Information Sifting

One of the hallmarks of 21st century living for many people is surely that of coping with information overload. The ease  with which information may now  be accessed,  fee free too  contrasts with the difficulties and expense associated with accessing information only a few years back in C20. In the day job for example  trips to the Law Society Library or to Her Majesty's Stationery Office to look up legal points were not uncommon so legal research often took considerable time to complete. That is not to say that legal research today is completed in an instant but there is no doubt but that the speed and efficiency of the process today in C21 are in a different class altogether from those of C20.

Now the major problem is of the how best to sort the wheat from the chaff variety. There is simply so much news and information that some, items of  maybe of huge significance, are lost in a welter of gossip or trivia that crowds the media. I pondered over two such possibly lost items this week:

Firstly the report that the whole of the long standing  theory that about a fifth of the universe is composed of 'dark matter' may be erroneous. That in turn could mean that some of  the billions of euros  being spent on the Large Hadron Collider with a view to detecting the existence of dark matter may be being spent in vain. This news snippet includes learned commentary on the possibility of  categories of cold dark matter (but maybe this category is false too)  stale neutrinos and warm dark matter  as forming the basic building blocks of the universe as we know it (or not). The news snippet gave no commentary on the effect of such scientific doubts on the religious  faith of millions of peoples around the world of our being created by God but  such scientific doubts surely strengthen the partnership between faith and reason; to me they  give even more credence to the Credo (pun intended!). In my view man's  religious faith is inextricably bound up with human doubt so the fact that even in C21 sub atomic  scientific  analysis  is subject to human doubt is reassuring - quantum physics is almost as fascinating as theology.

Secondly with all the news about wars, killings,  banking crises, rogue traders,  Euro zone woes and the risk of financial contagion sweeping the world, the news of  disastrous floods in Pakistan and the misery/poverty they are causing, are going almost unnoticed   if the absence of any significant   international financial relief  provision is any yardstick.