A Meditation on What It Means to Live in the Age of Information

“Minority Report” (2002)

Perhaps, one of the most significant attributes of the Information Age is that information can be shared faster than ever and that the validity of that very information is often dependent on the additional information shared.

We are in the era of constant acquisition of new information. Information that not only needs a sharp intellect to discern it’s usefulness but often needs to be checked in tandem to the information shared by individuals from varying vantage points.

Take, for example, the situation of crimes and other so-called viral video sensations. Not only do multiple camera angles seemingly help validate the circumstance and lessen the probability that the event was staged, but it also helps provide even more context to an event and allows for even more possibilities of interpretation.

This ultimately means that because everyone has access to a super powerful mobile super computer (their phone), that therefore everyone who wields a smartphone and an internet connection has a responsibility and obligation to attempt a steady contribution of useful information to the global conversation. This information shared, if focused on the facts, will allow for a system of checks and balances, thus allowing different perspectives to be seen all at once. In this way, clarity and truth becomes more of entity that human beings have a personal relationship with. It is seen, it sometimes trends on social platforms, gets shared in discreet, but is ultimately a tool to make educated and informed decisions about how to live and be in command of a holistically healthy lifestyle.

This means that everyone is instrumental in the process of creating a better world. Every image shared, every video, every comment, contributes to the global perspective that either empowers individuals to evolve and to reset their perspective, or strikes chords of fear in order to paralyze the individual in the ideological swamp, a slave to the ever changing zeitgeist. In the year 2020, it is no longer a matter of content merely for consumption but of a choice to become educated, challenge the self, connect and evolve or to lock the mind within barriers of ideas. The choice of slavery is now clear , the choice of mental slavery is that of a refusal to open up and update the mind to think and to grow, or to be stuck forever in one outdated, ineffective, operating system.

This means that we must choose to change to a mode of simplicity. Simplicity is oxygen in 2020. The challenge for us in 2020 is to change. Will you change?

“It has not yet discovered that, quite as much as A.T. & T, it is in the business of moving information” — Marshall Mcluhan

Because content is massive and at scale, the fight now is for your perspective. The fight for content creators and specifically large media companies is to control context, your perspective, and your lifestyle. It has been the same since the 1960s — for you to simply buy a product is a low priority objective when compared to the goal of truly influencing how your perceive the world and how you choose to live your life. This is why a big challenge in the new year for us all is to reexamine our daily practice, the small things we do every day that come together to make the collection of events and actions that is our life. We need to reexamine how we design our homes, what materials we use, how we use those materials and what role we want those objects to play in our life. The reasoning is because many companies are spending money in advertising to control this very aspect of your mind — to control your perspective on the world and influence your daily practice. To be a human in 2020 means to constantly challenge this idea given by others, to find some peace and stillness in neutrality.

“This is like the voice of the literate man, floundering in a milieu of ads, who boasts, “Personally, I pay no attention to ads.” The spiritual and cultural reservations that the oriental peoples may have toward our technology will avail them not at all. The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception” — Marchall Mcluhan , 1964