Almost 4 in the morning, and i'm almost in bed. I've become distracted looking up new and 'useful' things on the internet, including Twitter and blogging sites. I think that this step into blogging is the next step in a progression of steps started by my recent infatuation with podcasts. They're great, because they make you feel like you're accomplishing a lot (like learning about philosophy as you walk to class or hearing today's economic forecast while you're on the, well, toilet), but you actually waste a fair amount of time looking for new and exciting podcasts, updating those, managing your old episodes, transferring them back and forth between iPod and laptop, deleting and re-downloading episodes that you regret deleting, and so on. It also leads to activities such as the one which I am currently doing: wasting time writing a blog. It's the information age (or maybe we've already past that? I've maybe thought that I am living in an age that has come and gone) and there is a plethora of useless garbage available to help one become a well informed and well rounded individual. One can act as Big Brother on Twitter, and see what one's friends and family are doing as often as they update their status. Then one can go to Facebook and see the changes in their friends' (or more often, distant acquaintances') relationship statuses. After perusing Facebook, one can then look at whichever blogs at which one would want to look, all the while listening to The Philosophy Podcast. Of course, when one becomes confused with the podcast, one is always able to visit Wikipedia for clarification (albeit sometimes dubious and without citation). In the past week, I've learned so much about philosophy, current events, and the economic crisis from listening to my hours and hours of podcasts, but I've probably learned just as much, or, more likely, less, than I would've learned from going to my Existentialism and Macroeconomics classes which I've accidentally slept through due to my podcast induced insomnia. This is the intrinsic enigma of our modern world. There is so much information available, but the sheer volume of information tends to make each bit less important to us and also serves to limit our actually knowledge on any of the things which we are trying to learn. Sixty second sound bites about science may spark interest and help pass the time, but they do not teach one anything about the science to which they are referring. We've placed 'experts' on a podium, and asked them for brief snippets of information that are easily understandable. We lose interest in topics that take more than ten minutes to explain, and this would not be a problem if most topics required a great deal more time to adequately explain and even more time spent on reflection to adequately understand. When one is done with one sound bite, one moves on to another one, then another, then another. Humanity's thirst for knowledge (be it knowledge of one's self, other's selves, or the selfless world around us) is evident when one considers the success of information technology, of 24-hour news networks, of podcasts like 60 Second Science. But the use of these means to achieve the end of knowledge is like drinking beer to alleviate one's thirst. It may be liquid, and it may be mostly water, but in the end one is worse off for having imbibed it (well, maybe not worse off, just more thirsty). We try to sate our hunger for information with heavily processed and easily digestible bite sized bits of information, when we really need a seven course meal that took hours to prepare. Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.