I’m very curious about how people come to know and believe things.

The problem is that the world is very big. Far too big to visit everywhere personally, and far, far bigger if you want to keep track of what is going on, all over the world. Necessarily, almost all of our information is second-hand and heavily mediated.

Global village? Small world? Not a chance. Just because we can pick up the phone and call anywhere in the world doesn’t mean that we do. Goods, brands, and technology are globalized, but communication is not. We live in an era where the world’s great societies and cultures actually know very little about one another.

I’m by no means a privileged observer, but I have been around the world a bit and I do read.  I have a developed-world middle-class income, a valid passport, high-bandwidth internet access. This turns out to be a very striking combination, new in history. And so I constantly wonder: just how much could I know from first-hand travel, public sources, and random conversations?

One thing I have learned is that “common knowledge” depends very much on where you are and who you ask. I am stunned at the isolation between people and places. I am fascinated at the breakdowns between languages and ideologies. Maybe technology can help solve these problems, if only we could figure out exactly how.

This blog is my space to report not only what I’ve learned, but what I’ve learned about why no one knew it.

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