How Rapid Access to Information Affects Our Perceptions and Attitudes

BY THOMAS M. DORAN

Many in Michigan, America, and the world take rapid access to information for granted. Entire generations have never lived in a world without devices that deliver limitless information, images, and more, at their fingertips or at a voice command.

Surely, this is a good thing. Technology now delivers information that makes science, engineering, and every career field accessible to millions. It is no longer just a privileged few who have access to experts, sponsors, and technical libraries, or those gifted enough (Thomas Edison comes to mind) to blaze a path of their own into the theoretical or applied sciences.

Is there everything to like, and nothing not to like, about our immediate access to information and entertainment?

Consider that the immediacy of everything can blur historical context. Take water quality, for example. The press of daily information and advocacy voices highlighting immediate concerns can get in the way of long-term questions such as:

 Have we made progress compared to 25/50/100 years ago?

 How serious are today’s water concerns in relation to those early in the twentieth century when many people were sickened or died from typhoid fever from drinking contaminated water?

 Are habitats in my own region (the Detroit River, for example) more, or less, robust than 25 or 50 years ago as measured by diversity of species and water quality data?

Historical context is important because it can identify trends, trajectory, progress, or lack thereof. However, we must work harder and dig deeper to understand historical context.

Rapidly communicated information can be of great benefit by alerting us to an emerging epidemic or an impending natural disaster, so governments, individuals, companies, etc., can be as prepared as possible. Pollution events, too, such as spills or drinking water advisories can be communicated rapidly to the public and water customers.

However, the rapidity and social weight of today’s communications may also convince us that the consensus view of the scientific community at a particular moment in time is the last word on a subject, that contrarian views should be rejected, or even censored, even as the consensus of the moment has often been shown to be incomplete or incorrect. Before they were publicly recognized giants of science, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, and many others held contrarian views in their times.

Data, statistics, models, algorithms, and the like— unimaginable a few generations ago—are now widely available for reference, reflection, and action. We rely on such tools of science and applied science, and the benefits are incalculable.

However, identifying the limitations and boundaries of these models and statistics is often neglected, especially in the public arena. Thus, oversimplification, or even misinterpretation, can occur, as when it’s announced that a “toxic chemical” has been detected in a water supply. With today’s fantastically low detection levels (parts per trillion or parts per quadrillion), merely detecting a “toxic chemical” may or may not signify danger, a distinction too often lost in public communications. The amount, as well as other factors such as transmissibility, is important to identify before danger can be proclaimed.

Several generations ago, “near zero” meant one part per million. When I embarked on my career, we could detect 1 polluting (red) marble in a 10-foot long by 10-foot wide by 1-foot-high box filled with a million blue marbles. Today, we can detect 1 polluting (red) marble in that same 10-foot by 10-foot box filled with a trillion blue marbles—a box 200 miles (yes, miles!) high rather than 1-foot high. Finding 1,000 red marbles in that sky-high box represents far less pollution than finding 1 red marble in the small box.

Rapid access to information means collaboration across countries and the globe is easier than ever before, facilitating accelerated advancement in practically every field of study. However, the security of confidential information, intellectual property, and inventions is also under assault at an unprecedented rate.

Rapid access to information can be a tremendous boon to people and societies if we also understand limitations, context, and the potential for misinterpretation and manipulation. That appropriate balance enables us to maximize the benefits of information about often complex and manylayered subjects. As a practical matter, we can 1) verify the credibility of a source of information, 2) review at least one credible contrary perspective, 3) check to see if the source of information has an advocacy agenda (not disqualifying in itself but worth knowing), 4) eliminate or limit sources we know to be provocative for the sake of manipulation.

Literature and all the arts often give insights that go beyond data, models, and the like. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings , as well as Peter Jackson’s film adaptations and Amazon’s The Rings of Power series, depict a spectacular far-seeing stone called a Palantir. In Tolkien’s mythology, Palantiri were created by a master artist and inventor for good and useful purposes; that is, to see things across vast reaches of land and sea, sometimes view possible events, and to use this knowledge wisely. Later, Palantiri were corrupted so that those who gazed into them saw despair-inducing or desire-inducing or rage-inducing images. Professor Tolkien was a visionary in foretelling what too often happens when people are obsessively attached to devices of all kinds, when they seek out information, images, and voices that manipulate or misinform them. Discerning the difference between seeking and using information wisely, and being misinformed or manipulated, is the essential challenge of the devices on which we increasingly rely.