Are We Losing Touch?
As I was waking up this morning, I was considering how much I’ve lost touch with the weather. When I was growing up in Louisiana, I could tell what kind of day it was going to be by how the air felt in the morning. It didn’t matter if it was sunny first thing, I could feel if rain was going to happen before the day ended.
Today, I’m probably like most of you. I get my weather from weather.com. The conversation around town is something like, the weather man says it’s going to snow later today or I saw on the Internet we are going to have a thunderstorm at 3PM. I start relying on this information like it’s a clear prediction of what lies ahead.
The only problem is I have lost touch with my personal discernment. I know the weather.com folks have sophisticated computers with access to satellite data, but their forecasts are still just a prediction. While they speak with absolute certainty, they are using models to estimate what lies ahead.
I began wondering where else I rely on other sources like weather.com to tell me what’s going to happen. I could start with CNN. They are telling me the state of the world in as little time as possible. If I’m not careful, I will take this small taste of sound bites and believe I know what’s happening.
Everywhere I turn I’m turning over my responsibility for understanding my world to others. Sounds like a dangerous thing to do. So what to do? For starters, I’m going to start enjoying walking outside to feel the weather in the morning, reading longer news pieces from a diverse set of writers and having conversations with friends around the world to start getting my own picture of life as I know it.
Thomas White
Whew! You nailed me on that one, Thomas.
Guilty as charged. I have turned over so much to the guru of technology. Thank you for the wake up call.