Thinking about ...

... the difference between wisdom and knowledge, the overwhelming bias towards the latter in an information age.

●Knowledge is not wisdom.

●Though tangentially related, the two cannot be pursued in the same way or at the same time.

●Information is a consumable good; knowledge is a storehouse of consumed information.

●Our age has made information an cheap, attractive, marketable good.

●In the information age, if one wants to pursue wisdom with greater zeal or devotion, he must find a way to turn his energies away from the aquisition and consumption of more and more information.

Thoreau went into the woods to live deliberately.

technoSabbatarianism may only be step one ...

4 comments:

Ed de Blieck said...

The distinctions between wisdom and knowledge and skill are straightforward. It is a matter of wisdom to want to give up smoking. It is a matter of knowledge that there are various ways of achieving this. The skill comes in picking the best effective method. (Pouring half a gallon of petrol over oneself would be an example of an effective approach lacking in skill.)

J Balsbaugh said...

Hmmm ... this might be one distinction, but I don't find reality quite so neat on this point.

Ed de Blieck said...

;O)

mconey said...

I like your last bullet point. That's something that I've been struggling with in college. Besides everything that I'm learning in classes, there's a whole endless pit of information that I sometimes fall into and have to pick myself out of. It's often sparked by the thought "man, that would be cool to know about." It causes constant tension in my mental focus.
That's part of what's really intriguing about technosabbatarianism to me- having time free from information collection in order to allow processing to happen and to understand where I am focused so I'm less easily side-tracked.