Couldn’t agree more with this latest thought-piece by Alain de Botton, Does more information mean we know less? In fact, as I missed out on my website advent calendar this year, I’m tempted to do a mid-year one on ‘books that I have read more than once’ or read very slowly. As de Botton says,
If we lament our book-swamped age, it is because we sense that it is not by reading more, but by deepening and refreshing our understanding of a few volumes that we best develop our intelligence and our sensitivity.
hey Jonathan … call me !! 🙂
I couldn’t agree more! Never before have our lives been so simultaneously richer and poorer for the wealth of information at our fingertips.
What matters is the degree of selectivity we exercise over this abundance of information. Furthermore, that one cultivates a resistance to the increasingly trumpeted call to diversification of one’s intellectual, social and personal interests….I prefer a deep and refined knowledge of a few fields rather than a weak and affected grasp of many. You simply cannot form a decent and meaningful understanding and opinion on every topic…
I agree, of course – except it’s too late for me, I’m your archetypical jack of all trades, wishing I had mastered just one.