We live in a country that is obsessed with information. I consume more information than I ever realize on a daily basis because it’s literally everywhere. If I’m pouring a bowl of Cheerios, I learn that “three grams of soluble fiber daily from whole grain oat foods, like Cheerios cereal, and a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol, may reduce the risk of heart disease.” As I pour my soymilk (lactose intolerance sucks) over the cereal, I learn that soymilk contains isoflavones and “medical studies show isoflavones may have potential health benefits [such as] lowering LDL cholesterol, maintaining bone density, [and] providing antioxidant protection against harmful effects of free radicals.” I usually eat my breakfast while watching the local morning news, and there is usually a ticker-tape of news whizzing by the bottom of the screen giving me more information, so I can watch the news while I watch the news. A lot of times I will watch the news and eat my cereal while scrolling through updates and articles on Facebook. My point is, our society is (subconsciously) obsessed with information.
There are definitely worse things to be obsessed with, don’t get me wrong. I can guarantee that after only watching 2 episodes of Strange Addictions. But anytime I begin consuming a lot of something indiscriminately, I typically reach a point when I stop and wonder what that particular thing is doing to me. (I learned this lesson the hard way with fiber one bars). The purpose of information seems pretty simple and self-explanatory: to inform. Since information is usually about things that we experience on a day to day basis, it is typically about reality. And we crave information because it helps us make sense of our lives and reality. Information is powerful because it can shine light into dark corners, it flips a rock over so you can see what’s underneath, and it can help you make more logical decisions. Information is not a bad thing, but it is a very powerful thing. And with great power comes great responsibility…which is why I’m a little bit worried about our society’s obsession with information
Our voracious appetite for information has become a lucrative market, especially considering the profitable and instant-gratification marriage of information and the high-speed-internet-my-cell-phone-is-a-computer era. Combining the powerful entity of information with capitalism and technology has changed it drastically. Not only has the demand for quantity negatively affected the quality of the information, but technology has allowed more people to produce information that is false (this blog included). This (hypocritically) frustrates and terrifies me because there doesn’t really seem to be a large cultural push to make distinctions between what is good information and what is not. We simply consume it. Also, since information is such a huge and profitable market, producers are tinkering with the substance of information in order to make more money. Why do Cheerios and Harris Teeter put health facts and statistics on their packaging? Cheerios are a lot less concerned about what that information will do to my LDL levels. They just want me to buy their product. The same goes with the soymilk. And even the news that I watch in the morning. They are competing with other local news channels to receive higher ratings so their information has an ulterior motive, too.
Manipulating information to create a desired effect isn’t new. It has existed as long as anyone has tried to make an argument or sell something…which is kind of the same thing. But there is a trend happening right now that involves the manipulation of information that is pretty scary. Originally information was intended to reflect reality. But now, it seems like it’s becoming more and more acceptable for politicians, companies, and entire media networks to change information to create a non-existent reality. So in simpler terms, they are lying…and very few people seem upset about it. This has been happening in the education world for a while. If school systems and administrators are being pressured to raise their reading comprehension scores, they simply make the reading tests easier. Or if you want to raise your graduation rate, change what it means to graduate which allows them to give information that is “true” while creating the reality that isn’t actually there. Pretty ballsy and tricky if you ask me. But now, North Carolina legislators (GOP P.S.) are doing more than just manipulating information to create a semblance of order. They are actually outlawing the use of information that presents a reality that they don’t like.
Stephen Colbert talked about this on his show last week. (I’ll save the discussion about how ironic it is that I get more reliable news from Comedy Central than I do from many of the major media networks for another blog). You should probably watch it because Colbert does a much better job explaining this than I do, but I was too upset to not write about this Climatologists have recently predicted that sea levels might actually rise more than earlier studies forecasted. This translates to sea levels that could be more than 30 inches higher in the next 100 years on the North Carolina coast. Obviously this would be catastrophic and unprecedented in human history. Instead of taking proactive and aggressive measures to slow climate change, the NC GOP is simply going to create a law that makes it illegal to refer to data that predicts catastrophic rises in sea level. Which would be like me going to a doctor and being told that I probably had appendicitis and then instead of taking care of the situation (by getting a second opinion, CT scan, or scheduling a surgery) I just made a t-shirt that said “I do not have appendicitis” and then I went home and watched reruns of 30 Rock on hulu like normal. And my strongest argument for my illogical position would be that I cannot have appendicitis becuase historically, I've never had it before...which is exactly the way the bill approaches the issue of rising sea levels.
Colbert was referring to House Bill 819, specifically Section 2(e):
“The Division of Coastal Management shall be the only State agency authorized to develop rates of sea-level rise and shall do so only at the request of the Commission. These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise. Rates of sea-level rise shall not be on rate for the entire coast but, rather, the Division shall consider separately oceanfront and estuarine shorelines.”
