The Knowledge Age – Learn To Appreciate It

I do agree with the general sentiment here, that people should try to historically put their lives in context: our instant access to information is unrivaled in any history of which we are aware.

However, I've written before on the important difference between information and facts (http://tumbledry.org/2009/11/20/when_information_overwhelms) -- when the filter for publishing and disseminating bits becomes so low, the onus transfers from the distributors to the consumers for important tasks like fact-checking, context, and bias-hunting.

Furthermore, "any piece of knowledge, ever created, accessible literally at our fingertips" is still a stretch -- some of the most valuable information (untranslated, undiscovered diaries, research, historical texts) those remain offline. To tell people that "Google can access any piece of information you can ever think of in 0.15 seconds" is to narrow their understanding of sources for true knowledge and understanding.

It's a good article, but one that needed a few caveats. I hope I've provided those.

> I recently read a stat that claimed that 80% of college graduates NEVER READ A BOOK AFTER FINISHING UNIVERSITY. This sounds like utter bullshit. What about the statistics that say people read so and so many books each year? Any references?

Question: If everybody has "any piece of knowledge, ever created, accessible literally at [their] fingertips", how does the author know whether people are taking advantage of it? Is the author privy to everybody's online habits? Getting "the" top 10 web sites is tricky because it depends on who you ask, but Google and Wikipedia are generally on there, among other things that could be interpreted as at least potentially "searches for knowledge".

And I think that's a pretty good ratio. It's OK that Facebook is up there too; we're still human, after all.