Tuesday, August 18, 2009

PoMo won't Die and nor will I


I saw this picture and couldn't help but laugh. Wikipedia has become the default website where one can go and read a certain article and declare themselves an expert on any given issue of their choice.

The fact that I have a B.A. in political science holds little weight in a discussion when one can simply wiki search "Mutually Assured Destruction" and come away with an equally informed understanding of the topic.

I fear the biggest loss of our post-modern generation is our inability to evaluate good information from bad information, and further how to judge a good source from a bad one.

Anyone can now search their presupposition on an issue and find some one out there in cyberspace who has some poor rhetoric and fake reference to back up the presupposition. And then we end up in the quagmire of, "then how can we know which is the truth?"

And I, as a regretful post-modern answer the above question with, "I am not exactly sure it is possible to uncover a truth based on information anymore since anyone who sets out to prove a point or make a statement is too full of assumptions and presuppositions to come away with an objective opinion."

And if we think it's a generational thing, read this article about wikipedia adding it's three millionth article.

We see of a rift between “deletionists” and “inclusionists," which to me equates perfectly to me between the war of post-modernists vs. modernists: People who fight to make the information as objective as possible and those who want to add any and every opinion on the topic.

I think we as human beings too often devalue and underestimate the power of our presuppositions and influence of the community around us in our declarations of knowing the truth. And this is why I am a regretful post-modern.

1 comment:

John said...

"I fear the biggest loss of our post-modern generation is our inability to evaluate good information from bad information, and further how to judge a good source from a bad one."

In order to lose some thing you must have it to start with. I have seen plenty of people of all ages doing Chicken Little impressions after reading a chain e-mail.

By the way The Journal Nature reported Wikipedia to be on par with Britannica.

Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005)