| Number 6: "What do you want?
Number 2: "We want information. Information. Information." – The Prisoner
"Everybody knows everything about all of us / that’s too much knowledge." - William Shatner & Henry Rollins, "I Can’t Get Behind That"
It’s unlikely, but U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s most enduring contribution to the world may turn out to be his definitive statement on the philosophical nature of knowledge. Speaking in February 2002 of the search for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said that, "As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know."
Immediately, and inevitably, Rumsfeld’s careful distinction was lampooned, ridiculed and parodied by countless comedians and commentators. Britain’s Plain English Campaign even awarded him that year’s "Foot in Mouth" prize. "We think we know what he means," said spokesman John Lister, "but we don't know if we really know."
But – and damn it, I never thought I’d ever say this – Rumsfeld makes perfect sense to me. Of course there are "known knowns." I know the capital of Canada to be Ottawa, for example. Then there are the "known unknowns." I don’t know, for example, what the capital of Azerbaijan is, but I do know that I don’t know it. In other words, I’m aware of my ignorance on this subject.
That brings us to Rumsfeld’s category that caused most giggles, the "unknown unknowns" – the stuff that we don’t even realize we don’t know about. Like what? Well, that’s the whole point: if I could give an example, then I’d be aware of what it was I didn’t know, and would therefore have to shift whatever it was – if you follow me – into the "known unknowns" box. Right now, though, I’m more than willing to concede that there must be an awful lot of things out there that I’m completely unaware of. These are the "unknown unknowns."
"Ignorance is strength," wrote George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, voicing one of the cornerstone mottos of the all-seeing/all-knowing Party in his nightmare vision of totalitarian rule. Not so, we now know. Knowledge is strength. Or at least, knowledge – and its alter ego, information – are the key to success and power, we’ve been assured for the past 20 or 30 years.
Phrases such as "the Information Age" and "the Knowledge Economy" have by now become glib clichés, devoid of any real meaning, but still they retain a seemingly unquestionable authority. "Lifelong Learning" is another mantra for the modern world, warning us that what we learned during 12 years of school (plus whatever else in college or university) is no longer a guarantee of future employment, let alone wealth, success or power.
This connection between information and power — political, economic or cultural — is nothing new, of course. Again in Ninety Eighty-Four, Orwell wrote, "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." The Party’s ability to rewrite the historical record of past "errors" made it appear infallible in the present, and denied the possibility of any alternative for the future. And sure enough, the control of information – both access to and dissemination of – has been a key battleground in dictatorships and democracies alike over the past century or so.
The Internet was supposed to have changed all this. The so-called "Information Revolution" was going to "democratize" knowledge, not only reducing the number of "known unknowns" (e.g. the dirty little secrets of governments, large corporations, etc.) but also casting light on the "unknown unknowns," the secrets we didn’t even know were being hidden from us.
Maybe this has happened. Certainly governments and businesses seem to find it harder to keep information secret these days. Or maybe Bill Shatner’s right: perhaps we have too much information now. While the sum of public information has grown exponentially, thanks to the Internet, our ability to sift through, assess and process that information has not kept pace. Typing the phrase "essential information" into Google, for example, produces more than two million results. Who’s got that kind of time?
In 50 Facts That Should Change the World (2004), British journalist Jessica Williams offers a shortcut through the ever-expanding forest of information. As the book’s title indicates, here are 50 pieces of information that reveal something important, and disturbing, about the modern world and our place in it. "These are facts, but they are not immutable truths," Williams writes. "It’s not too late to change the way our world works. But we need to act soon."
It might be tempting to dismiss Williams’ catalogue as just another "book of lists," an arbitrary sampling of typical "liberal" grievances about the unfairness of the world. Yet the book’s strength is not so much the surprising (or outrageous) nature of each individual entry – for example, that cars kill two people every minute – but rather the way they relate to each other. That’s to say, Williams lets us see how seemingly separate pieces of information are, in fact, part of a bigger whole. Here are six examples, picked more or less at random:
· Brazil has more Avon ladies than members of its armed services;
· the U.S. spends more than $400 billion on its military, 33 times the combined military spending of the seven identified "rogue states" (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria);
· Tiger Woods, the highest paid sportsman in the world, earned $78 million dollars in 2002;
· one-fifth of the world’s population lives on less than $1 per day;
· each cow in the European Union is subsidized by $2.50 per day;
· less than 10 per cent of the world’s population has access to the Internet; more than 70 per cent have never used a telephone.
I’ll leave it to you to find whatever meaning you choose in such facts. That a golf player earns nearly 214,000 times more in a single day than 20 per cent of the entire world? That Brazil might serve as a military model for the U.S.? Or that despite the "Information Revolution," more than 90 per cent of the world remains "unconnected"?
All I know is that these facts are no longer "known unknowns" or even "unknown unknowns." They’re now "known knowns." What we do with that knowledge is up to us. |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.