Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Magic of the Internet

Yet another example... a reference to "Informing Oursleves to Death" on an Information Zen Enterprise 2.0 discussion post let me to a thought provoking speech by the aforementioned title given by Neil Postman to the German Informatics Society, 11 Oct 90, Stuttgart sponsored by IBM-Germany, which led me to the Neil Postman information page, which kindled my interest in reading his book Amusing Ourselves to Death as well as pointing me to Joshua Sowin's thoughtful Fire and Knowledge blog, and a post that references an interesting cartoon, based on the forward in Amusing Ourselves to Death, that compares/contrasts the future created by Huxley and Orwell. 

The links/relationships created between information can be as valuable as the information itself.

3 comments:

Beverly Graham said...

And where did all of that get you? I see your journey, but no destination. What did you learn?

Anonymous said...

Fair question. For me, learning can be the journey of discovery, the destination of having acquired new knowledge or skill, or often some combination of both. To me, this journey:
- reinforced the value of people within a community / domain identifying content of value within the context of a conversation / discussion
- pointed me to a far better thinker than I who, like I, views information and technology as means, not ends, and subtly decries society for thinking otherwise
- pointed me to a thought provoking author to explore further
- reinforced Weinberg's assertion that everthing is miscellaneous and the value of hyperlinking
- enabled me to consider Orwell and Huxley in a comparative fashion that I'd never thought of

Clearly, in this case, the learning was as much about the journey as unintentional destination .. serendipituous discovery .. exploration ..

markinsonmarshal said...

I like the link provide about the Amusing Ourselves to Death...The title sounds interesting looking forward to read it.
knowledge management