough but not optimal. Satisficing also works in reverse, A lot of us pick the first bit of information that seems to fit (or is "good enough") rather than taking the effort to find the best bit of information. In an era of information satisficing, information is cheapened to the point that it is basically worthless. It's sad, really.
Another problem with the cheapening of information is that most of us never get past the second step on the hierarchy which his usually defined as data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. To simplify it greatly, think of a car. If you see a bunch of parts lying around, that is data- the little bits that might be useful, but without some sort of schema for interpreting them (like a Chilton's manual?) You have no idea what their meaning could be. When these bits are put together through the appropriate schema, we have information. You can see it is a car and you know what a car is. Next, you can learn and understand the information. You know how to drive a car. This is knowledge. If you can internalize, interpret, evaluate, and use this knowledge, you have wisdom. You know why it is important to drive carefully, and you intend to do so. If you are satisficing in the great shallow sea of information, you get data arranged in a schema (usually a language with most web information), and if you understand the output of the schema (i.e. English, Spanish, etc.) you have information. But we usually don't get past that point. We get no real knowledge out of it ( seeing and "liking" Kim K's newest revealing dress is not knowledge), let alone wisdom which is in very short supply these days.
Without knowledge and wisdom we are left with a dumbed-down populace, intellectually strangled by the abundance of information instead of being lifted up by it. There is value in scarcity, but it is up to people like me to try to preserve that value in the face of an unfortunate abundance.
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