Who's Ahead, Who's Behind--And Who's Missing the Point

Unlike my fellow blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick, I don't have anything too astute to say about the opening pre-conference workshop of Techonomy—hosted by the World Economic Forum and entitled “How to measure the impact and transformational power of technology?” 

But I do have a remark on how sophisticated conversations like this one often get mashed into meaningless by media coverage--which is why we need ideas-oriented conferences like Techonomy in the first place.

The morning's workshop centered on a regularly released World Economic Forum report—better described as a brick, really; this thing is massive—entitled the "Global Information Technology Report." If that sounds wonky, it is. But it's also a crucial document for tracking just how countries are doing when it comes to getting their citizens online, and upgrading and improving their information and communications technologies.

Whenever the "GITR" comes out, observed its co-author Soumitra Dutta, the press uses its release as an occasion for tech horse race stories—e.g., Sweden ranked # 1 in “networked readiness,” Singapore # 2, and so on. Woo hoo. Journalists cover such data almost like they would a presidential campaign.

But as Marshall Kirkpatrick plainly showed in his post above on this report, "who's ahead, who's behind" isn't necessarily most interesting part of this story. In fact, it is very likely to be a misleading story. 

We have this same problem in the coverage of scientific controversies. The horse race mentality leads to a "who's ahead, who's behind" treatment of, say, the battle over teaching evolution or solving climate change. Then we wind up with a 50/50 "balancing" of two points of view even though one has no basis in reality.

We're here at Techonomy because the conversations really worth having--like about how different countries are and aren't progressing in getting their citizenry wired--need to be conducted in an entirely different way.

Comments

[A. Skousen]

"Then we wind up with a 50/50 "balancing" of two points of view even though one has no basis in reality."

I'd be very cautious about making statements like this. It is too tempting to brush aside the ideas of others when they don't coincide with our own, but it is learning to seriously explore others' realities that will enable our species to coexist peacefully in the future.

WHY do people make the claims they do? Self-aggrandizement or sincerity? Can you turn that focus onto yourself? In seriously grappling with viewpoints different from my own, I came to realize that the large majority of people are as genuine and sincere as myself. I submit that most people come to their viewpoints in ways that appear largely rational to them, in much the same way that I like to think I come to my conclusions.

Could you say that the research you have conducted, examined, or passed along is sufficiently exhaustive to preclude the reasonable possibility of error or misunderstanding, thus obviating the need for further debate? I think that such a position would require more omniscience than pure science normally grants.