A recent issue of The Economist had a feature story on the information deluge that characterizes these modern times. While it has been said for a long time that we are living in the information age, our understanding of what that means continues to be reconfigured by the massive amounts of data that are currently being generated, processed, stored, and utilized around the world. In that article from The Economist, the writer observes that when the Sloan Digital Sky Survey started work in 2000, its telescope in New Mexico collected more data in its first few weeks than had been amassed in the entire history of astronomy.
But as has now been observed in several sectors, just because we are able to collect massive amounts of data does not mean that we know how to utilize all of the data. In some ways it seems human beings in a modern age have resigned themselves to a pack rat mentality of collecting things simply for the sake of collecting without any clear sense that the items will have value or utility now or in the future.
So it is that I find myself standing at the edge of the proverbial hard drive looking into the great cloud of information and data that pervades digital existence. I am at once so aware of so many things, yet unable to effectively engage with any of them. Information is supposed to empower, but in the face of its sheer volume it has a strangely dis-empowering effect.
I do not mean to sound hopelessly despairing about the current information age. I think there is reason to maintain a sense of hope, and will explore that conviction in future posts. But what I do want to underscore is the need for something beyond the data or information alone. Data alone simply cannot sustain and help us to create the kinds of lives, I think, we would like to live as human beings.
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