Hopes for a New Year

What is your resolution for 2010?  For many, I can guess it is to be more open and willing to accept the unexpected. To be surprised.  With this new economy of information we find ourselves in as we enter a new decade, it is easier to listen to new, unexpected points of view. But I wonder, and I ask for your opinions to the contrary: does more information make us well-rounded, or does it further our own biases?

The last decade, has created a deluge of information in multiple mediums.  How many articles and profiles have been published on the importance of Twitter, social media and the evolution of blogosphere?  Online media has shifted from being from an addendum of the media to being the media.  David Carr, media and culture critic for the New York Times, penned one of the better articles I’ve read about Twitter.   He discusses his apprehension toward the next Internet craze, although he eventually acknowledges that this isn’t just a fun way to document the minutia of the quotidian.  Rather, he sees Twitter as the guts of the new Internet, our new way to communicate effectively.  Carr sees Twitter as a way to “carefully curate” the people one listens to thus creating an “always-on data stream” from the minds you trust the most. Beautiful.  A custom-made brain trust at the click of a mouse.  To a point that is exactly what our new information age wants.  The most information with the least effort and cost.  But how does more information help us understand our world better?  We are getting more facts, but are we gaining a better perspective and putting all the necessary bits into context?

I believe that in pursuit of niche publications (Huffington Post, DailyKos on the left; Drudge Report and Newsmax on the right) we have further entrenched ourselves in our own biases, and dug bigger holes that are harder to dig out of.

From personal observation a good cross section of different popular but partisan news sites- opposing views are shared within the sites, but merely as a means for mockery and instant refutation.  Instead of “You say X, but I must say Y,” the tone has changed to “Can you believe X?  Can you even believe they said X?”  These hardened beliefs have in turn left and taken the form of a coarser public dialogue. From the often obstructionist Code Pinks on the left and the Tea Partiers on the right, hardened values makes any hope of the moderate middle fading. The web makes it even easier to disregard an opinion, because you may never even see it.  It is no longer a page you flip past in the newspaper; the thought was never even manifested.  With the instant arguments and message board flare-ups that occur on our browsers, it is easy to see why William F. Buckley was so revered at the time of his passing in 2008.  He represented a clear brand of conservatism, but also a brand of arguer and intellectual.  On his show Firing Line, he didn’t bring enemies on his show to shout them down a-la Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly or even the increasingly popular liberal loudmouth Ed Shultz of MSNBC.  Though no conservative myself, I can respect two minds engaged in conversation rather than two talking heads making noise.

We’ve squandered our new era of information by preaching to the choir.  Let’s try finding some middle ground. My resolutions are to ask more meaningful questions and find better context and perspective.  What are yours?

-Johnny Simon for Pangea