How true is the word?: April 21, 1997 issue of New Thinking

April 21, 1997 New Thinking:
How true is the word?

Website content management

Home I About I Services I Clients I Contact

New Thinking Home

Subject Classification
Reader Feedback
Subscribing
Unsubscribing
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996

Books by
Gerry McGovern

Content Critical

Gaining competitive advantage through high-quality web content

The Web Content
Style Guide

The essential guide
for online writers, editors and managers

April 21, 1997

How true is the word?

By Gerry McGovern

“You talk as though dinosaurs being killed off by a meteor striking the earth millions of years ago is scientific fact,” Mike Witte pointed out in a response to my last piece. “But it is pure conjecture with little or no scientific evidence to support it.”

I stand corrected. But Mike was not so much interested in correcting me, but in opening up an argument with regard to how we evaluate the information we receive from the Internet.

The power of the written word has been substantial throughout history. If it was written, or perhaps more importantly, printed, then many took it to be true. However, as we near the new millennium that power is certainly waning.

For a long time I have had a skeptical eye for what was put down in print. For I had to deal with British propaganda towards Ireland. I read historians such as Charles Kingsley who wrote about Irish people as follows: “To see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours.”

Being a journalist helped my skepticism, as I’d have to say that a lot of journalism plays with the truth, if not downright abuses it.

Mike Witte writes about everyone becoming a publisher on the Internet. “How does one discern fact, fiction, falsehood, opinion, distortion, etc.?” he asks. A good question.

We are in a fast moving age. Information comes and goes with the times, and its value often changes with those rapidly changing times. In the Industrial Age, where you could plan far ahead, you knew what knowledge was needed for that time ahead.

Information became locked in books. Our children opened those books and for X number of years learned from then. The objective of the educator and student was that once this period of learning was over, they could go securely on their merry way into the world of work and society.

But The digital age is very different. We need to learn all the time now, because in an era of great change learning becomes a life-long process. More than that, we need a new approach to how we learn.

Much of the information we need is no longer locked in books. Rather, it is floating, and the Internet is a great sea upon which it floats. In fact, to survive and prosper in the digital age is not so much about learning information, but rather about learning how to learn. It is about developing our critical capacities to sift, discern and judge information.

Truth is a relative thing at the best of times. Today, truth is at its most volatile point. So very little can be believed in fundamentally anymore (which is why I feel we have these hard-core fundamentalists who force our shifting world into fundamental form).

I believe that the great majority of us know what is true, and that what we need to do is follow our instincts and sharpen our critical skills. The Internet is not a fountain of truth, but rather a sea of possibilities. We need to learn to navigate.

By Gerry McGovern

Next issue: How much do you want to pay today?
Previous issue: Human diversity
New Thinking homepage

New Thinking Newsletter
Subscribe to this free weekly newsletter covering the role and function of content on the Web.
More info | Privacy policy
Read the current issue

Email Address:

 Subscribe  Unsubscribe

Content management seminar feedback
"Gerry's presentation was very well received by the more than 400 higher education delegates. I've chaired this meeting since 1994 and very few speakers have generated the same level of enthusiasm. Wit and wisdom is always an unbeatable combination."
Bob Johnson, American Marketing Association

“Excellent presenter ... thought-provoking and relevant. I hope we can persuade him to visit us again one day.”
Malcolm Davison
The British Association of Communicators in Business

"Hearing Gerry McGovern speaking, one can feel that he truly masters the subject of content management. He was voted ‘best speaker of the conference’ by delegates."
Toon Lowette
European Association of Directory Publishers

Find out more about Gerry McGovern's seminars

The Internet is not a fountain of truth, but rather a sea of possibilities. We need to learn to navigate.