September 27, 2002

10:17 AM

Information gods amongst mortalsis the first in a series of three blog entries (so far, anyway) by Brad Wardell on the topic of the growing knowledge gap between the net-savvy and the non-wired. I found the link in a newsletter from WinCustomize today. They plugged all three:

1. Information gods amongst mortals
2. The Information Gods respond
3. Information Gods Srike Back

He explores the theory that those who are net savvy are quickly leaping ahead of the non-wired among us: "You know the situation. Someone has told you something you want to know more about and within a few minutes you have gotten yourself up to speed on it. You did it through the use of the Internet. A combination of search engines and helpful websites have educated you on that topic."
posted by tbc (12 comments total)

I am sure this is really interesting, but the link isn't working.
posted by McBain at 10:25 AM on September 27, 2002

We killed it.
posted by dhartung at 10:27 AM on September 27, 2002

Cached on Google. Gods can raise the dead, too.
posted by wanderingmind at 10:45 AM on September 27, 2002

i'm vastly more efficient because i can use google? hmmm. i think these links show how powerful a snappy phrase (information gods) can be.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:18 PM on September 27, 2002

info-apotheosize me, baby.
actually i'm much more the uber librarian just because my range of interests isn't all-encompassing.

it's a lot tougher to parse/assimilate data you aren't particularly interested in knowing in the first place.
posted by juv3nal at 7:20 PM on September 27, 2002

...and if anything, it's less efficient, not more.
i waste a ton of time looking up stupid trivia.
posted by juv3nal at 7:21 PM on September 27, 2002

Have a friend learning French? An information god can quickly take anything needed and translate to and from French (and even knows how to word it so that it is translated properly).

To quote a girl who became a bit of an expert on language herself: Not bloody likely.
posted by redshoes3 at 10:32 PM on September 27, 2002

Inadvertently snipped from previous post --

An old high school friend exagerrates their success in an email? An information god pulls up where they live and then gets a recent satellite photo of their house down to seeing the exact trailer they're in.

Ew.

Plus, "exagerrates"? "gets a photo....down"? "seeing the exact trailer they're in"? Apparently those information gods can't afford the OED CD-ROM.

(I know, it's a nit, and it's bad form nowadays to call bloggers out about spelling let alone grammar, but....if you're going to discuss divinity in an article, you ought to at least run said article through the baby jesus crying spell-checker.)
posted by redshoes3 at 10:32 PM on September 27, 2002

I considered using my Information God m4d skillz to resurrect it from Google myself, but then I decided to just wait a while and see if it was back up later.

There are some reasonable truisms present in the articles like the mix of socializing and isolation that online activities present, but the conclusions are quite overstated. I know full well from bloody experience that being a Mensa-level IQ grants you nothing in the wider world. Information may be power, but the type that is freely available is pretty much there because it has been deemed nearly worthless. Savvy use of the internet could enhance your career or other climbing activities, but isn't in itself any longer unique or that much differentiated from other means of information processing and retrieval. We're amusing ourselves to death, more than pumping ourselves full of useful knowledge. The NSA has rooms full of computers listening to overseas phone calls -- but that's useless if you can't interpret the language spoken or get what you glean to the right people with time to spare. Information availability is subservient to information processing, to the ability to make use of that information in the real world.
posted by dhartung at 11:52 PM on September 27, 2002

We killed it.

Fear the wrath of God(s).
posted by inpHilltr8r at 12:51 PM on September 28, 2002

I can't help but notice that the titles of these pieces is a perfect example of how nomenclature affects perception. Why "information gods"? Why not "information junkie" or "information geek" or even "information ignoramus", in the sense of course of being a vain pretender to knowledge.
posted by Winterfell at 8:04 PM on September 28, 2002

Sometimes, I also get these feelings of godlike omnipotence. But then, later, I realize that something has been missing from my life - like human contact, exercise, sunlight, or B-vitamins.
posted by troutfishing at 9:37 PM on September 28, 2002