“Check your facts” – Donald Trump
While I am indifferent to the buzz of recent news and personalities, I am aware of how my fellow thinkers, creators and builders are impacted by the media barrage we live in.
This got me questioning deeply the climate in which people are sourcing and accepting their information.
The truth is, without realizing, I have been pondering the term:
‘the medium is the message’.
Created by Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan who studied extensively the impact of media on society in 1960s.
His works on ‘Media Theory’ rose questions to the extent media has influenced peoples way of accessing, sharing, understanding and leveraging media.
The birth of the internet, predicted by Marshall, has revolutionized the means of which information is created and shared.
I wanted to explore the collective perceptions of communication and how we interpret the truth.
Like all major trends, the best approach is to look at the microcosm of our daily interactions to get a view of our understanding.
Which led me to the concept of a ‘data diet’ -what you consume has an impact to your overall health.
Mental, spiritual, self awareness and broader views of the world are all touched by the data diet in which we choose to devour.
‘The medium is the message’ provokes us to think beyond the topic of the specific kind of content we consume, but rather to how the actual information is served to us.
If the medium is key, the type as well as relevance of information must be carefully analyzed.
We know this from the concept of data tracking from nearly every digital platform that analysis on our behaviors and actions can be analyzed to serve content that we respond to.
As a result we may not realize that we are being victim to a custom fabrication of the information that keeps us hooked.
Questioning the bigger picture of the intent behind why certain information arrives, changes the relationship between what we consume willingly.
The larger implication being the gradual molding of our perspective in life based on the exposure of specific media over time.
For example, when I think of what I consume, I can’t help but notice the similarities or bias of information that is represented.
- Twitter → self improvement, business, parables, writers, learning a craft
- Instagram → motorcycles, landscapes, quotes, novelty products, travel.
I am being fed an echo chamber of content that I naturally want to consume.
While this is great because the dopamine is flowing through the roof, how else however, am I to be exposed to differing thoughts to learn from?
While I applaud community and the connectedness of like minds, the echo chamber represents a dangerous outcome.
Gone are the days in which I had to filter through content and use my own analytical judgement to form my own findings.
While this is great because it removes the thinking from my experience, it runs the risk of being naive to not questioning my sources of information.
Blind acceptance of information removes individuality of free sovereign thinking to come to my own conclusions.
While I still engage in the webs of the internet, my takeaway is to be mindful of how and what I consume.
After all, if the medium is the message, what is it really trying to say to me?
