[Infowarrior] - A Drawback of the Information Age

[Richard Forno]

A Drawback of the Information Age

>From Christian Science Monitor, February 9, 2007
By Jeffrey Shaffer
http://www.freepress.net/news/20962

I¹m thinking it might be a good idea for every major city in America to have
a guy like Joe Turner on the payroll. He¹s the fictional CIA agent portrayed
by Robert Redford in ³Three Days of the Condor,² a 1975 thriller that¹s one
of my favorite spy movies.

In the film, Joe is a researcher in a clandestine agency office in New York
City. He reads books and other publications from around the globe and picks
out information that might indicate an awareness of secret CIA operations.

In today¹s world, he¹d also be watching hours of TV, scanning for clues to
potential nefarious activities. Boston could¹ve used a guy like him last
month when reports came in about strange electronic objects planted around
the city.

I feel that Joe would¹ve turned on his police scanner, heard a description
of the blinking devices, and immediately called city hall to say, ³Don¹t
shut down the highways yet. This sounds like a promotion for Aqua Teen
Hunger Force. It¹s an offbeat animated series with a small audience. This
kind of publicity stunt is right up their alley.²

Is it possible that no one in the Boston law enforcement bureaucracy is an
avid fan of the Cartoon Network? I¹m not being sarcastic.

I¹ve mentioned in previous columns how hard it is for me to keep up with
every detail of modern culture, and obviously I¹m not alone in battling this
information gap.

The old saying that knowledge is power still holds true, but how does anyone
with a thirst for knowledge avoid being drowned by the tsunami of
information that crashes over us each day? My fear is that many Americans
are sliding into a narrow groove that includes a few topics of personal
interest, and everything outside the groove is simply ignored.

A recent Nielsen survey of Internet users found that 12 percent of American
respondents had never heard of global warming. I¹d like to question those
people more closely and learn how they decide what information is useful in
their lives and what they don¹t care about.

It¹s a decision we all face constantly, and it never gets easier. A recent
story in The New York Times explained that 10 publications in Washington
carry a total of 14 columns focused on political gossip, up from only three
such columns a decade ago.

I wonder what Joe Turner would do if I yanked him out of that movie and put
him to work monitoring our cavalcade of modern media outlets? I have a
feeling he¹d just shake his head and opt for early retirement.

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