While learning about a 'perfect market' during my MBA, I always thought of it as a distant ideal that will not likely materialize. But it seems that, in one aspect atleast, we are close to getting there: an almost complete information transparency and instant access to information anytime and anywhere (do check out the book Profit Power Economics by Mia de Kuijper where she talks about this).
However, the funny thing is that with all the unlimited information out there, we are now having to narrow our access to information ourselves, leading to a narrower view of the world in some ways. Take movies for example: the only access I had earlier was through the TV and was compelled to choose among the movies broadcast by the channels I had, which was a more heterogeneous set. This allowed me to stumble upon some really good movies which were not necessarily famous and ones I would look for. But now that we have so many channels and can access pretty much any movie made in the world, I end up looking for the more famous ones and my viewing has restricted to that. This homogeneity of information consumption is also aggravated by the personalization that websites are having to do to share material that is more relevant to you. While I might want to view perspectives on a topic from a different country or from all over the world, my Google search results will first show me what it thinks I would want based on who/where I am (and who has the patience to go pages 6,7 etc. :D).
Another way in which this era is restricting our world view is by slowly making our exposure to the social world primarily virtual, where we only have people like us to look at and compare with. My own life here in the newer part of the city is like living in one massive hotel full of young professionals and the people who enable their lives (maids, auto/cab drivers, supermarket assistants etc.). Though these other people are from different strata of society, we don't really get to see their human side, just their professional/service side. So my life is kind of restricted to a tunnel between home and office and then what I see of the world on social media once I am back home. This gives me a rather narrow view of the world and the range of things it contains (except for those nice articles people share many times :D). This is why a lot of people from my generation end up not realizing how really privileged we are and feel like they are not keeping up with all the awesome milestones of life that everyone else is achieving hehe. This is also why I like going to Mumbai and getting a good refresher now and then...there the city is not so different in different parts and I get to see all kinds of people and things everywhere!
Apart from information transparency, another trend seen in the Information Age is the democratization of information. History is no longer written only by the victors but by any person with a PC/tablet/mobile and a good internet connection :D I pity the future human civilizations who will have to sift through sooo much information and wonder what really happened in our time! This trend also makes it easy to 'create history'. After watching Conjuring 2, I immediately wanted to look up the Enfield hauntings and whether they really happened or not. All I used to make this judgement was if some 3-4 articles on it turned up on a Google search, irrespective of who the source was. So with some good planning, if a group of people post some 'news' at the appropriate dates and with some reasonably authentic-looking pictures, it wouldn't be hard for them to convince the masses like me that the event really happened (unless it can easily be proved otherwise).
This makes one wonder if more information is really getting us closer to truth or just further away from it!
However, the funny thing is that with all the unlimited information out there, we are now having to narrow our access to information ourselves, leading to a narrower view of the world in some ways. Take movies for example: the only access I had earlier was through the TV and was compelled to choose among the movies broadcast by the channels I had, which was a more heterogeneous set. This allowed me to stumble upon some really good movies which were not necessarily famous and ones I would look for. But now that we have so many channels and can access pretty much any movie made in the world, I end up looking for the more famous ones and my viewing has restricted to that. This homogeneity of information consumption is also aggravated by the personalization that websites are having to do to share material that is more relevant to you. While I might want to view perspectives on a topic from a different country or from all over the world, my Google search results will first show me what it thinks I would want based on who/where I am (and who has the patience to go pages 6,7 etc. :D).
Another way in which this era is restricting our world view is by slowly making our exposure to the social world primarily virtual, where we only have people like us to look at and compare with. My own life here in the newer part of the city is like living in one massive hotel full of young professionals and the people who enable their lives (maids, auto/cab drivers, supermarket assistants etc.). Though these other people are from different strata of society, we don't really get to see their human side, just their professional/service side. So my life is kind of restricted to a tunnel between home and office and then what I see of the world on social media once I am back home. This gives me a rather narrow view of the world and the range of things it contains (except for those nice articles people share many times :D). This is why a lot of people from my generation end up not realizing how really privileged we are and feel like they are not keeping up with all the awesome milestones of life that everyone else is achieving hehe. This is also why I like going to Mumbai and getting a good refresher now and then...there the city is not so different in different parts and I get to see all kinds of people and things everywhere!
Apart from information transparency, another trend seen in the Information Age is the democratization of information. History is no longer written only by the victors but by any person with a PC/tablet/mobile and a good internet connection :D I pity the future human civilizations who will have to sift through sooo much information and wonder what really happened in our time! This trend also makes it easy to 'create history'. After watching Conjuring 2, I immediately wanted to look up the Enfield hauntings and whether they really happened or not. All I used to make this judgement was if some 3-4 articles on it turned up on a Google search, irrespective of who the source was. So with some good planning, if a group of people post some 'news' at the appropriate dates and with some reasonably authentic-looking pictures, it wouldn't be hard for them to convince the masses like me that the event really happened (unless it can easily be proved otherwise).
This makes one wonder if more information is really getting us closer to truth or just further away from it!
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