Sacrificing Knowledge For Information

Or Follow the Bouncing Balls

In the digital universe, knowledge is reduced to the status of information. Who will any longer remember that knowledge is to information as art is to kitsch-–that information is the most inferior kind of knowledge, because it is the most external? A great Jewish thinker of the early Middle Ages wondered why God, if He wanted us to know the truth about everything, did not simply tell us the truth about everything. His wise answer was that if we were merely told what we need to know, we would not, strictly speaking, know it. Knowledge can be acquired only over time and only by method.

-Leon Wieseltier, 2013 Commencement Speech at Brandies University

Last night after working another day of my survival job, I came home and walked my dog (while listening to a sports podcast). Then ventured out, got a haircut and picked up milk. The line at the barber shop was unusually long, so for the hour or so I was out I was glued to my phone. Blankly flicking through tweets, news headlines and other people’s photos. I got my haircut and was physically annoyed when my phone’s battery died. 

I stood in line waiting to check out at CVS deeply bothered that I had no way to entertain myself for the approximately five elapsed minutes I had to spend in line waiting to pay for my milk. I shuffled home and immediately opened my laptop, checking and replying to emails no one would deem urgent. My wife came home. We picked up some sandwiches for dinner and hit the couch. We watched someone win a million dollars on Wheel of Fortune, we watched 44 minutes of humans willingly bouncing off of padded objects and falling into water mixed with 16 minutes of commercials. Both tired from our long days we flipped on an episode of Hoarders: Buried Alive which I fell asleep to before it finished. 

I awoke to Frankie’s stare, I owed the husky one more walk. Our evening walk sometimes takes us past a tiny Greek cafe which, despite walking past every day, I’ve never eaten in. There’s outdoor seating and well past 10PM when Frank and I strolled by older European men were sitting outside yelling at each other through plumes of cigarette smoke over glasses of wine. They are debating Obama, Bush, Taxes, how their kids will earn money, the benefits of owning property versus renting. They are talking about how hard it is today. I don’t know what hour in the evening they finish solving the nation’s problems but I know I’m probably sound asleep when it happens

I tell you all of this because I’m worried. I’m worried that my intensely mundane Thursday evening wasn’t just my experience. I’m worried that it reflects the experience of most of us. Burned up by day jobs that make us automatons we have no mental faculty left to explore. 

One will argue, correctly I think, that we are more productive today than in any other age of human history. We get more work out of more hours than ever before. We are made to consume and understand more information than ever before and that which we don’t know is only keystrokes away. But the part of ourselves that is used for a digesting endless info graphics, reviewing data and reading breathless articles about FMRI scans is also the part of us that should be used to ask bigger questions. 

I’m worried because day after day, I’m not asking those questions. I’m not thinking big thoughts. Not about the world, or industry or even myself. I am moving through my days from banal pleasure to banal pleasure - from screen to screen.

Are you doing the same? 

It’s not that life is so terrible these days. Indeed for all of the talk of how badly the middle class is doing these days (and we are) we still have access to more comforts for less money than our grandparents did. Daily life isn’t that bad. Perhaps living through real troubles makes you want to think more about the nature of life? Perhaps never basking in the glow of the screen hardens you to thinking about what will come of the world? 

In their own loud and strange way the old, screen less men of my Astoria cafe are chasing knowledge. They are trying to find a greater truth. They are not watching people bounce off inflatable balls. They aren’t tweeting about bacon.