Health Care Reform and The Awesome Power of Techno-Confusion

I'm glad it was back in the 60s when we decided to go to the moon. If we had to make that decision today, I'm not sure we would get there.

I can hear the anger at town hall meetings. "It's too expensive." "It's a corporate land grab." "If God wanted us to be on the moon, he wouldn't have put us on earth."

The difference between then and now, of course, is a world-rattling ability to disseminate opinion -- no matter how self-serving, agenda-driven and utterly specious that opinion might be.

Witness the spittle-flung warnings of "Nazis" and "death panels" lurking in the fine print of health care reform; all the ridiculous diversions at a time when few topics have demanded more informed opinion or more rational discussion.

The mass confusion so successfully created in the health care debate (and we may have already slipped from debate into diatribe) raises a question:

Were we better off when professional gate-keepers assembled and presented news and perspective, or in today's media mosh pit, where anybody with a laptop, simple software and a cause can elbow their way into the national discussion?

It's a rhetorical question.

We're not going back to for-profit hegemony over the shaping of opinion any more than we are going back to carbon paper, rotary phones and antennas on the roof.

Newspapers are not going to repopulate the expertise they have driven from the payrolls -- not for the immediate future, maybe not ever.

The media filter of the past was never a perfect device, but at least its' imperfections were kept in check by the diverse expectations of a shared audience. There was a business case for accountability and balance.

So the open question is how -- somehow -- to manage opinion overload. How do you sort out who is right, who is wrong, who is paid, and who is simply saying what the voice in the toaster-oven commanded?

By comparison, information overload is simple. Today, like a sauce, we can reduce and reduce down to the categories and sources that have meaning in our lives.

For civility and society, that is also the bad news.

The reduction process tends to create a mix of input that calcifies opinion -- simply accumulating evidence to support what we already believe provides no place where give and take matters on the way to considered compromise.

It doesn't matter whether you think that the health-care shouters, were dispatched to reign havoc like the flying monkeys of Oz; or whether you believe their righteous anger is a simple reflection of their righteous anger. The point is that they were not there to hear and learn and consider. They were there to promote an agenda at high volume.

Just as they were, at least in part, a creature of the Web's ability to mobilize, they also are a reflection of what the Web has done to the ability to create the kind of compromise that creates democratic action. You don't have to consider contrary opinion if you never have to hear it. And if you make enough noise in enough places, you can make sure that nobody else hears it either.

I know we need to reform health care. I have no idea how to do it. I can Google "health care debate" and get almost 8 million places to go for answers. I don't know who is providing those answers. I don't know why they are saying what they are saying. I don't know who is paying them to say it.

Information technology has added rocket fuel to the engine of democracy. Will it power us forward or keep us spinning wildly in one spot?

The question remains open. The outlook is not encouraging.

Comments

[lorsavus]

demo2020


Good comment.

[Luvial]

Obama continues to gold-plate the US healthcare system with billions for EMR software that only increases costs for patients and does nothing to get healthcare to those who cannot afford it. The healthy get healthier and the sick get sicker in America.

[MegWe]

Computerizing health records will reduce costs. Your assertions are more lies.

[Malagodi]

A friend of mine once said “The internet has made people really stupid.” I told him no, the Internet just brought us closer together, so it’s easier to hear just how stupid people already were.

There certainly is a lot of internet noise. But elbowing your way into the national discussion is arguably as difficult now as it has always been. It is easier to disseminate opinion, but the gatekeepers are still there, and getting your message heard outside of your own group still requires a certain level of corporate, political, financial or social connection that no amount of internet bandwidth can provide.

Overwhelmed? Just turn it off.

But what prompted this response were her closing paragaphs:
“I know we need to reform health care. I have no idea how to do it. I can Google “health care debate” and get almost 8 million places to go for answers. I don’t know who is providing those answers."

The answer is not on the internet. It’s not to be found with Google. It’s not to be heard by listening to experts. The question is simple and the answer is as close as your own being.

We have allowed the debate to be what healthcare instead of why. If the answer to why is ‘because we’re broke’, then you get one set of possible answers as to what. If the answer is ‘because we must love and care for one another’, then the way forward is clear.

[William1950]

so perhaps we should have to take a test... and pass, to vote on anything... the test would be for knowlege of all sides of an issue, and on reasoning ability... nobody votes unless they pass...
or we simply decend into anarchy.. which is where we are headed.

[Malagodi]

that could be an improvement.

[GrumpyOldGeek]

Perhaps our elected leaders should take and pass the No Child Left Behind requirements before they are sworn in. Oops. No Child Left Behind doesn't include subject matter about history or civics. It's no wonder that our kids are more 'stupider' than ever. Is this is a conspiracy to get Republican votes? Maybe this explains why so many ignorant people vote against their own interests.

We are only made more aware about the misinformed, mostly because it's unusual and draws an audience. I believe that this knowledge leads us away from anarchy because we are awaked from our complacency.

There are those who want to believe. There are others who want to know. I want to know.

[aofh]

Ack

No Child Left Behind, as rendered by the Bush Administration, vehemently encouraged teaching to the test, thereby quantifying knowledge. By further shifting responsibility from the student (the learner) to the teacher (the disseminator), the framers showed their misapprehension of education and the education process. Learning is not something you can do to someone else. We have to learn for ourselves; we have to make ourselves emotionally and intellectually available to what is being taught. When the learner resists, nothing can be taught. One implication of this whole health-care charade is that we have a lot of resistive learners in this country.

[Dem02020]

Confusion and distraction are qualities and traits of people, not of technologies or machines.

People are far less confused or distracted on this Public Policy issue (and many others too), than you might be led to believe.

To watch television, particularly cable television political commentary shows, is to voluntarily subject yourself to a helter skelter that invariably leaves you distracted and confused (in addition to being rendered somewhat manic and even neurotic).

Television does that to the people who stare at it, and cable political commentary shows are perhaps the state of the art, in the art and science of rendering people confused and distracted.

Turn it off, it's easy to do.

As far as this technology (that you use this very moment), this true People's News Wire, this Internet Wire...

It's the single most powerful medium for Public Policy discussions and information that we have ever had or seen before.

There's never been anything like it, and it's already caused the turnover of Congressional power (first in 2006 and then again in 2008) in such a swift and dramatic way as to make Congressional Republicans' heads spin, as they were politically reduced and marginalized to mere spectators in Congress, mostly due (I say) to this true People's News Wire, this Internet Wire.

Again, neither it nor any other technology or machine can truly be called confused or distracted, as those things are qualities and traits of people, and not of the Internet Wire.

[William1950]

whatever the causes... people are confused.. they might not KNOW they are, but in fact - they are.

[Mark Hebert]

In our own history of debate on significant topics there has been no sea change in how the vox populi expresses.

Remember the ruckus that launched the Civil War... yeah, that one? Wow.

We are mislead to think that the relative normalcy brought about by early broadcast journalism was in some way a civil discourse.

I like the messiness of democracy. It has provided us a rich if primarily sanguine history. But the long arc has, as MLK stated, bent towards justice, or as I see it, significant rationality.

And, don't get me started on those internet wire, tubey things, 'cause of them I'm way past sliced bread now.

[lorsavus]

Good comment.

[pontesisto]

If you would like to help pressure Congress to pass single payer health care please join our voting bloc at:
http://www.votingbloc.org/Health_Bloc.php