There are definitely worse things to be obsessed with, don’t get me wrong. I can guarantee that after only watching 2 episodes of Strange Addictions. But anytime I begin consuming a lot of something indiscriminately, I typically reach a point when I stop and wonder what that particular thing is doing to me. (I learned this lesson the hard way with fiber one bars). The purpose of information seems pretty simple and self-explanatory: to inform. Since information is usually about things that we experience on a day to day basis, it is typically about reality. And we crave information because it helps us make sense of our lives and reality. Information is powerful because it can shine light into dark corners, it flips a rock over so you can see what’s underneath, and it can help you make more logical decisions. Information is not a bad thing, but it is a very powerful thing. And with great power comes great responsibility…which is why I’m a little bit worried about our society’s obsession with information
Our voracious appetite for information has become a lucrative market, especially considering the profitable and instant-gratification marriage of information and the high-speed-internet-my-cell-phone-is-a-computer era. Combining the powerful entity of information with capitalism and technology has changed it drastically. Not only has the demand for quantity negatively affected the quality of the information, but technology has allowed more people to produce information that is false (this blog included). This (hypocritically) frustrates and terrifies me because there doesn’t really seem to be a large cultural push to make distinctions between what is good information and what is not. We simply consume it. Also, since information is such a huge and profitable market, producers are tinkering with the substance of information in order to make more money. Why do Cheerios and Harris Teeter put health facts and statistics on their packaging? Cheerios are a lot less concerned about what that information will do to my LDL levels. They just want me to buy their product. The same goes with the soymilk. And even the news that I watch in the morning. They are competing with other local news channels to receive higher ratings so their information has an ulterior motive, too.
Manipulating information to create a desired effect isn’t new. It has existed as long as anyone has tried to make an argument or sell something…which is kind of the same thing. But there is a trend happening right now that involves the manipulation of information that is pretty scary. Originally information was intended to reflect reality. But now, it seems like it’s becoming more and more acceptable for politicians, companies, and entire media networks to change information to create a non-existent reality. So in simpler terms, they are lying…and very few people seem upset about it. This has been happening in the education world for a while. If school systems and administrators are being pressured to raise their reading comprehension scores, they simply make the reading tests easier. Or if you want to raise your graduation rate, change what it means to graduate which allows them to give information that is “true” while creating the reality that isn’t actually there. Pretty ballsy and tricky if you ask me. But now, North Carolina legislators (GOP P.S.) are doing more than just manipulating information to create a semblance of order. They are actually outlawing the use of information that presents a reality that they don’t like.
Stephen Colbert talked about this on his show last week. (I’ll save the discussion about how ironic it is that I get more reliable news from Comedy Central than I do from many of the major media networks for another blog). You should probably watch it because Colbert does a much better job explaining this than I do, but I was too upset to not write about this Climatologists have recently predicted that sea levels might actually rise more than earlier studies forecasted. This translates to sea levels that could be more than 30 inches higher in the next 100 years on the North Carolina coast. Obviously this would be catastrophic and unprecedented in human history. Instead of taking proactive and aggressive measures to slow climate change, the NC GOP is simply going to create a law that makes it illegal to refer to data that predicts catastrophic rises in sea level. Which would be like me going to a doctor and being told that I probably had appendicitis and then instead of taking care of the situation (by getting a second opinion, CT scan, or scheduling a surgery) I just made a t-shirt that said “I do not have appendicitis” and then I went home and watched reruns of 30 Rock on hulu like normal. And my strongest argument for my illogical position would be that I cannot have appendicitis becuase historically, I've never had it before...which is exactly the way the bill approaches the issue of rising sea levels.
Colbert was referring to House Bill 819, specifically Section 2(e):
“The Division of Coastal Management shall be the only State agency authorized to develop rates of sea-level rise and shall do so only at the request of the Commission. These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise. Rates of sea-level rise shall not be on rate for the entire coast but, rather, the Division shall consider separately oceanfront and estuarine shorelines.”
I don’t know if I can effectively put into words how effed up this is…and also how scary. North Carolina legislators REFUSE to face the issue of rising sea-levels. Maybe it’s because some of these legislators are really old and know they won’t actually be around to figure out what to do when the Outerbanks are underwater. I mean after all, most people are more willing to throw down when they know they don’t have to clean up. Or maybe it’s because they live in the Piedmont and they’ve always been inconvenienced by the 2+ hour drive to the coast and they are looking forward to living closer to the beach. But more than likely it’s because a lot of these legislators believe in Science about as much as they believe in Santa Claus. Thanks to their overtly religious policies (ahem Amendment ONE) and emotional approach to LAW-MAKING, logic is being slaughtered in North Carolina’s legislative bodies at a rate that is just as alarming as the one that climatologists have predicted for our oceans. No worries though; they’ll just create a bill that outlaws discussing the extinction of common sense in North Carolina…unless you’re using language that is approved by the NC GOP.
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