Frozen Toothpaste

Since it’s been warm outside recently (at least where I live), what better time is there for a poem about snow? This fun little poem, “Snow, Aldo,” is by Kate DeCamillo.

Once, I was in New York,
in Central Park, and I saw
an old man in a black overcoat walking
a black dog. This was springtime
and the trees were still
bare and the sky was
gray and low and it began, suddenly,
to snow:
big fat flakes
that twirled and landed on the
black of the man’s overcoat and
the black dog’s fur. The dog
lifted his face and stared
up at the sky. The man looked
up, too. “Snow, Aldo,” he said to the dog,
“snow.” And he laughed.
The dog looked
at him and wagged his tail.

If I was in charge of making
snow globes, this is what I would put inside:
the old man in the black overcoat,
the black dog,
two friends with their faces turned up to the sky
as if they were receiving a blessing,
as if they were being blessed together
by something
as simple as snow
in March.

Perhaps I’m the only one who hadn’t realized before, but there are over six billion people in the world. Those people are, at a given time, in 6 billion different places, doing 6 billion different things, and thinking six billion different thoughts. That means that each second, 18 billion potential — but very inexact — data points are being generated. The number quickly gets into the trillions if we seek data related to say, their health. Each of those people at each of those instants had different red blood cell counts, blood glucose levels, blood alcohol levels… I won’t even try to name all the possibilities.

The simple reality is that in a given instant the world’s population if full of more information than a person could know in a lifetime. If we were to include information about other animals, the planet itself, or the universe, it becomes impossible to fathom the quantity of data that we could amass and know.

Even if we limit ourselves to information that is being recorded — written and stored, by people or computers — there’s more than a single person could reasonably expect to know. Even if we further limit ourselves to information that is available to us, there’s more than a single person could reasonably hope to know. Surely the internet’s done a lot of good things, but by making so much information available so easily it’s no longer possible for someone to have “read everything” within more than 100 feet of themselves. (Yes, I’m making the indefensible assumption that you’re never more than 100 feet from an internet connection.)

It’s because of thoughts like this that people often complain about “information overload.” With more people and more computers than ever before, there’s more stored information than ever before.

The problem with information overload is that it fails to distinguish between what a person “can know” what they “want to know.” Those 18 billion or more data points available at any second offer precious little information that I actively “want to know.” Surely I’d think it was cool to know what a random person in India, Zimbabwe, France, or Paraguay was doing right now, but that’s different than those 18 billion semi-knowable data points.

Of course internet — or is it information? — skeptics maintain that people shouldn’t be able to know only those things they “want to know.” They lament that allowing that will create a world of small groupings of self-selected people who know roughly the same information and hold roughly the same biases about it.

It’s absolutely possible that a small circle between 10 and 50 people could create enough information and media that you could spend all of your free time consuming nothing but the ideas and products of that small circle of people. This is what gives way to fears of the mythical “echo chamber” that the internet is supposed to create.

Of course, such echo chambers existed before. Then, they were generally called “small towns” and the only means of escape were geographic. Today they can exist virtually, but the price of escape is much lower. A new website is a few clicks away, not a few hundred miles.

There has alway been an infinite amount of information. Now much more of it is recorded, and thus far easier to know. The fact that there is more information recorded and accessible than ever before doesn’t mean that we’re automatically more informed than ever before, or smarter than ever before. Surely coping with all the data on the internet can be daunting task. But the possibilities that all of this information offers are so great that I would never want to go back.

Dr. Seuss’s Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? is a book I knew by title long before I took the time to read it. I should also note that I think the question posed by the title is one that’s is critically important to ask of me and people like me. People who are, for example, able with little effort to do well in relatively-good public schools, go to a university, and graduate with little or no debt.

I suppose I should have known that a great title doesn’t make a great book, but I forgot. I also suppose I should have realized that Dr. Seuss is not exactly one to talk about the privileges I have had, but I forgot. So I found myself an odd mix of disappointed and satisfied when I finally took the chance to read the book.

