We turned from information collecting thinkers to information throwing up social media egos - expecting rewards for mental farts

Maybe nothing new for you, but good to be aware of this development in times of information production every second on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We got faster during the last 7 years in producing information, but also not smarter. We live in a wave of information overkill and there is no time for background checks or thinking about the sense, of what we wrote or talked about. There is no time and the people around us don’t have the time too, which gives us the chance to produce much senseless information, but with a feeling of importance, because we are productive. 

But there are on the other side positive and negative things concerning this topic. 

Yes, we produce more information and read this information by algorithms and use it in daily life, for our health, smart homes, sales and marketing, science and business.

On the other side, there is a leak of quality in cultural and society topics as well as in journalism, that wikipedia and also Dietrich Mateschitz in Austria start to create platform against fake news and with quality journalism. So, we have a global need for that, which was unbelievable 10 years ago or did I live in an intellectual academic bubble during this time ? Maybe.

So after each trend, there comes a trend backwards, when we are sick enough of the stupid information overkill. This is no problem, if you have learned, how to sort bullshit information from relevant information, but it is, if you didn’t.

When we were children, we liked it, if mom or dad said ‚BRAVO‘ to us, after we painted a house, car or castle, after we picked some flowers or backed a cake.

The same feeling we got later in university, when you worked for 2 month on your semester thesis, reading at least 10-30 relevant books about a topic and created out of this information boost your 30 pages semester paper. The day you finished the last sentence of you ‚homework‘, was the day, your real holidays started. It’s similar to the moment an author send his manuscript to the publisher. It makes you free, after a time of hard work and hours of thinking, writing and deleting words.

Nowadays, in times of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. pp., we got used to it, to have the same publishing feeling like 10 years ago, which brings also a kind of gratification feeling to us, when we publish without thinking. And the good thing is, that nobody will punish us, if we publish bullshit or stupid things, because there is no censorship of fake or stupid, irrelevant news, but the reward feeling stays alive.

This behavior is similar to a child, you yells every minute: „Mommy / Daddy look what I did!“ and wants rewards for writing 1 word. Good parents ignore this every minute call for reward yells and give the compliment at the end, so that the child can learn something.

The feeling, that writing 1 word is not an academic brilliant performance, got lost with social media during the last years. Now every word or picture of your rubbish on Instagram is a brilliant performance for 1 second with many LIKES and then comes a new one and a new one and a new one. 

Producing information or pictures turned into a fast-food industry with a reward feeling every second. And there is now, because we are grown ups, no mommy or daddy or professor, who controls the things you publish, who tells you, that this is a stupid idea, not an effort, what you wrote not for the nobel price and that the 3.459 pictures you took with your smartphone are irrelevant, because polaroid matters more and more, because it leads you to selection and self censorship.

To think first and then publish, is something, which was normal 10 years ago and deep fixed in our society, but now we and the major mass have to learn it again. I am not talking about the academics, who live in their academic bubble making intellectual onanism and hyper-reflection. I am talking about journalism, news, media, business and citizen society.

Another problem is, that we got used to this weak informations and that we adopted this into business daily life. We produce stupid newsletters, that no one will read, we spam our company Facebook and Twitter accounts with irrelevant content and this devils circle gets faster and faster.

Less is more. We have to turn back to slow life, but with real information that matters and we have to discipline ourselves again in that. I believe, that quality and slow, but real information, sustainability and real thinking are the great topics for the next 10 years. Know we know this things, but they just got lost since 7 years, but we can reactivate it, this is the chance, before they get totally lost in 7 more future years in a fake news society.

Rethink your old habits and combine it with future technology in a smart-thinker-way.

Happy Father’s Day from Vienna, also if you are not a ‚Father‘. :-)

Picture source:[http://www.ign.com/blogs/umadbroooo/2011/08/31/sorry-i-just-had-a-brain-fart]