Is Google Reader Distorting My Knowledge?

Tonight I was working on a presentation that I’ll be making in a couple weeks. In the process of developing the presentation I went seeking for inspiration and went directly to Ted.com where I’ve found some of the best presentation videos on the web. One video that I stumbled upon was Alisa Miller who shares information about our distorted view of the world.

I’ve embedded a copy of the 4 minute video below which I highly recommend watching. After watching the video and realizing how distorted our domestic perception of the world is, I thought about my own perception of the world. Every day I read through hundreds of articles just about Facebook and frequently hundreds if not thousands more about technology. It has become my job and can only be expected by now.

The more important think that I’ve realized is that I spend my time searching for tiny tidbits of information so that I can share it with others (while elaborating on those tiny tidbits) and this is not a unique habit. All news can essentially be boiled down to one sentence per story (frequently called the “lead”). My personal infatuation with these tidbits of knowledge have ultimately distorted the depth of my knowledge.

I can tell you a hell of a lot about Facebook and social media but rarely can I tell you deep insight beyond that which I’ve deduced from my own logic. Ultimately all of this information collected from tiny tidbits which occasionally even includes a research report (although quite rarely), is compiled and available for rapid recall. Why do I do this and is it making me smarter?

Well the reason I do it this way is that my traffic moves up as I (as well as Kristen and others) post more information and traffic spikes arise from more effectively constructed articles or detailed insight with statistics. Unfortunately though, deep insight developed through research doesn’t pay the bills in the short-run (although in the long-run it can). As such we continue to re-tweet, re-post, and rewrite the same content from one to another only increasing the bubble illustrated in the video below.

My only question is whether or not this new form of content consumption completely distorts our perception of the world, or is this the path to maximizing “knowledge”? Just wondering!