4    

The Information Field:
Overload or Opportunity?

The fourth major factor to understand about your learning landscape is the information field. As you know, information is increasing at exponential rates. By 2020, information will be doubling every 73 days! Astounding. Frightening. Exciting!

Fortunately, you are equipped to deal with this information overload. Your brain’s 90 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections, the capacity of your big self, and a variety of emerging technologies and ways of packaging information are your allies. So are your learning skills if you upgrade them to 4.0 for today’s reality.

Here is what you need to know about information to be a 4.0 learner today:

• Information is a unique resource.

• Information you use is always filtered and biased.

• Information is power, and others want to use it to influence and even control you.

Information Is a Unique Resource

Most resources are finite, tangible things: Either you have them or I have them. Or they are consumed in use, like food. But information is different: It expands, spreads, and sometimes increases in value with use. As it spreads it changes and creates more information! No wonder you feel an increased urgency to be a better learner!

Information is everywhere. It may come to you as raw data (for example, as facts, opinions, observations, an experience, a tweet, a piece of feedback) or packaged in media (print, video, presentations, apps, courses, blogs, websites). These data and information packages are the resources that feed your learning. And, the same information can appear in a variety of forms. For example, imagine that you want to find information about how to care for an elderly relative or how to give feedback to a team member. The same recommendations might appear in an article, a course, a role play, a case study, or a YouTube video. Part of your learning challenge is to decide which information format is best for your purpose.

Finding the information you need is an increasingly difficult task, thanks to the expanding and complex information field. Fortunately, an increasing array of services like search engines and course aggregators (called “scanners” later in this book) is cropping up to help you find what you need in a format that you can use.

Packaged Information Is Always Biased

In its raw data form, information is neutral. But as soon as it is selected, organized, presented, packaged, or used, it takes on a point of view. In other words, it becomes biased. The content creator selects some information and ignores the rest. Then, when you use that information, you will probably focus on some aspects of an experience, an article, a speech, or a conversation and not others. Thus, your information is filtered twice—both by you and the primary source—cementing the selection bias.

However, sometimes there is more than just neutral “selection bias” at work. The question for you as a learner to always keep in mind is, “Why is some information included in a conversation (or article, course, or talk) and other information ignored?” Scientists (who claim to be more neutral) will select different information about a topic than people who are trying to push a point of view or an ulterior motive. Think of selection bias from a conservative or liberal politician, or in an article by a leadership expert who believes in participative management approaches. Or imagine an advertiser who wants you to purchase a new drug, or a teenager who wants to stay out later than usual. Now think of your own selection bias when you listen to people you agree or disagree with. For example, recall your comments to somebody who has different political beliefs or views on child-rearing. Unless you take steps to see beyond your filters, you inevitably bias your listening and comments in favor of your interests and points of view.

Remember that although the information field contains a lot of data, there is always bias and filtering at work in the information and in your own processing of it. This is OK when the motives are clear or when the information is relatively objective (for example, scientific or reliable statistical information). You can expect to see a point of view on the editorial page of the newspaper or for there to be bias toward a certain building method in a construction class. Whether you expect and seek it or not, it is important to be aware of information’s more selective and subjective side. It is also vital to detect when bias goes beyond filtering to deliberate distortion, manipulation, misinformation, and propaganda. Never forget that it is up to you to recognize filters at work. It’s up to you to stay a step ahead of any information you are using!

A final note related to information biases: In today’s information-saturated world, it is tempting to gravitate to information sources whose points of view are like your own. It’s common, for example, to listen to one news network, belong to just a few social media communities of like-minded people, and read blogs and news sources that reflect your biases. Opportunities to be part of even narrower information sharing communities are increasing as interest communities grow and then fragment into subinterests. This can be great for kinship—deepening your knowledge about special interests and helping you feel more in control of a smaller part of the information world. But it is dangerous and puts the brakes on learning when like-minded people begin to think that their views are more true than others’.

So, don’t let being in your information comfort zone keep you from being curious about what’s happening in the larger information arena. The more diverse information field will always contain people and views you will disagree with, but it will also help you grow and stay current. It will also help you rise above the larger biases in your work, community, and society in general, and perhaps help you understand (although not necessarily agree) where other points of view are coming from. Doing this is an important part of developing yourself through the life stages you learned about in chapter 2.

Information Is Power: A Warning to 21st-Century Learners

The Internet, social media, and mass media in general are powerful instruments for spreading information. They can reach billions of people in a flash. So can formal learning programs. One online learning course or mobile app can reach anyone on the planet who has a computer or phone—and with increasingly reliable machine translation services, even language differences are not a barrier to universal access.

As despots throughout the centuries discovered, information is power (dictators always try to get control of or discredit the major information sources in their societies). But they are not the only ones trying to influence your information field; attempts to influence you are happening all the time. Businesses, advertisers, politicians, community leaders, teachers, special interest news channels—anyone with an agenda—are constantly selecting and attractively packaging information to influence the behavior they want.

People who do this use what you learned about the brain in chapter 1 to influence your thinking and behavior. They know how to appeal to your amygdala (emotion center) by playing to your fears and desires. They can present information in ways that trigger feel-good chemicals and appeal to your unconscious learning capacity.

Originally called captology, deliberate information manipulation is now called behavior design. Businesses, politicians, and others use this knowledge about your brain to create apps, marketing material, games, speeches, and propaganda that “hack (your) brain and capitalize on its instincts, quirks, and flaws.”¹

Even scientific studies can’t be completely free of bias from the researcher. As a 4.0 learner, it’s important to know that all information is subjective, and to keep your power and independence as you learn. It’s a difficult road to walk, but it’s vital to be aware of the potential for bias so you are not manipulated toward goals that are not your own and not good for you.

The Information Field, in Brief

As a 4.0 learner, you know that there is a vast information world out there, filled with a broad array of learning resources and experiences. It is so vast and changing that you will often only be able to find what you need by working with resource scanners. But you have to do more than find the information you need in a very crowded field. It’s also important to check your information for reliability and trustworthiness. Don’t automatically assume objectivity.

You can expect any information you use—articles, experiences, courses, conversations, and so forth—to be selective and therefore biased in some way. This is neither good nor bad; some information is always included and some excluded. When you learn, you’re also applying filters that influence what you take in and ignore. It’s important to be aware of this when you choose information and learn.

People who design courses, write books, give speeches, or create simulations and apps inevitably select information and try to convince you to accept their views and methods. You expect this kind of pressure when you learn. However, because information is power, the information field is also a battleground for competing powers in the media, workplace, politics, and finance; they all want your eyeballs, attention, support, or money. And they know how to manipulate information to get it.

As a 4.0 learner, you can preserve your freedom of thought. Be aware of the vastness and the subjective nature of the information field. It is the fourth and last major part of the learning landscape to understand.

Now, it’s time to upgrade your learning practices to 4.0 so that you can thrive in this new learning landscape.