Do we live in a world where quantity is more important than quality? This is something that I have been pondering this week, sparked mainly by the fact that I have started reading Ben Elton’s new book, ‘Blind Faith‘. In this novel, Elton creates an Orwellian world where privacy is looked on as unnatural and all people are encourgaed to shared their every thought and action online with the rest of the community. Meanwhile, the novel’s main character, Trafford, works for the government, gathering totally useless information about people to fill the national databanks. Its hyperbole I know, but it does make you wonder where all this is headed.
Every day we hear or see things about how much more information is available on the internet, but what sort of information is it and is our life any better for its existence? To quote a passage from Blind Faith, “The Internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and fith, and then beneath the cloak of police surveillance.” Im not suggesting that we are headed towards the ‘police state’ laid out by Elton, but the obsession we seem to have with quantity over quality is concerning and something to bear in mind when taking students into the dark corners of the internet. Its not all about how many comments you have, or how many hits you got, or even how many friends you have on Facebook. It about quality too. To quote the old proverb, “A man with two watches never knows what time it is!”
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May 28th, 2008 at 2:11 am
Thanks Mal, I couldn’t remember the name of the book – have to read it it sounds really interesting. Prue