information shortcuts and constraints

In Rate This Article: What’s Wrong with the Culture of Critique, Chris Colin discusses the current environment of generating reviews/recommendations/opinions online of articles, restaurants, movies, etc. – things that we interact with on the Web. Expressing opinions by sharing tweets, reviews, recommendations and engaging in conversations around them is very much a social activity and thus almost necessarily extremely popular.

The aforementioned essay presents an interesting perspective. Two sections particularly stood out for me.

Technoculture critic and former Wired contributor Erik Davis is concerned about the proliferation of reviews, too. “Our culture is afflicted with knowingness,” he says. “We exalt in being able to know as much as possible. And that’s great on many levels. But we’re forgetting the pleasures of not knowing. I’m no Luddite, but we’ve started replacing actual experience with someone else’s already digested knowledge.”

Having more information available is generally preferable to having less. We are in trouble though, if a large amount of information creates, what perhaps amounts to an illusion of knowledge, particularly if that cuts short our own quest for discovery.

Modern search engines as well as large amount of meta information in form of reviews, opinions, etc. provide extremely convenient sources of data and real shortcuts in knowledge acquisition. It is good to learn from other people’s experiences. That however, does not need to be the end. Sometimes, quick answers are more than sufficient, but other times there are real opportunities for deeper inquiry, to “figure it out for oneself.”

There’s an essential freedom in being alone with one’s thoughts, oblivious to and unpolluted by anyone else’s. Diminish that aloneness and we start to doubt our own perspective. Do I really think Blue Bottle coffee is that great? Or Blazing Saddles that funny? Do I really not like that pizza place because it isn’t authentic New York-style? Sure, it’s entirely possible to arrive at one’s own opinion amidst a cacophony of others. But it’s also possible to bend, unknowingly and imperceptibly, toward a position not naturally our own.

Knowledge can both empower and constrain. Both is important, but in this discussion that second aspect may be the more interesting one. Every bit of information that we consume about a topic will inform and build our perspective and opinion of it. We will become biased, perhaps in subtle ways, but often quickly. It is important to consider the artificial, mental boundaries that we will build, based on the information available to us.

Like many good quotes, the following is commonly attributed to Mark Twain.

They did not know it was impossible, so they did it!

This can be interpreted more broadly and I think it comes down to the following. Introspection to determine our own biases in a given situation can be an instructive exercise. Sometimes it is a very good thing to ignore or place a lower emphasis on certain pieces of knowledge. Sometimes, one has to dive in deep and experience discovery not because but in spite of any other information that others provided.