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Community Corner

Knowledge is Growing Faster Than We Can Keep Up

Each year, the mass of knowledge that is available to us doubles.

Almost two months of this year are gone. It is said that time waits for no one and moves even faster as one grows older. People are beginning to realize that it is going to cost more to live in 2013. The cost of living is going up, as groceries, gasoline, taxes and almost every other consumer product is costing more.

“Everything is going higher, except my salary,” someone said to me recently.

I was asked to pass on a complaint to our legislators at the Capitol from a citizen. The complaint centered on the reality of what is taking place in our country. Everything is costing us more. What can be done about rising prices? The fatalist would quickly say, “Nothing can be done, we are doomed to failure.” The optimist would say, “We have lived through hard times before in this country, and we will live through this time.”

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Somewhere in between those two extreme views an answer or two could be discovered.

I was reminded, recently, that each year the mass of knowledge that is available to us doubles. Think for a moment about that statement. All of the mass of knowledge that is available to us doubles every year. To think back a few years it took a decade or more for the total sum of knowledge to double, but now as the world is moving faster and with technological advances, knowledge that is available to us doubles every 12 months. With that being true, we are two months into this year and by the end of the next 10 months the mass of knowledge will have doubled from Jan. 1 this year. How can we be expected to keep up with this fast pace of knowledge that is adding up by the second? The answer is to remain as informed as possible. With news agencies via the Internet providing 24 hour alerts and breaking news, we are never at a place where we can say we do not know what is happening around us. It is true that half of knowledge is knowing where to find it. This media source is a great way to keep up with local, state, national and international events. With the majority of people in our country having cell phones, we have at our fingertips a way to be informed on almost every subject.

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The issue of making right choices and decisions might not be with the mass of knowledge, but in our willingness to pay attention and to act on the information we have. Many people do not think but just react to what is going on around them. Emotion drives too much of what we do, rather than having a clear understanding of the issues as they affect us. Personal responsibility must be accepted by each of us to make right choices in life. From where I stand, it is not what we know, but is it how we respond to what we know.

Where do you receive most of your information?

Follow Ray Newman on Twitter — @RayNewmanSr.

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