The Information Age

Sometimes I hear media personages refer to all this "knowledge" we have due to computers and the Internet. It's not knowledge; it's information. Having ready accessed to compiled information does not translate into knowledge until a person's mental processes interact with the information. Knowledge is in the head; information is in data banks. Knowledge is dynamic and mutable, while information is static although ever-accumulating.

In some ways, more access to information makes us dumber. "I have it at my fingertips; with a press of a few buttons, I can look up anything," so we never look it up. Why bother? we have it in our possession. Why memorize multiplication tables when we have a calculator? If we don't know what 8 times 7 is but can punch a few buttons to find the answer, we might discover that 8 times 7 is 56, but if our brains don't memorize (remember) it, we haven't really learned; we still don't know it.

It's a good thing, then, that punching "8x7=" into a calculator always results in 56. I rue the day when machines are made to learn; at that precise moment in time, they will begin to know more than we.