The Information Age

Information is around you everywhere you look. Televisions, radios, newspapers, computers, and cellphones all provide us with seamless connections to information around the clock. This wasn’t the case a few generations ago. As a culture, we have become accustomed to having information at our fingertips everywhere we go. Once a major event happens anywhere in the world, we all know about it within a few minutes. With the creation of the internet, we have all become connected with each other through constant information. We have created a central hub of information that is accessible at any time, from various locations and requires little to no time to tap into.

Can you remember the last day you didn’t Google something? Anytime I have a question or need some information on something I can now just take out my phone, launch my browser, and Google it to find the answer. How crazy is it that 100 years ago something like this would just seem like it was out of a fairytale sci-fi movie? Think about how much of your life revolves around the internet and how much time you spend daily tapping into this infinite source of information. It is absolutely astounding that we have access to a near limitless amount of resources of information through a single channel that anyone can tap into whenever they want, sometimes even for free. Information has spread like wildfire and it is not stopping.

With this rapid expansion of information availability, the window for hiding information is getting smaller and smaller. Gone are the days where secrets were kept under wraps with only a select few having knowledge of them. We can now follow celebrities with every step they take and know what they are doing around the clock. When something of interest happens, we are going to know about it. There are no boundaries restricting us anymore from any of this information.

This is certainly a giant step in human innovation, but what could the possible consequences of this be? The benefits are easy to see but could this potentially be dangerous? As much as the internet will help us gain knowledge and communicate with each other, could this kind of power be abused? Is it already being abused? Could we really wage a war over the internet? The internet could easily be used to influence thousands of people to believe something whether it be true or not. History has shown that propaganda has been used before by governments to influence their citizen’s thoughts and beliefs. I think it would be pretty easy to fabricate something together, spread it on the internet, and have ordinary people believing something their “leaders” have told them no matter the actual validity of the information.

A lot of people will believe anything they read or hear without logically thinking about it completely. Just because someone in “power” says something, doesn’t automatically give it any validity. The false impression of leadership has given influential power to those at the top of governmental hierarchies. The problem is, no one is really leading anything. We have been culturally influenced to believe that we are being led and that we need to listen to these leaders or we will get locked in a cage. It is a social trap that we have got locked into and it will take a long time of enlightenment to eventually break. The internet can be used by these leaders to infect beliefs systems into our brains to program us to believe war is necessary, killing people is actually a just cause, and marijuana is actually a harmful drug.

It is amazing that for the most part, we are all going along with this. We don’t question it. Granted we don’t have the ability to revolt against it because we would find ourselves in a cage pretty quickly. You can just throw ethics out the window when it comes to policy making within most countries. Will it ever change? Are we going down this road forever? I think this is a step in the road that we need to actually realize what is happening in this world. Truthful information cannot be concealed forever and the internet is giving us access to more truth and more bullshit at the same time. The truth will eventually outweigh the nonsense but it isn’t going to happen overnight.

Information is powerful. It might be more powerful than any physical weapon we have developed. Infecting someone with an idea leads them to believe something. They in turn infect others and it spreads quicker and quicker especially with the way information can be spread now through the internet and other various intermediaries that we use constantly everyday. My hope is that the truth eventually spreads to the point where it can’t be contained. All the nonsense and illogical beliefs get weeded out and we grow consciously as human beings. We stop going to other countries to kill for profit and we stop believing that someone is actually leading this whole bizarre thing called life. We drop all materialistic values and we concentrate on what is really important. We all treat each other equally. We all look out for each other. We all help each other grow and we all enjoy this thing. Put your ego aside for a few seconds and imagine a world where this was actually happening worldwide. It seems like another feel good movie with a happy ending. Start doing your part and spread the truth. We will only actually make some progress if we all start telling the truth.

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