Picking out the information we all want...

This podcast with Lewis Lapham has a great line from the guest, Tony Judt. Paraphrased:

• With the age of infinite information, we all can pick and choose our points. We don't have a basic "common knowledge" anymore.

How can we get the public to consider alternate points of view? How can we stop all the "preaching to the choir"?

• Without a common culture, we have no chance of understanding one another.

This leads to less control over politics.

Turn off the talking points. At least let's consider the sources:

This comes from one of the biggest brains behind "The Daily Show":

• Chodikoff doesn’t use Google to turn up inconsistencies, preferring news stories on LexisNexis, and he ignores Wikipedia. Explaining why he prefers print over the Web, he cites a scene from the movie “Back to School,” when Rodney Dangerfield asks his son why he’s buying used books. “And he says, ‘Because they’re already underlined, see?’ And Rodney says, ‘But that guy could have been a maniac.’ And that’s the problem with the Internet.”

Yet every maniac now has a voice. Kinda scary. That's why I was a newspaper subscriber.