My Rant on Uninformed people.

I read a study last week that documented statistics of huge numbers of people in the US purchase ONE or fewer books per year. Many of those same folks who admit to that also claim to have seen every single episode of American Idol. It seems to me there is clearly a correlation here.

It is an undisputed fact that in 2011, maybe for the first time in history, access to knowledge is unimpeded for almost anyone. Without much effort or expense at all anyone can become informed if they choose to do so. For far less than the cost of most monthly cable TV bills, you can purchase and read at least 4 books per month and if you share your books with friends you can do this for less than you spend on coffee monthly. If you want to spend nothing, in most places in this country there are public libraries with free access to all types of materials.

OR YOU CAN CHOOSE TO WATCH TV.

One thing is, watching TV does have it's benefits. It excuses you from the responsibility of having an informed opinion about most things that matter in our world today. It provides you with shallow opinions, false "facts", and media controlled spin that you are able to parrot to others who also just watch TV so that your self-induced world is carefully protected and you are able to remain isolated from the "real world" - and NO - I'm not talking Reality TV programs here. We elected our President last time based upon 30 second (or less) clips of media spin.

I was discussing my blog the other day with someone who proudly made it clear that he doesn't read any non-fiction books, and would never consider reading a blog, even if it were related to his industry. What surprised me the most was he seemed proud of this. Yet when this man chooses to speak and express his opinion he wonders why others don't accept his viewpoints as factual and worth consideration. AMAZING!

I travel a lot, I spend way too much time in airports and it always surprised me how few folks I see using this time to read and become more informed. I realize that deciding to read is clearly a deliberate act and that it takes work to accomplish, but in our infoculture in 2011 why not expose yourself to interesting ideas, facts, or points of view? I do see some folks using their iPad's to scan online news reports - according to Google the estimate is the average online news reader spends a whopping 90 seconds or less per day even on this activity.

Now I realize this complaint isn't new, in fact, people have been complaining about widespread willful ignorance since the times of Brutus or Caesar. The difference now is that more and easier access exists and there are many more "creators" of newsworthy items than ever before in history. Today, more people than ever go to work to use their minds, not just their hands. With social media sites (like this one) we also have an open platform to share our points of view with many that would otherwise be difficult to reach. I believe this access is able to raise the bar for our understanding of our world today and how it works.

I contend that if you are involved in any way in the business world today, and you don't get paid just to lift bricks or hang steel, then you are involved at least in some small way in the idea business. Whatever you do or create is important and you should at least attempt to spread the idea and share your knowledge with others. They may choose to disagree, but that too is great as it opens the path for intelligent discussions that may benefit all who choose to participate.

As for those who choose to remain deliberately informed, we can ignore them or we can start a program to reach out to them and hopefully start a pattern of more people stopping to think for themselves and form their own opinions.

This is my thoughts on this subject, what are yours?
Steve