Post-Information Age

We used to call this the information age.  The idea was that information would begin to be power as it became more widespread and transferable.  Information was going to be the currency that the world traded in, as inventions and discoveries became more commonplace.  Executives didn't need secretaries who could type letters, they needed assistants who could find information for them.  What dawned, however, was that information itself became commonplace.  It became unimaginably easy to find just about any information one wanted.  Suddenly, executives didn't need secretaries who could find information either (they could do it themselves) - they needed assistants who could understand and simplify information into meaning.

Now we are in a world where information is literally at our fingertips.  In less than 5 minutes' reading time, using only a digital device that rarely leaves my person, I can become a novice in nearly any subject.  Ken Jennings, the guy who won 74 straight games of Jeopardy, speaks about the pain of becoming obsolete.  Information isn't power anymore, because everyone with access to the internet has unlimited access to it.  The alchemists trying to create gold centuries ago would have limited its value.  Tim Berners-Lee limited the value of information by creating a platform for it to be widely-accessible.  The "information age" was short-lived.

I would argue, as Ken Jennings tries to do, that information has not lost its value entirely.  It's still better to know something than to have to look it up.  Our educational system, however, is training for a world that doesn't exist yet, and it's very possible that when our current students are in the prime of their careers, information will be so easily accessible that the value of knowing facts actually does decrease to nearly nothing.  What is the objective of education in that type of a world?

The value in a world inundated with information is found in connections.  I can read all I want about nanotechnology, but the information isn't valuable unless I realize a connection to something I know about architectural engineering.  I can become an expert in organizational dynamics, but that knowledge becomes truly significant when I start seeing the wisdom of the ages recorded in literature about human nature.  It isn't particularly important anymore for students to learn the name of the admirals in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, but it's exceedingly important for them to understand the implications of the Russo-Japanese War on the 20th Century.  Knowledge pales in comparison to an understanding of cause and effect and the ability to think critically and creatively.  Connecting disparate fields and linking separate disciplines creates innovation.  The importance of a "Renaissance Man" is being re-discovered.