The age of abundant of information is paradoxically marked by a deficit of wisdom. It seems the more information we have the less wise we are in managing and controlling it for our individual and collective well-being. The problem is that there is too much information and not enough time to absorb it, understand its implications and judge the best way to use it for our individual and common good. The glut of information has created gluttony for information, which can lead us to behave unwisely and foolishly.
Examples of such unwise and foolish online behaviour abound. Take for example the Australian treble Olympic gold medallist who lost a lucrative sponsorship with Jaguar as a result of a thoughtless tweet about the South African rugby team; the Canberra Raiders star who was photographed performing an act of simulated bestiality with a dog, which was later published on the Internet and forced his resignation; a journalist with the Age who was fired for a series of unsavoury but mostly silly “tweets” about various TV personalities and celebrities; a journalist in Ireland sacked after making comments on her Facebook page about the young woman Michaela Harte murdered on her honeymoon in Mauritius; an American journalist who had to resign after making offensive tweets about Lara Logan the CBS journalist who was sexually attacked in the recent demonstrations in Egypt.
More commonly still, young people undermining their privacy and chances of future employment by placing compromising photos of themselves and friends on Facebook and cyber bullying that has driven young people to suicide. The problem is global. There are countless such daily informational acts of unwise and self-defeating behaviour, which but for the all-seeing-eye of the omnipresent Internet, would pass unnoticed as matters of no consequence.
An important truth the Wikileaks controversy has revealed is that the Internet and the digital informational environment affords no one the certainty or comfort of privacy. The Internet is by its very nature a boundary-free public space not well suited to private conversations and secrets and what’s more to the point, informational indiscretions.
The digitisation of information has fundamentally changed not only the way we disseminate information but the way we live. We are becoming informational beings increasingly spending our lives in the infosphere, where we play, pray, download and upload recipes, music and movies, buy and sell, chat and live in other virtual worlds, and make and break ‘friendships’ at a click.
The Internet just like the natural environment cannot be neatly constrained and controlled by any one group of individuals, conglomerates or nations. And like the natural environment, the Internet is capricious and unpredictable and only favours the uninhibited free dissemination of information by anyone, anytime and anywhere If we cannot control or manage the flow of information on the Internet just as we cannot control the weather, the next best thing is to control our own online informational behaviour. That is within our control.
We have to learn how to use and disseminate information wisely in a manner that protects and promotes our individual and collective wellbeing. Wisdom that was the core concern of philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome (think of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Epictetus, Seneca and Cicero, Confucius in China and the Budda in India) provides a ready-made model. As a higher-type of knowledge (knowing how to understand and use information upon reflection and with good judgement for the benefit of oneself and society, wisdom can provide practical “know-how” for applying information to improve our lives and that of others.
It is also a reflective virtue in the form of practical prudence, which can teach us how to create and use information to live good and meaningful lives in the infosphere – lives that are capable of leading to self-fulfilment, eudemonia and happiness for us and others. What wisdom requires is that we learn the husbandry of information. How to reflect upon it, how to understand it, how to control it so it does not control us, how to judge its implications so we can foresee its consequences, whether they are good or bad, and how to use it in ways that enhance our well-being and promote and protect our rights to freedom, privacy, and respect.
In the age of information it seems we would be better off with more wisdom and a little less information. Switching our iPhone and iPad to Plato is a good start.
Edward Spence of Greek and Irish parentage is a Senior Research Fellow at the ARC Special Research Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. He teaches philosophy and media and information ethics in the School of Communication and Creative Industries at Charles Sturt University.
His latest book ‘Media, Markets and Morals’ (2011) has just been published. espence@csu.edu.au