We live in the information age, where the internet gives us access to virtually all human knowledge (and even knowledge beyond human knowledge), and where anyone can learn about or teach on any subject they have interest in. I’ve learned about creative writing from novelist Margaret Atwood, wine appreciation from wine critic James Suckling, and presidential history from biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin all from Masterclass. I’ve taken knitting classes, yoga classes, and business classes from YouTube. I’ve used virtual learning to get CPR certified, to attend venture capital courses, and as part of my master’s program.
The ability to learn from our laptops has opened endless possibilities, but as we all know from Peter Parker’s uncle Ben(ish), with great possibilities comes great problems. The rise of misinformation and fake news is certainly the most obvious of these problems, but even reputable news sources struggle to avoid junk information, and we consumers struggle to identify it. This has led to what the World Health Organization has officially titled an infodemic.
Timoni West, the VP of AR at Unity, recently said this in a Fast Company article about the biggest tech trends of 2022:
“While I think this is the most important thing we need to talk about as a species, it will likely be in nascent or shallow stages in 2022: real understanding of how online communication changes perception and understanding. We live in an era where adults who have been fully vaccinated from measles, mumps, and polio from infancy who are refusing to get one vaccine now. We see people vastly misunderstanding new tech, like what an NFT actually is, or the limitations of augmented reality. We need better ways of communicating complex ideas.”
Better ways of communicating complex ideas. When I read that statement I wrote it in all caps in my notebook and I’ve been noodling on it ever since because as much as I appreciate what the internet has allowed me to access, I also know first-hand how difficult it can be to learn virtually.
At the end of 2019 I accepted a job offer to step into the COO role at a venture capital firm as the current COO was transitioning out. I started work in February of 2020, thinking I would have weeks of in-person training before taking over the job solo. Instead, after a few days in the office we decided to work from home until “this whole COVID thing clears up…” and then we never came back.
When people ask me what my experience was like entering a new industry in 2020 my response is to say that it was interesting. And it’s the truth, because I love my job and all its diverse responsibilities, and I really was learning a lot. But it would also be the truth to say that it was difficult, frustrating, nerve-wracking, and led to plenty of mid-morning breakdowns and glasses (read: bottles) of wine with dinner to de-stress. I felt like it was taking me twice as long, and sometimes even longer, to understand concepts and processes that normally I would have been able to pick up quickly. I’ve always described myself as a quick learner, but when I was trying to learn how to prepare financials and valuations by watching someone screen share on a Zoom call, I felt dumb as rocks.
Part of this can be attributed to the pandemic itself, but there is evidence behind the statement that online learning isn’t as effective as in person learning. Being in person with teachers and other students creates as social situation with unique interactions and pressures that can help motivate active learning in schools, according to Susanna Loeb, a professor at Brown University who studies education policy. And the gap between success online versus in person becomes even greater for students with weaker academic foundations, so students who struggle in person are even more likely to struggle online.
The difference between in person and virtual learning, Loeb pinpoints, is that online courses have more distractions and less oversight, which clearly applies to more than K-12 students participating in class online during the pandemic. I certainly felt like it applied to me trying to learn the lingo of venture capital from my living room (I mean, pro rata? EBITDA? Pari passu? Every three words someone spoke I felt like we had accidentally slipped into another language). Building a life online irrefutably changes our perceptions, and is even beginning to change our physical brains.
I don’t want to make excuses or blame the internet for my struggles adapting during the pandemic. Instead, I use this example to highlight that maybe knowledge isn’t as finite as we often believe it to be, that our ability to understand is impacted by our use of the internet, and that our content consumption needs to change in order to accommodate for these shifting paradigms.
As author and internet theorist David Weinberger says in an interview for the Atlantic, “for the coming generation, knowing looks less like capturing truths in books than engaging in never-settled networks of discussion and argument.” Weinberger describes our current age as one of “networked knowledge” which reflects the way the World Wide Web itself is set up, as an interconnected ecosystem that reflects all of human interest. As a result, the smartest person in the room is no longer a person, but the room itself (meta, right? I mean, not Meta. But, you know, meta). This also means that if the room (meaning the network) is stupid, everyone in that room will be made more stupid, and so they key is “to learn how to build smarter rooms.”
