From Grange halls to gigabytes

A call for choosiness in the information age

By Jack V. Booch

In the late 1950s I was approached by a national lecture bureau and offered a job. For those of you born post-Pleistocene, a lecture bureau was an agency that employed a stable of speakers to travel the nation giving speeches in Grange halls, executive clubs, public affairs councils, etc., holding forth on subjects of interest to audiences in small and large towns alike back before the average citizen had easy access to varied and comprehensive sources of information.

Such agencies still exist, of course, but they’ve evolved into media platforms for major political figures and celebrities of all shapes and sizes to host featured events. As a rule, they are no longer about bringing information to the masses. And why should they be? We live in an age where media technologies and the Internet put oceans of data at the fingertips of even the poorest and most isolated individuals.

Technology has offloaded (or is it downloaded?) more facts and figures into easily accessible and searchable formats than any one person could possibly sift through in a dozen lifetimes.

It used to be that the greatest difficulty faced by anyone eager to learn about the wider world was the accumulation of dependable source material. Not so anymore. Choice has become the deciding factor in the makeup of individual intelligence.

Since the days when I beat the highways and byways of this country speaking on subjects as varied as “Regional Variances in American Geography” and “Global Perspectives of American Youth,” we have landed a man on the moon, conquered an astonishing array of infectious diseases, and birthed the World Wide Web.

But such advances necessitate a heightened commitment to discernment.

For instance, just the other morning, I dragged my body to a local Cineplex to catch a live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera Company performing Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde.” To my surprise, it turned out to be an absolutely delightful occasion.

When I was boy, I saw the same opera performed by a much earlier incarnation of the same company in person at the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan.

And here’s the kicker — it bored me to tears.

The reason has everything to do with technology. I was seated so far back in the bloody-nose section of the opera house that I couldn’t see a damn thing and I had no idea what was going on.

The broadcast I partook of the other morning was in a small auditorium (by comparison), was projected onto a huge screen (Portland’s largest, in fact) in high-definition, and featured super titles for the linguistically challenged. It was just terrific.

Unfortunately, the same technologies that enabled me to have such a lovely time recently are put to the devil’s use ordinarily with such programming as “Knocked Up” and “Lars and the Real Girl.”

It was a lack of options that necessitated the profusion of live performing companies like the Met. These days it’s just as easy for the average Joe (or Jane) to journey forth in search of “National Treasure” as it is for folks to expose themselves to quality cultural events.

It is more important than ever for each and every one of us to choose our media intake wisely, lest we become the accumulated sums of loud-mouthed media pundits and reality television shows.

It is far too easy in the current environment to reduce our universe to the dimensions of our cell phone display screens.

As a lecturer, I wouldn’t have dared waste people’s valuable time and money speaking on trivial or poorly researched subject matter. The counterintuitive truth we have to face today is that the sheer quantity of available media options has actually lowered the bar for journalists and artists across the board.

I wouldn’t turn back the clock, even if I could. I value the availability of information and art, and it is so instantly and immediately accessible that I have come to depend on it in ways that I would be loathe to do without.

As has been noted in the past — I am one supremely critical and curmudgeonly (some would even say cynical) old man. And yet this is one occasion where I can help set a good example for a change.

It may be more important to achieve a high level of skepticism toward modern media than any other relevant trait. We need to embrace a resistance and hesitancy toward popular culture in general — as well as political propaganda — and carefully filter the onslaught of information as though our lives and future depend on it.

It may just turn out that they do.