Did I Ever Tell You… proceeds about the way you’d expect a Dr. Seuss book with that question in the title would. The narrator begins by telling about when he met a man in the Desert of Drize who “sang with a sunny sweet smile on his face:”

When you think things are bad,
when you feel sour and blue,
when you start to get mad…
you should do what I do!
Just tell yourself, Duckie,
you’re really quite lucky!
Some people are much more…
oh, ever so much more…
oh, muchly much-much more
unluckly than you!

From there, we of course proceed through a litany of terribly unfortunate people forced to do terribly scary or unfortunate things. All, of course, accompanied by the dynamic and colorful illustrations for which Dr. Seuss is so well known.

But all of it, as well-executed as it is, as much as I love the idea, left me disappointed. Surely there’s something to be said for my having held too much anticipation for too long to be quite satisfied with a children’s book, even one by Dr. Seuss.

I know it’s silly to criticize a children’s book for being too simplistic and diversionary, but that’s the problem I find myself having with Did I Ever Tell You…. The reality, I suppose, is that I don’t know how lucky I am. That there exists a single children’s book that asks one of the most essential questions that most Americans — and really most in the “first world” — need to grapple with at some time is a marvel. And for that alone, I should be at least a little satisfied. And I’m certain that should I have children, they will be repeatedly subjected the book, however imperfect I find it.

I’ve been thinking about taking a week off from this space for a while, and I finally reached the point where such thoughts become the official plan. I shall be back next week, same as ever.

prakhar

Be heard, provoke consideration, but never — never — be perceived as impetuous. The second the public at large sees you are a bigger problem than the problem you’re protesting about, you’ve lost.

These thoughts of mine were provoked in no small part because of the amount of coverage that recent protests along the path of the Olympic torch relay have provoked. Thus far, I’d say that protesters have done an admirable job of making their concerns heard without becoming the story, but they’re treading perilously close to that line.

Obviously, it can be hard to judge when you’ll become seen as a pest and not earnest citizens with a legitimate grievance. There are some people who see even the most minor protest as too big a bother and will, consequently, do their best to handicap the cause for which the protesters demonstrate.

It’s hard to judge exactly what’s accepted by the majority of people and what’s not. Surely, to the average American, “terrorism” is not a legitimate form of protest. If there’s one lesson from the late sixties and the early seventies, it’s that violent protest doesn’t work. Fights scare off the luke-warm and the merely curious, armed clashes and explosive used against Americans will mean you’ve completely lost the public argument.

Surely in some cases and in some circles, by some people, terrorism is considered acceptable. Al Quaeda is not completely without supporters who see their action as a justified means of protest and self-defense. Surely the violence of the IRA was accepted in at least some of the Catholic areas of Northern Ireland. So to was the terrorism of John Brown accepted, even fêted in some parts of America before the civil war.

Without a doubt, audience matters. Protesters who violate the sensibilities of their intended audience do a great disservice to their cause by acting dishonorably. Almost without question, black empowerment became less popular in America when the protests organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. gave way the militancy and violence of Black Panthers and other groups. By showing that their hand included guns and a openness to “any means necessary,” they scared off many luke-warm supporters. The militancy of those and other 1970s protesters is widely recognized as the cause for the conservative resurgence of the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Surely it’s no minor tragedy that China has a history of intransigence on the crisis in Darfur. Surely it’s no minor tragedy that China still refuses to acknowledge the role of the Dalai Lama as the representative of the Tibetan people. Surely it’s no minor tragedy that the Chinese have been one of the most crucial supporters of the military junta controlling Burma.

But it’s not out of the question that outrage about beligerent protesters could overwhelm people’s outrage about such tragedies. And if the continued irritation of extinguishers of the Olympic flame becomes the story rather than the tragedies for which they seek attention, I think that would be the biggest tragedy of all.