Source: Felix Mittermeier
Living in the information age comes with significant perks. It was never easier to access knowledge about literally anything and everything in a matter of seconds with just a few clicks. We have a vast ocean of readily available data at our fingertips, easily accessible from pretty much anywhere in the world.
This has led to dramatic increase of the rate at which we produce technical information and solve problems that have been stalling our development for decades. The best part is that the more we progress, the more we tend to progress, as Arthur Conan Doyle once said. The more problems we solve, the better we become at solving problems.
The development of the World Wide Web and the subsequent adoption of personal computers on a large scale that followed almost a decade later laid the groundwork for the internet revolution of our time. We found a way to accelerate the transmission and processing of information and it has worked wonders so far. It is now easier than ever to generate value.
Near-instant exchange and access to information is a great thing. Knowledge is power, and transparency is the remedy to the darkness under which abuse, injustice and corruption thrives. In this sense, access to information is the key to democracy, and that explains why the world is now a much better place than ever politically speaking, even with all the terrible conflicts and silly wars going on at the moment.
However, with great power comes great danger. The internet is flooded with information, and unfortunately there's a lot of junk out there.
One needs to know where to look at and what to ignore in order to find the truth. The ability to filter out the garbage and navigate through the noise is an essential skill to have. They say there are always two sides to every story, but the thing about the internet is that it's more like two thousand sides.
On one hand, false information spread deliberately - and often covertly - to deceive is everywhere. The average person just won't bother cross-checking facts and doing research in order to reach safe conclusions. It's frustrating but at the same time reasonable, considering that the largest part of the population is working non-stop to make ends meet. The rat race is no joke.
On the other hand, and to quote Oscar Wilde this time, the truth is rarely pure and never simple. Just like literary interpretation is largely subjective when it comes to quotes like this, the truth is a complex concept in most cases. Difficult to explain and open to interpretation, it's all a matter of perspective.
The lens through which we view the world may satisfy our own feelings, but this doesn't mean it's always right. The truth is often what we make of it, and that's because it's in our nature to focus on the facts that serve our purpose. In reality, there are three truths; my truth, your truth and the truth. The latter lies somewhere in the middle.
Thanks for reading,
