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Getting our information in bits from social media : Can we learn this way?

Sitting with Craig Ball yesterday at the Washington Solo and Small Law Conference, he asked a wonderful question. “Do you think younger people are learning what they really need to know when they are getting their information from bits here and there, mostly shared from ‘friends,’ some in a form as short as 140 characters.” Craig was deeply concerned that our next generation is not going to be prepared for life ahead.

I responded the last few weeks I came to fear the same thing for myself. 90% of the news and information I pick up comes from a combination of feeds in my NewsRack App and my ‘influencers’ and ‘mainstream media’ lists on Twitter. In 45 minute commutes to work and back I browse my feeds, read what I perceive as the good stuff, and share with my Twitter followers the items I most liked that I thought they would have an interest in as well.

I’ve come to realize this condensed way of learning and sharing is re-wiring me. I don’t have the same patience to enjoy a good book — and God knows I’ve downloaded a bunch to my Kindle App on my iPad. After reading a chapter or two I’m apt to say this author is tailing off and I can learn more elsewhere. It’s a struggle to sit down and enjoy the New York Times now that I go to the Times App, skim for the good stuff and share it on Twitter.

I explained to Craig that I do feel that I am learning a lot. It’s allowing me to get more of a grasp on the future so as to guide LexBlog and to help empower our clients to network through the Internet.

By studying who’s sharing the good stuff, browsing the headlines, reading items, keying them into Tweets, and seeing the Tweet on a screen I’m getting multiple points of exposure, and in turn, grasping a great deal of important information.

Craig followed with a good question. “Do you think the fact you learned the old way — in books, classes, being mentored, and oral discussion — better prepared me for digesting information the way I am doing it today? Maybe young people are not going to be as equipped?”

Seth Godin may have the best in his post today, ‘The Management of Signals.’

Dealing successfully with times of change (like now) requires that you simultaneously broaden your reach, focus on what’s important and aggressively ignore things that are both loud and false.

Seth explains there as are are two things we’re going to need to get better at to achieve this.

  1. Getting accurate signals from the world. Right now, we take in information from many places, but we’re not particularly focused on filtering the information that might be false, and more important, what might be missing.
  2. Sorting and ranking information based on importance. We often make the mistake of ranking things as urgent, which aren’t, or true, which are false, or knowable, when they’re not.

No question there is a lot of junk out their on the Internet and in social media. Skimming all the stuff from the self proclaimed social media experts recently I couldn’t help but think of Paul Simon’s Kodachrome lyric, “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school it’s a wonder I can think at all.”

My gut tells me I’m equipped to separate the wheat from the chaff in this new way of learning. Not from school, but from years of experience practicing law, trying cases, working on business deals, and starting businesses of my own.

I learned to learn what I needed to know — from books and from people. I was driven by fear of failure. Failure that would result in me being unable to support my family.

I’m optimistic kids will do the same. They’ll figure out what they need to know and who to learn it from for the same reason as I. Darwinism will weed out those who cannot adapt.

  • Scott Key

    Very thought provoking. It is a challenge to figure out how to process information these days. I had a kindle before I bought the iPad. I find myself picking the kindle back up because it doesn’t beep to alert me of email and because I cannot easily check my Twitter feed. I love reading my rss, Facebook news feed, Twitter, etc., but it is important to shift gears, too, even if it means switching devices or even picking up an actual book or newspaper — I don’t think I’ve actually held a newspaper in three years though

  • http://www.myrlandmarketing.com Nancy Myrland

    Kevin, I agree with Scott about this being thought-provoking. As I was reading it, I thought to myself, “Kevin has learned how to discern the good from the bad, the truth from the garbage, and the decent from the shoddy because of all the years he spent in the practice of law and business. I haven’t practiced law, but I’ve spent years in business becoming just as discerning in my judgement and thought processes.”
    I read the rest of your post, and there, basically, were those thoughts. I agree with you that the way we think, the way we process and the speed with which we absorb, judge, share and move forward is different than it’s ever been. I love the blending of the two, or probably twenty, worlds in which I have lived because all of these experiences and perspectives have allowed me a very rich and deep mode of thinking for which I am grateful.
    I, too, think those who haven’t yet experienced all of this will get there, some quicker than others. It truly just depends on how likely they are to think critically, to question, to dig deeper, to speak and ask for feedback, to share, to make mistakes and stand back up, to experience victories, to allow oneself to ask for instruction regardless of age, and to realize there are many perspectives to take in to consideration.

  • http://www.gjel.com/blog Ben Buchwalter

    I think it’s absolutely true that young people are wired to think in a different way than other generations. Putting social media aside for a second, just the fact that we grew up with the internet (!) changes everything. By the time I was in high school, I could get 80 percent of the information I needed from the comfort of my own desktop. Now, that percentage is much closer to 100.
    Then comes social media. Through Twitter, Google Reader, or whatever else you use, you can skim news quickly and pull articles aside you want to look at in more depth. In fact, that’s how I found this blog post.
    But I think it’s a major error to assume that younger people are less equipped to handle the demands of success due to social media. First of all, access to more information can be a plus rather than a minus. And while I’m aware that I run the risk of sounding naive, my generation, and those that come after, will step up simply because we have to. As Kevin says, Darwinism will make sure of that.
    Thanks for the post, Kevin. I think this is a fascinating discussion.

  • http://kevin.lexblog.com Kevin OKeefe

    Thanks for the comments guys. There’s no question people are getting their info new ways. Look at Amazon now selling more ebooks than print copies alone.
    There is a lot of shallow information gathering and thinking today. It’s posible that it’s no greater than before – we just see people putting their shallow thinking on display for the world via the Internet. Kind of like Mark Twain’s line about opening your mouth and removing all doubt that you’re a fool.
    At the same time, I don’t think I’m all that unique in being able to separate the garbage from the good stuff. I’m finding a lot of young people are a lot smarter than I — and they are getting there info in bits shared from friends.