confusion

Beyond the age of information is the age of choice.

Charles Eames

I got this quote from this TED talk [ted.com] by Eames Demitrious. Apparently the quote is from 1978. That in and of itself says the speaker had extraordinary vision or luck.

Those of us who live in the Age of Information (assuming that this is it) are bombarded with massive amounts of passive information, and have a functionally infinite amount of informational easily available for our consumption if we actively seek it out. More information than any human can consume and use. There have been libraries and universities for along time, but the internet has removed the barreors to knowledge for far more people. What we struggle with is how to choose what information to focus on, and how to use that information.

Now for the choice: What information to consume? What information to believe?

IBM must have had whole departments of people just to FACT CHECK the pages in their manuals which said, ‘This page intentionally left blank.’

Joel Spolsky, from a blog post [joelonsoftware.com]

…And I thought the telecoms business was bad…

“Men have sought to demonstrate their love of God by loving nothing at all and their love for humanity by loving nobody whatsoever.”

John Passmore, quoted in “Onwards and upwards” from the December 17th 2009 The Economist