“The clear but counter intuitive consequence of the connected society seems to be that we rely more and more on our own quick judgment of everything all the time. And if we start doing this at an increasingly early age, we don’t have time to fill the brains with basic knowledge and thinking capabilities.”

futuramb:

It is easy to blame the eductional system and not without reason. But what is usually forgotten in this discussion is how the connected society influence our minds.

What we experience today is a dramatic imbalance between the amount of data and information available and the human capacity to manage it. When a human have too little information the human brain fill on the blanks by possible or likely elements. In effect we then produce myths or stories which is our tools of encoded knowledge which help us manage a certain situation. Stories which we update when new information contradicts the current story.

The interesting thing is that when we have to much available information we seems to weave even more stories. The reason this time is that the brain still don’t have a chance to find the right information because of the difficulty to sort and analyze. But we have a lot of data and information to put together in order to create a feasible story. The increasing amount of conspiracy theories are a clear indication of this.

Together with increased stress due to the amount of data and decisions we have to make, individualization and boosted self confidence that comes from a self centered and reflexive perspective due to the media age, we think we know a lot when in fact we know less. We are fooled by the shallow acquaintance we constantly gather about a lot of things. 

The clear but counter intuitive consequence of the connected society seems to be that we rely more and more on our own quick judgment of everything all the time. And if we start doing this at an increasingly early age, we don’t have time to fill the brains with basic knowledge and thinking capabilities. 

The question about the education system is rather how any system for learning could balance this effect which I use to describe as the Megatrend of Truthiness.