The Information Age

The most significant event in my life is the rise of the internet and the information age. The steady computerization of society began when I was a very young child. I have been lucky enough to witness the breakneck technological progress in my life. In addition to the internet and the home computer which has grown from science fiction to reality we are experiencing unparalleled media coverage. The world has always had war, disaster, and stories of human triumph but never before have we been able to witness world events from our television and computers.

The first catastrophe I can remember was the space shuttle challenger explosion. I remember watching the news on TV for hours. All historical events are now viewed through the lens of the media. Unfortunately a byproduct of this coverage is the concept of spin.

When I was a child there were facts, and you learned those facts from books. Now every event is spun by various political and media related interest groups so that a fact may change based on the perspective of the spin doctors reporting that fact. The people who write history down were perhaps the first spin doctors. We have now elevated the concept of spinning truth to an art form. We have gained much from the growth of the internet and the information age but we have also lost something, innocence. My generation is a generation of skeptics. I personally do not trust a fact until I first evaluate that fact from a large pool of sources and even then I have to stop myself from adopting feelings about that fact from the reporter. I have learned to review the fact and try to develop my own point of view and feelings about a fact.

Look at how wildly public opinion has changed about the war on terror from the early days of post 9/11 to now. There is no question in my mind that biased media has played a major role in the reversal. If you compare the war media coverage of today with the war media coverage of World War II and then Vietnam you can see how much media influences public opinion.

Since every single historical event in my life must pass through the lens of the media spin doctors and be disseminated in real time full color images with sound. This is why I think that the rise of the information age via internet and media is the most significant even in my life.

Learn more about this author, Jon Ferguson.
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