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Thoughtful Citizenship in the Information Age <...cont.>
Now, the Industrial Revolution involved the division of physical labor. The Information Revolution involves the division of mental labor. Like the industrialist, the Information Age entrepreneur divides up the production process into its basic constituent parts: that is, ultimately, into zeros and ones. Once information is in binary form, it can be manipulated and its output expanded with much greater ease. Nor do we have to worry about the stunted minds of our machines. Computer chips don't get tired of repetitive tasks--nor are they called upon to make personal or political judgments. At least not yet.
But what happens when the amount of data generated by the Information Revolution exceeds the capacity of human beings to make sense of what the data means? Then we become dependent on the machines to help us not only generate and classify information but also to find patterns, construct interpretations, and draw conclusions. At that point the habits of mind we develop to cope with the avalanche of data in our info-glutted environment may conflict with the habits of mind necessary for democratic citizenship. Good democrats are amateurs, not experts. They believe that all people are equally endowed not only with political rights, but also with the potential for wise political judgment. Consequently democratic decision-making cannot be reduced to an algorithm. But the Information Economy and the Information Society tend to privilege the kinds of decision-making that can be reduced to algorithms. Which means that we are at risk of losing the arts of reflection, contemplation, self-examination, and self-criticism.
Our world of bits and bytes is a very hurried world. We are constantly complaining that we don't have enough time to get everything expected of us done. We get frustrated when a Web page takes more than a few seconds to load. We have little patience for reading grand philosophical texts or listening to political debates that last more than an hour and a half, commercial interruptions included. We are used to assimilating information in small, highly digestible chunks of text, speech, images, or data. We want not only our food but our facts served up as fast as possible. And today's computers can process digital information amazingly fast. But that's not the same thing as thinking. Thinking takes time. It requires time to "waste" in the act of imagination, in the pursuit of curiosity, in the quest to look at the world from multiple perspectives. Unless we are prepared to hand over our decision-making responsibilities to next-generation Intel processors running Microsoft Philosopher King software, we will need to find the time to exercise our minds the "old fashioned way"–by thinking, by puzzling through problems both individually and collectively, and by wondering about the kinds of questions that can't be answered by zeros and ones, on and off, yes and no. I hope that the members of Phi Beta Kappa will model for others how to fulfill the responsibilities of thoughtful citizenship in the Information Age.
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