The Pursuit of Knowledge Vs. The Pursuit of Information

There is a very important shift in the educational trends of today. Because of the amounts of information that are made available individuals have access to more amounts of information than they have ever had. Not only are their gigabytes and terabytes but there are now such things as petabytes, yodabytes, exabytes and zetabytes. There is a virtual abundance of information that is available at the finger tips of the average individual.

Anything that an individual desires to look up they can. Technology has mad it possible for individuals to even listen to college lectures from Harvard or Yale. There is such an abundance of information that storage in the future could very well be compromised because of the huge amounts of data that are produced on a daily basis. The problem is not the lack of information. The problem in the educational process is that there is a deficit in learning. Individuals are memorizing large amounts of information and yet they are no learning the complexities behind this information. Individuals are gathering facts but they are not gathering the power and capability to understand the meaning behind this information.

The power of intuitive processes and critical thinking skills are waning at an incredible rate. This generation is the piece-meal generation that can find a lot of information about a lot of things but has no direct wisdom or understanding concerning any of these things. It is as though knowledge has become the principles objective. To know is the cry of the day but to understand that which is known and to have a comprehensive systemic understanding has been in most cases abandoned. Individuals seek to obtain degrees and therefore work to obtain the degree but in many cases most of the knowledge acquired to obtain the degree is forgotten because the goal was the degree. In some rare occasions individuals still seek the knowledge with the degree being the symbol of acquired knowledge and skill.

In many cases information is sought after to obtain an answer to a question but not to obtain a lasting and understandable concept. The goal seems to be information that will enable elevation in position and elevation in salary. These things are not bad in and of themselves but at what price are we trading the development and the expanding of our minds and mental capabilities for information that is used for a momentary purpose. This, I believer will produce a very serious problem in the future. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the integration of cybernetics with humanity. The future is pointing more and more to the integration of computer tech with the human brain.

The author has learned that anything we bind ourselves to will become that which we cannot live without and ultimately become the master of our fates that determine what we will ultimately become in the future.

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