Too Much Information?

We live in a time of lightning fast information.  If a happening seems newsworthy or interesting or inflammatory it will be posted on the internet in seconds.  Other information is also available with a click or your mouse such as homes for sale all over the world, local basketball scores, or simply the weather for any zip code anywhere.

I have an app on my computer that shows me the current weather for my city.  It's a cold morning here, so when I logged on it told me the temperature in my city was 10 degrees.  Yep, that's about right.  It also had the word "blizzard" with an accompanying graphic of snowflakes.  Nope, that one's not about right, not even close.  There is snow on the ground, but not a single flake falling from the sky.  It's clear as clear can be, in fact has been all morning.  To be fair, ten to twenty miles north of us is experiencing snow, but not here.

So, how trustworthy is all of this information available at our fingertips?  Hard to say.  It's not often that we can verify truth.  In Latin truth is veritas, from which we get verify.  I suppose truth with a capital T is only what we can verify.  I remember a decade ago when my uncle died.  He was a local politician, so his death made the news.  However, the news station got the details of his death wrong.  I would never have known it was wrong if he hadn't been my uncle.  How many stories are like that? How much do we trust what we don't or cannot verify?

Now, I must apologize, because I've led you down the primrose path.  I've been pointing out the flaws of our information age, as if I was going to make some rallying cry for finding real truth or not being too accepting of available "information."  In reality, I'm thinking about how I can exploit this in a novel or two.  I'm pretty certain I can, if I want to.  But don't worry, in the end I'll tell you the truth. ;)