Voices

I hear the ghosts of passed generations screaming out through the current silence. Somehow their haunting pitch falling on mostly deaf ears, but not mine and not here.

We live in an age incredible. At out fingertips, whether through the endless volumes filling countless buildings throughout the world or merely the books in our homes we have the key to our own survival. For those of us that refuse to read we have a seemingly endless supply of television channels, some responsible for the stunting of humanities progress but other truly attempting to impart the wisdom of our age. As if this were not enough,, should we be fortunate enough (as even still computers are prohibitively expensive) our homes have a direct link to a system of networks that can at lightning speed give us almost any information. Not only that which we require but also that which we desire.

We live in an age of information, inundated by it at every turn. What we have relegated to common place is in fact one of the greatest achievements our species, but, our obtuse and oblivious innate nature almost willingly turns a blind eye.

The voices grow louder until I can no longer stand their screams. They fear that we are loosing trees for the forest and as such are missing the full splendour of individuality. All those that died at the beginning of time scream loudest as we learn more in one day than they in a lifetime.

They scream, asking why we ignore the answers to our own salvation believing that in our quest it is enough to focus our intellectual attention (if we focus at all) on just one thing: Specialists all (or most) without a specialty in the thing that really matters – A solution to the very real problems that face us, have faced us and will continue to face us until we collectively realize we’ve had the answers all along.

The information age, the age in which the whole (With minor yet important exceptions) of human knowledge has been given to its rightful owners, each of the approximate six billion people on this planet – Save that not every one of those constituents is yet to realize the very real empowerment that faces them.

The voices scream of the inherent danger in that constituencies apparent apathy. Slowly, the toold of empowerment that so rightly have been returned to the people who should be both the beneficiaries and benefactors are going to have the caliber of information, our information, attacked first and eventually ripped from our wanting fingers.

The voices can’t say for sure when or where but should we continue on this course the age of information will become the age that lets its true source of power pass it by. For you, reading this, no matter the time or place you can pull yourself up and out of any station of life that you are in by merely capturing, reading, speaking about, debating and truly understanding as much as you can bear.

Salvation, yours and ultimately that of the planet is at hand, right at your fingertips, the only question is; Will you grasp it?

SDM

Fit to Print

What’s the story, all the news that’s fit to print, save that now so few of us seem to pay attention to the wholesale value of words and what they truly mean, let alone read, in this age of television. In days gone by long ago, words came from storytellers, first spoken through a glorious oral tradition to let us know of our past and where we came from. Soon, the spoken word gave way to the written word giving a freedom of conscience and consideration that the spoken never did, as from behind closed doors we could choose in dimly lit rooms whether to consume tawdry tales of the Marquis or moral dilemmas from Voltaire, Choice; Where should our minds advance? As technology advanced and the industrial revolution gave birth and rise to the marvels of invention again our focus changed, albeit temporarily to radio – The magic of invisible waves renewing and invigorating the spirit of the oral tradition. Families sat in rooms to listen to the news or stories of the world at war or of mystery and intrigue, our imaginations still active as with our minds eye we still had to create the images of people, places and things that we had no firm knowledge of, or belief that we could ever see. Still challenged by the media that fueled our souls by leaving us wanting and hungry. As history shows us, technology allowed us to become intellectually lazy, as again, invisible waves brought pictures to us of places we would never go, to see things we could never see, save for the images that now confronted our senses, first in black and white, then in colour.

The golden age of that technologies advance brought us presidential debates, the Cuban missile crisis, assassinations and the first step on the moon. Respected veterans of that by gone age like Cronkite, I can only imagine what they would think, as now, from the cradle of civilization, in stark contrast to an age of moderately objective truth I now see Babylon falling again brought to me by talking heads that talk a lot but don’t seem to be using their heads.

Brokaw, speaks of death, destruction and terror, Arnett of failed war plans, Mansbridge of suicide bombers and Entertainment Tonight of embedded reporters fired for not following the rules.

What is the story? Is it any of these? Or all? Or none – Was Pandora’s box opened when we gave our intellectual ability to services whose only job is to keep us dumbfounded and staring at the screen, why you might ask; so GE, GM, NIKE and McDonalds can sell me just one more, anything, as long as I watch and consume.

SDM