Information

You know, information is something that has no meaning

if not communicating something from one bit of creation to another,

and humans pass information to each other in all sorts of different ways,

some close and personal,

like having a conversation,

some spanning time,

like the pages of a book,

and some targeting visual and emotional triggers,

like art and advertising campaigns.

And the media used to handle the information being passed from person to person

can easily become not just a transmission device

but a translator,

so we must consider how much has the media become the message.

Media can be used to distract attention from unwelcome places,

and people have to ask

how much does any shiny presentation hide weak underlying foundations?

How do you know who to trust?

Can you trust the TV newsreader?

The politician or the advertiser?

Are you sure you can tell the difference between them?

Can you distinguish between free and open information

and the manipulations of public relations?

The original numbers in data will always need to be translated

into communicated meaning.

Numerical information is reliant on

the media through which it is communicated.

Despite its eternal truths,

maths is always at the mercy of personal opinion when it meets the world,

which means that to form your own best opinion

you need to be able to analyse for yourself,

to look critically at the original numbers

and follow where they lead,

and recognise the information traps that lay in wait for you.

To know what is real you need to learn to distinguish truth from falsehood,

and know that not everything is the way it first seems.

But it's not just the numbers you need to analyse,

you have to analyse the person looking at the data,

you have to analyse yourself.

Sometimes things just seem so obvious that there's no need to question them.

It just feels as though that's the way things are.

Yet so many things that seem obvious about the world

turn out to have a very different probability from the way that it feels,

like that coin toss landing nine times one face in a row,

it really does feel weird that the chance of it coming up again the next time is still the same 50/50.

Very little of how life feels

seems to fit comfortably in the world of numbers,

though life is quite a comfortable place for numeracy.

Everything looks so solid,

and yet it all comes down to a shiny presentation

built on foundations that are no more than probabilities.

Life is a dream that seems real,

and of course in one way it is,

because God is the Creator and Sustainer of all that is within that dream,

and God is the Truth,

and God is the Real.

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