David Carr today makes exactly the right point in looking at how the web can help/hurt with processing information. He takes the debate from the theoretical to the real by looking at results of a drug study that had the potential to affect him. He says:
Admittedly, that was the reaction of the Old-Media Man, the person who starts his day reading the morning headlines in the local paper (in my case, The New York Times) or jumps out of his recliner after watching an item on the “CBS Evening News.” After calming down, I remembered that I am also a New-Media Man, the kind who has trained himself to drill down and look past the headlines. And an entire niche of blogs and digital news sources on relevant subjects — drug risks, Big Pharma, diabetes — were at my fingertips for the mining.
And here is what I found: everything, except insight.
As he digs into the information found on the web, in blogs, in databases, in discussion groups, and as he looks at what is available via the MSM, he notes that all the information available ads up to....not much actionable. As often, I'm reminded of this snip from a poem from Edna St. Vincent Millay:
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric; undefiled
Proceeds pure Science, and has her say; but still
Upon this world from the collective womb
Is spewed all day the red triumphant child.
Quite often, decisions come down to a question of trust and authority. Which expert has the context and the authority to truly answer the important question. For Carr, today at least, the answer is:
This Wednesday, I will see my endocrinologist. We will chat for a few minutes about Avandia and no doubt he’ll smile when I entertain him with all that I have learned on the Web. Then after he tells me what he thinks, I will follow my doctor’s orders.
All things considered, not a bad choice.