For as much as we love to know about the world around us, very few people actually take the time to really learn about the things they are interested in. Most people settle for sound bites, filtered through the popular media and pre-packaged to take no more than a couple minutes per story.
Now even most educational shows have been reduced to 5 minute segments, each segment an entirely self contained cliff-hanger for the next segment (just watch an hour of the Discovery or History channels to see what I mean). It seems people who channel-surf would find a show in the middle and have no way to figure out what was going on, so they would continue past it. Now anyone can drop in to the middle of a show and quickly catch up.
The news, too, is heavily abbreviated. Instead of getting a detailed story, we get a minute or two of overview and maybe one new fact, then on to the next story. And, predictably, newspapers are the same. Most of the news in ongoing coverage is repeated from the last time, and very little is actual new information. Even breaking news is mostly filler and conjecture and contains very little actual data.
While this is convenient for the average television viewer or newspaper reader (and therefore good for advertisers), it’s a horrible way to learn anything. Our minds soak up information very quickly, but instead of tuning in to learn, most of us tune in to tune out, and marketers know this. Instead of television being a great educational tool, it’s just another distraction.
If you want to really learn about something, you need to avoid all the popular media sources and go for the actual sources. They may be a report written in a lab somewhere, or an article or book in a non-popularized trade-journal. Often a quick search on Google is enough to track down the original source for a given news story or research result. You will likely find that the brief version given in the news bears little resemblance to the original story.
You will start to discover just how many research articles and reports are biased or skewed to make a point. A pile of data (which most readers, even the experts, will skim over) will be followed by a quote that is pointedly designed to alter your perception of the report. And often that quote, while not strongly supported by the data, is what is actually printed in the popular press.
If you want to get up-to-the-minute information on a breaking event, turn to one of the major news carriers for a couple minutes. But if you want to actually learn something, turn the TV off and actually dig in to the original source.
Other news
- Addicted to the phone by age 12? When did they get the freakin’ thing in the first place? Spain treats child phone addicts
- More comfortable than a cork: Patch ‘halts holiday diarrhoea’
- Not to be confused with ‘Texting Thumb’, and entirely different from ‘PSP Thumb’: Beware the ‘Blackberry Thumb’
Quote for the week
The best way out is always through. - Robert Frost
From the editor
One negative side-effect of living in another country is that sometimes you miss all the cultural reminders of upcoming holidays. I was just logging into my computer at work today and discovered Father’s Day had come and gone when I wasn’t paying attention.
Luckily, there were still a couple hours of Father’s Day left in the US, and so I was able to reach my dad and my brother and wish them both well. I didn’t, however, get cards or gifts for either of them… I simply forgot.
To all the fathers out there: happy belated Father’s Day!
Healthy thoughts,
Jeff
