What do you know about....

the 19th century and information! Good question. Sorry to pull a Clinton here, but that depends very much on your definition of 'know'. I've studied the 1800s enough to be familiar enough with who did what when, but how much is actually contained inside of my head? Very little. Rarely do I memorize information that can be pulled up in seconds, and when I do it usually stays there only as long as the test. I guess that in itself is a kind of commentary about information, which is the other half of my assignment. So, before I go to refresh myself on the notes of previous history classes, here is what information actually resides in my head.

American history I know pretty well; War of 1812, Louisiana Purchase, civil war, gilded age, all that good stuff. My grasp on the world stage of that century is a little shakier. I haven't taken a history class in over three years. What I do recall is the collapse of empires and the rise of technology. Asia began to open up, Edison and Tesla make important steps in the field of electricity, and science in general expands greatly. Darwin shakes up things with his 'Origin of species', and slavery starts to be abolished. Basically, the 19th century breaks down the walls established in the medieval world and sets the stage for technology and globalization, which was realized later in the 20th century.

As for information, it's kind of a self-referential loop to know something about information, isn't it? I very much like the three concepts outlined in class: consume, create, and connect. I feel that those are very pertinent to information in our world today. The internet and technology has created a veritable flood of information that drowns quite a number of people. Despite the ready availability, vast populations still reside in ignorance of much of the advances in science, world politics, and basically all the advantages that technology affords us. The ability to filter information and getting the right knowledge to the right people is, I feel, one of the greatest tasks of this digital age. No one person or organization can sit atop the internet and try to funnel everything to the right place, so the answer lies more in the direction of getting the masses to guide themselves, by connecting themselves to the right people, and the right people to themselves. Like the catch-phrase from class, 50 brains are better than 1, even if the 1 has a PhD. So what do I actually know about information? I know that it's important, and I would like to know more about it. That's about all I've got.