"Google It, That's What I Do When I Want To Know Something"

Understanding what the concepts of information, knowledge and wisdom represent within the context of a consciousness framework

In this article we will look at the concepts of information, knowledge and wisdom and see if there is some way in which they can all be connected. We will also try and gain a clearer understanding of these concepts when considering them from the perspective of a consciousness framework. Ultimately, we must remember that all of these concepts are something that we have created. Regardless of this fact, we can still make an attempt to integrate them as part of the consciousness framework being developed in these writings, identifying them as specific individuated parts of the whole. 

As with all of these articles, each of them is generally based on real-life events that were directly experienced by myself at some point. Each of these events acts as a catalyst that then sparks the initial insight which the rest of the article is built upon. Therefore, to help the reader understand this article better, it is worth taking some time to first set the scene and outline the specific event which acted as the initial catalyst to the discussion we will be having here. Mentioning the circumstances leading up to the writing of this article should also help bring into the reader’s awareness the fact that the ability to develop ourselves is available to us at each and every moment, every single day.

Outlining this particular experience helps to establish this fact within our perception to an even greater degree. Every single experience we encounter has within it something which, if internally integrated and realised, is able to shift our conscious perception of the world around us. Therefore, it will only be natural that if you are consciously engaged with the process of developing yourself, you will very soon start to find these moments of inspiration around you, even in the places you would not typically expect to find them. Ultimately the whole cosmos is, in some respect, a vast mechanism for developing yourself. Becoming conscious of this fact means that you can always be consciously engaged with the process, regardless of where you are and what you are doing.

The experience which acted as the catalyst for this particular article and the topics being discussed here occurred as part of a simple train journey. I was travelling on my own on this train journey and there were various groups of people sat around in the coach all having discussions amongst themselves. I was not focused on anything in particular and was just sat in a conscious state of observation. All of a sudden, I became very aware of a particular phrase which had been uttered from one person to another. The exact topic of their conversation was not something that I was aware of, it was only this particular phrase which became illuminated in my awareness. It was as if, for a brief moment, this was the only thing that was discernible from what was otherwise just background noise.

The phrase which was uttered was, “Google it, that’s what I do when I want to know something.” Amongst all of the movement and noise in the coach, it was this phrase which my conscious perception became particularly focused upon. It is also worth mentioning that upon hearing this phrase I did look to see who it was that had said it. Although the reasons for this do not have much to do with the main discussion of this article, it is something which has some relevance in another regard and so will be briefly touched upon here. The phrase had been said as part of a conversation between two individuals who were around the age of seventy. 

Why their age is being mentioned is because it adds another dimension for us to consider to this discussion. This is because of the fact that this phrase was being said by an individual who was from a generation that did not grow up with computers, the internet, or Google. Unlike the younger generations of today, these technologies would have been developed and introduced into these individual’s lives at some much later stage. It therefore may be more likely to expect to hear a phrase like this from someone much younger, someone who had grown up with this technology, because it would have been something that had become naturally intertwined with their lives. The point being made here is that, because these individuals had not grown up with Google in their younger years, the attitude they were expressing was something which they had, in some respects, adopted at some point. This point will have more relevance later on in the article when we come to combine a number of the threads of this discussion together.

Hearing this phrase was enough to begin a certain contemplative process to unfold within me which had me contemplating upon the concept of knowledge. We generally refer to the idea of knowing something quite regularly and yet, if we take a moment to really ask someone what they mean when they say they ‘know’ something, a large majority of people would not be able to tell you what ‘knowing something’ means for them. The reader can even take a brief moment now to think about this themselves and think of what knowing something means to them. Perhaps, with regards to our more day-to-day activities, we may be able to simply accept that there is something being implied by the use of this phrase, however for the Truth seeker, the simple acceptance of what it means to know something cannot suffice to bring them in touch with the Truth they are seeking.

The phrase that was uttered between these two individuals on the train then becomes the basis for a number of questions that we can answer over the course of this article. Does googling something really mean that you know it? Expanding this same line of questioning more broadly, if we find information on something does it really mean we can say that we know it? Bearing this in mind, is there a difference between information and knowledge? If there is, what is it? If we can understand what information and knowledge are, can we also understand the concept of wisdom within that same contextual framework? Finally, what do each of these concepts represent from the perspective of a consciousness framework?

How We Use Tools

Before getting much deeper into the core of the discussion, it is worth taking a look into some other areas that may initially seem unrelated, but which will be shown later more clearly to be entirely relevant. The first of these areas to look at is our understanding of what a tool is, how we develop these tools, and how they are put to use. We take this tangent from our main discussion because any search engine is a tool that we employ, and so understanding the general nature of any tool and our interactions with tools will help us to understand the phenomenon of us ‘Googling something’.