Building smarter rooms is how we will be able to better communicate complex ideas online.
How do we do it? Here’s my unsolicited opinion:
Better knowledge: Update the algorithms
If you’ve watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix you know that many of the algorithms that dominate our social media feeds (which includes or news feeds as well) operate by sharing similar information to what we’ve consumed in the past in order to keep our attention. There’s been a lot of research presented on the dangers of the internet “echo chamber” so I think it’s fair to start with working against the impulse to cultivate our feeds with viewpoints we already agree with. I also think it’s fair to hold platforms responsible for changing their own algorithms to be less echo-y, but since I doubt that the CEOs of social media companies are reading this blog, I’ll stick with ideas closer to my own realm of control.
By intentionally searching for and following various perspectives we can make our personal knowledge network smarter. Importantly, I think the right kind of diversity should be considered, meaning it’s not as easy as following both Fox news and MSNBC. It’s more about culling through content to find the right blend of information that’s reliable, easy for you to digest, and on par with what you’re hoping to gain from it. Look for media sources that are both quick bites of information and deep dives. Find writers that are inspiring and uplifting if that’s your vibe, or videos with lots of well-done graphics if you’re a visual learner.
Better Understanding: Rethink the way we learn
The way we teach learning needs a revamp. Staying mired in memorization, repetition, and contrived testing environments means intentionally holding ourselves back from all that innovation has to offer us. For schools, this might mean moving away from a strict grading and testing system that gives students one chance to complete an assignment and instead moving towards a “mastery method” that allows students multiple attempts until they can show that they’ve mastered concepts. For individuals outside of academics that still want to learn, this might mean learning how to collaborate better online in a variety of formats, including video calls and message boards, without getting dragged into comment wars or “listening” to a lecture in the background while you also do your taxes, clean your kitchen, play Wordle and walk your dog.
If you’re interested in leveling up your learning, you might start with this video from Jim Kwik about doubling your learning speed. One bit of advice from Kwik that I’ve started using is to ask myself “why must I use this information?” anytime I’m consuming content. This helps me pay attention to the core of what I need from the learning experience, and to avoid useless content that doesn’t actually serve me, because information should serve you.
Lastly, I’ll caveat all of this by saying that this learning revamp really applies to understanding complicated ideas, but not all learning is complex. Basic math skills, learning a language, or following a recipe are all great examples of learning where the internet can augment and upcycle your educational experience through memorizing, repeating, and testing by trying.
Better Consumption: Stick to an information diet
Ok, this one isn’t my original opinion, I found it in an article by Angus Hervey on FutureCrunch, and I think it’s awesome. Hervey argues that we need a “slow food movement for the internet.” Basically, that we should cultivate our information habits in the same way we do our nutritional habits, by focusing on maximizing what’s healthy and works best for us and minimizing the what’s not. Hervey lays out his own information diet as an example, which is modeled after the listing books as wholewheat grains, email newsletters as vegetables, podcasts as leafy greens, reddit as beans, specialists publications as fruit, and social media as junk food.
However you choose to organize your information pyramid, I like Hervey’s advice to begin with mindset, by choosing a “dietary philosophy” for your information the way you would for your eating habits (ex. keto, paleo, vegetarian, etc.). His personal philosophy is this quote from Mr. Rogers:
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”
Keep Iterating
Weinberger argues that, try as we might to do anything different, humans are fallible beings that will “basically get everything wrong and then die.” What’s so great is that we keep trying despite that, and as we race to catch up to the progresses in technology and the subsequent changes, we should keep in mind those cheesy motivational posters that remind us that it’s not about the destination, but the journey.But what do you think? Am I on the right track, or way off? What do you have to add to this corner of the internet, my own knowledge network? Let me know and let’s argue.