Becoming Wise in the Information Age

In his new book, "

" (John Wiley & Sons), Tom Siegfried argues that throughout modern history the dominant machine of an era determined the way in which people saw daily life and the world. These machines were: first the clock, then the steam engine, and now the computer.

Certainly today the computer's influence upon the way we see the world is all encompassing, so much so that we call our current era "The Information Age." Almost everything seems to be interpreted in terms of information these days.

I was thinking about this the other day while I was pondering what

is. We all agree that maturity is nice to achieve, but what exactly is it? It occurred to me that in this computer age, it looks more and more like a lifelong journey through different kinds of information: first pure

then

and finally

. We are able to take this journey because of certain skills we acquire along the way.

Information consists of both words and silence. The "words" part is easy to master; silence takes a little more doing.

We begin our life in this world by learning a great deal about

. We learn that mastering it isn't as easy as it seems at first blush. That's because information consists of both words and silence. The "words" part is easy to master; silence takes a little more doing.

A typical bit of information may say something like, "People who do such and such die twice as often as people who don't do such and such." We may nod, and decide to alter our actions accordingly. But wait a minute. The words we just heard boil down to "the death rate for such and such is 2x." But we're never told what "x" is. There's some information missing; it's hidden in silence. We're not good at dealing with information until we notice those silences, and try to find out what's omitted from the stuff we are told.

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