One of my favorite blogs in Wired Magazine is, This Day In Tech. Today, I added the following to the comments about whether or not Y2K was a lot of hype or not.
An absence of knowledge of the facts, will never prevent most of us from holding strong opinions on all manner of things. Human beings, like nature apparently, abhor a vacuum of ‘opinion-less-ness’. We form opinions though mostly by choosing sides, selecting those to believe and disparaging the intentions and basic decency of the opposition. And the pundits we choose to believe, while passionate, articulate and loud, are frequently as ignorant of the facts as any among us. But I’d like to suggest that there are some questions of concern so basic, so fundamental to the way we live, that we might better rely on what some might call our innate “common sense.”
Is it necessary to be vigilant about maintaining, securing and updating our computer systems worldwide?
Should we be cleaning up the environment?
Do we require universal access to the very best education possible to assure our future?
Do we require some kind of universal access to affordable healthcare?
Is Congress functioning well—doing the people’s business?
Seriously, now…. Don’t you already know the answer? The big questions are not really the ones that stump us. It’s the figuring out how we’re going get together and go about fixing what’s broken or about to break.