What a Learning Tool it could be

You can send any wounded soldier a Christmas card via the Walter Reed hospital. If there are five Saturdays, (or Fridays or Thursdays or whatever), in a month, the Chinese call this “Money Bags” and it means you will receive money soon. If you share a picture of Jesus on Facebook, he will know AND he will also know if you don’t.

Sound familiar?

We all know these things. We know them because they are told to us, retold, recirculated and shared again and again. Other than the fact that they are all one hundred percent NOT TRUE, these examples represent just a tiny fraction of the “knowledge” that is delivered to every first world adult who uses social media each day.

Now imagine if people weren't so… misguided. Imagine if they stopped to think for a minute. Would they realize that Bill Gates isn't going to contribute ten cents for every time they share his photo? Would they understand that Facebook doesn't care at all if you place a notice in your status claiming copyright jurisdiction over the content you willingly shared over the internet? Would anyone stop to check… anything?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Now imagine what would happen if social media was used in a way that the creators of the internet had envisioned. Not the ArpaNet Cold War designers, but, those wide-eyed hippie types who envisioned an open, democratic platform for the exchange of ideas and information. Imagine if you could trust the information on social networks! Just imagine a world where everything you read was true and not created by some partisan hack with an axe to grind. We could actually use a tool like that. We could actually use it to share real information, real ideas and real news, without having to compete with bald-faced lies. It could be a fundamental shift in learning!

But, first, people have to be a&$holes. People so want others to believe in their side, their take on things and their own world view that they will actually lie to make it happen, (I’m looking at you, major news outlets). Then others, so willing to have someone say out loud what they hold in their hearts, agree, like, share and pass the, ahem… misinformation along to their “friends”.

Religion and science are not equal. Truth and lies are not equally important except in an academic discovery kind of way. And yeah, puppies barking at their own reflections are cute, but this doesn't move us along as a society. Imagine if we could actually use social media to teach and to learn. Imagine what kind of power we would have over our elected officials. They wouldn't dare lie to us. Imagine how smart our kids could be. Imagine how smart our great-great grandchildren could be.

When you read something on social media, just stop for, like, two seconds, and think, is this even possible? Is it logical? Are there other facts supporting or disputing this claim? Or is this just another steaming pile of nonsense being promoted to shore up one side of an argument?

We can change it. We can resolve to only promote information that is actually true, (even if it is just puppies barking at mirrors). We get what we deserve. We get what we allow. Our kids, and all of the generations after them deserve better than the false hopes and knee-jerk reaction-ism we have now.