Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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A friend emailed me following

The problem with the progressing world and the ever-evolving generations of human is the overwhelming assortment of information, thoughts and ideas thrown around with little care leaving many dumbfounded and many others thinking and analyzing those bits that came their way. While there are some who are simply left confused because they don’t know what exactly to absorb and what to ignore and worst still how to interpret and how to infuse it with their understanding of the world and life. Left behind as a result are ambiguous thoughts and confounded souls living unfocused lives with hazy dreams. As they say “ignorance is bliss” !

An after-thought:
Meet the new generation… aware and confused. Just as we were as kids and now as youth… just as our parents were at the prime of their life… the information burden just keep on increasing with the passing decades… as the generation passes by, there is more to know and discuss with ever-increasing pressure to know…

Meet the kids of today… overwhelmed with the burden of knowledge… burden imposed by us… accepted by them… given the increased level of their curosity… given the easy access to information sources. With the progressing world, every time we pass on a larger information dump onto our future generations causing them to think and grow much faster than their predecessors.

And I wonder, if this more knowledgeable generation will be better prepared to face the world out there and lead an enriched life or will it just lead to the loss of innocence much earlier than required without helping them to grow into better humans?!!

Here is my reply.

There is only one peril. With the democratization of information and things available at finger tips, everyone is expressing themselves. Most people are not really thinking. They are just paddling what others have said. And thus the noise increase. Its the classic battle between signal and noise and currently there is a lots and lot of noise around.

And this noise adds to ignorance. People think its enlightenment but it truly is ignorance.

As far as the next generation of India goes, thing is that burden is only expected. Darwin once said and I totally agree that the fittest survive. If you are not fit enough, if you are not knowledgeable enough, if you are not intelligent enough, you would be in the lowest rung of the pecking order and that is not an interesting place to be. Once you are there, you loose everything that a human being wants from life - authority, power, food, sex, control and other things like that.

Any feedback?