Last week I witnessed a tense, bordering on nasty, exchange between two people on Twitter. A freelance writer, a woman, had been tweeting about her experience in looking for a new car and said she planned to write an article reviewing a few cars. A doctor, a man, responded to her saying she had no position to write about cars since she is not an authority on the subject but because she has a large following people would believe her.
This got me thinking: In the digital and social age it is possible for anyone to broadly disseminate a point of view or opinion. This is a good thing and a right with which we are all born. Information is therefore abundant. Have we not then passed the time that we admonish people for the information they put “out there”? Rather we all, individually, have to be responsible for filtering our own information. We have to be equally (if not more) responsible for what we accept as for what we transmit.
If you consult Dr. Google with your symptoms and self treat and have an adverse result, who do you hold responsible?
So going back to the Twitter spat, our freelance writer can say what she wants about cars from her view. Your end of the bargain is to view and compare this view other abundant sources of information and make a decision from there.
With greater access to information we have to become smarter, not dumber yet that is all too possible.
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