I came across these resonant words on the subject of information the other day:
These then are some of the characteristics of the deluge of information which has descended upon us... We ought to ask whether the increase of these variegated types of knowledge has made us happier or wiser, whether it has enriched or impoverished the quality of our lives, whether the increased production of intellectual knowledge necessarily had to be accompanied by an even greater increase of trivialised and trashy knowledge. Might it not be time to expect a reasonable community to control the indiscriminate flow of knowledge? Has knowledge, destined to increase man's mastery, assumed a fetishistic domination over him? Has modern industrial society created another Frankenstein monster?
Bitingly relevant for 2013? Actually written in 1963 by one Lewis Coser (whoever he was) reviewing a worthy volume on The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States in the first issue of the New York Review of Books. I came across it in the facsimile edition of numero uno that the NYRB gave out for free with their summer issue.
So what does this tell us? Nothing really changes? If you thought things were bad then you have no idea just how incredibly, infinitely, bad it's going to get? It's game over for civilisation? Possibly, paradoxically, all three?
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