Becoming Wise in the Information Age

We have never been more informed than we are today

There are two main reasons for this. First, we have never been more literate than we are today. In 1820, only 1 in 10 people could read. Now, it’s the reverse. Only 1 in 10 people across the world remain illiterate (Our World in Data).

The second reason is that we have never had greater access to knowledge. In our pocket, we have an unlimited mobile library, a personal research assistant, and access to a constant stream of ideas, commentary and experiences from the every region on Earth.

The average online-and-literate person can speak about an impressive breadth of subjects. Phone me up today and our conversation could easily jump between US politics, the SpaceX rocket catch, the crisis in the Middle East, opinions about football in Europe, the greatest films of all time, the future of AI, the latest culture war and what some podcaster from Austin said last week.

Today, we are informed about more issues than we care about. But that doesn’t automatically make us wise.

In fact, I have noticed that the wisest people I know are not the most informed. And the times I have truly grasped something worthwhile have been as a result of reading less stuff, but reading more slowly, carefully and thoughtfully.

David Perell writes about a “Three Book Guy” he respects, who has a deep grasp of only three great books at the cost of ignoring everything that is new:

As we read online (blogs, tweets, e-books, comments) and offline (books), the temptation is to consume at 100 miles an hour. There’s just so much to get through; you don’t want to miss out.

But if we are to become wise in the information age, then I suggest a fundamental shift:

From ‘Fast Intake’ to ‘Slow Intake’

A slow intake enables deep understanding

Last week, I parked up at a viewing point over one of the most stunning sections of coastline in Northern Ireland – White Park Bay. I stood still for about 10 minutes, just absorbing everything in front of me. I couldn’t take the vast view in all at once. Instead, I slowly moved my eye’s focus from the long grass just in front of me to the sweeping green fields below, then to the sand dunes and the long, empty beach, and then to the endless waves rolling in, and finally to the miles and miles of open sea that stretched to the horizon line.

After about five minutes of this slow, searching gaze, I noticed that there was a tiny boat far out in the sea. It surprised me that I hadn’t seen it until then. The whole ten minutes were special. It felt good to really take in such a beautiful view. To absorb every bit of it. As I turned to get back in my car, I made another discovery – a few tiny red spiders doing their thing on a wooden fence post.

Other people drove past me as I stood. They probably glanced down at the bay and out to sea. I’m sure they mentioned to their family at dinner that they were up past White Park Bay. But they hadn’t absorbed the view like I had. Without slowing down, they had missed my discoveries and they had missed the sheer joy of having your soul filled with such a sight.

The same applies to our intake of any kind of information. If we, or our children, hook our minds into the non-stop information machine and never get beyond shorts, soundbites, quotes and quips, we will never become people of depth or understanding. And we will miss out on the simple pleasure of discovering and grasping the full meaning of something good.

A slow intake enables transformation

The ancients had a practice called ‘meditation’. We’re not thinking here of the Buddhist monk sitting in the lotus position. We’re thinking of a different kind of meditation, described in Psalm 1, that relates to the intake and impact of words:

The context is obviously scripture. But I want to note the consequence of meditation and then apply it to our modern setting.

Without meditation, the man in Psalm 1 would have been informed about the word of God but never transformed by it. Without meditation, the power and righteousness of God would be familiar to him (e.g. Genesis 1 – the Creation account, or Exodus 20 – the Ten Commandments), but they would have no formational impact on his life.

But because he brought the Law of God right into his being and mulled over it as he went about his day, the man got the full benefit of the Word. The slow intake of scripture and the deep grasp of its meaning, produced in this man stability, fruitfulness, freshness and prosperity.

Now, here’s what has challenged me: when was the last time I let a piece of writing really seep into my being until I had deconstructed it, understood it and made it part of who I am?

We can’t avoid a lot of the fast information intake. It does give us a wide breadth of knowledge. I rely on Twitter/X to keep my finger on the pulse of news and ideas. There are many benefits to being informed about so many aspects of life. But for the sake of our own growth in wisdom, we need to carve out regular time to slow down with a book and let our mind slowly wander from word to word, taking in everything as we go.

Let’s enjoy the experience of fully absorbing the thoughts of the author. Let’s be fully present in his story and ideas. And when we’re finished reading for the day, let’s make time to think about what we have read:

What is at stake? What is the core argument? What is the key insight? How does the author’s ideas fit into our growing understanding of the world?

Our children also need to slow down their information intake. Just this week, the National Literacy Trust announced that reading frequency and reading enjoyment are at a historic lows. Only 35% of eight to 18-year-olds enjoy reading in their spare time, while only 20.5% report reading daily in their free time (compared with 28% last year).

It is no good to have a generation rising up who are constantly up-to-date with the current thing but who have never taken the time to grapple with and grasp what is good and true and beautiful.

A question to leave you with is this: how can we encourage slowness in our homes? How can we make it easier to stop flicking to the next piece of content on our phones and instead step into a the slow, meandering world of books, observation and imagination?

I’ll leave you with C.S. Lewis’ experience:

Thanks for reading.

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Until next time,

Stephen