Smart Phone Trap

Smart Phones have taken over the world. It seems like everyone has one. Little kids to ancient elders have them. 

They are many things I could say about smart phones but I’m going to focus on the information aspect. Anytime someone wants to know something it’s usually just a Google search away. Google, like much of life, is all about being able to ask the right questions. That’s one of today’s survival skills.

Of course, information is not knowledge. One has to be able to integrate that information into a greater whole. That’s where a good general knowledge comes in. For example you may look up the shortest distance to get somewhere and get an answer. The problem is that the shortest distance involves climbing mountains and crossing flooded rivers. That’s where having a greater knowledge makes a difference. Instead of blinding following the shortest directions you know there’s more to travel than the number of miles.

People have information at their finger tips. What happens to you when you don’t have that information in your own little gray cell storage center in your head? Batteries die. Phones break.

Should you do without the information access of a smart phone? No. Think about it. We’ve been storing information outside our heads since we invented writing. It wasn’t long before that written information far exceeded the capacity of the human brain. That event happened thousands of years ago.

While it’s impossible to keep everything in your head you have something in there. The trick is to have on-board human storage of the most important things. The fun part is deciding what’s really important. 

-Sixbears