Content Conundrum?! - Part I

How is it possible that the Information Age is producing a puzzling crisis related to of all things - content?  It is profoundly ironic that a society of people with such great access to information is simultaneously suffering from a lack of good, accurate content.  Why is this occurring?  Let's consider four contributing factors.

First, our culture has become increasingly satisfied with relying upon headlines, a few lines of text, and/or sound bites as an acceptable supply of content needed to be informed.  I, like many of you, now consume most of my media electronically.  It's been years since I actually had a newspaper delivered to my front door.  As much as I love this "zeitgeist"method of downloading information, I am concerned by the kind of distance it creates between the full content of the article and the reader.  One must click on the headline (btw, only if it creatively captures the imagination) and chase the content in order for substantial text to appear.  This is rather dissimilar to holding a newspaper with a longer column of content readily available.  An unfortunate trifecta of our cultural need to receive information quickly, the ridiculous pace of our lives, and the presence of mere headlines in our glances is relegating content to skimpy bites of text.

Secondly, the internet has diminished our ability to decipher between reliable, accurate, and/or authoritative information and that which is rogue.  The preponderance of bad information being spewed daily by self proclaimed pundits, who now have a delivery method that is unprecedented in terms of accessibility and audience, is overwhelming.  Who has time to sift through it all in search of accuracy? Or, an even bigger question, who do we now rely upon as being trustworthy to impart reliable data?  The internet has hyper-decentralized historically, acceptable standards of appropriate sources of insight.  Our culture no longer has a macro-intersection of unanimity as it relates to Source.

Thirdly, the no-holds-barred, commodification of content has supplanted the old paradigm.  While it is true that information has been commoditized for centuries (books, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias), it was done so with regard to quality and product differentiation.  The cyber approach to spewing information does so without a conscience and is available to the highest bidder.  Search engines, if utilized without filters, lead us on a path laden with land mines placed by those whose sole motivation is monetary profit.  

And fourthly, fueling this forest fire, is our insistence that impatience is not only normative but an acceptable character flaw for the 21st century.  We flaunt our impatient ways like a badge of honor.  But here-in lies the problem.  It takes time to gather good information.  Short cuts are suspect.  The art of gathering requires us to read longer texts, listen thoroughly, research more often, ask questions, attend a variety of meetings, and/or spend more time reflecting on what we have heard.  It is tragic to be misinformed or misguided simply due to impatience.  Do we not realize that this is one of the areas in the content conundrum that is fully in our control? And yet we relinquish our freedom to be informed by choosing convenience and a hasty life style over substance.

With this backdrop in place, Part II (coming soon) will address the impact on the Church and our focus theme of the "old and new Church."

Ex nihilo,

R.J. Rhoden