Some years back, I remember many industry experts talking
about how we were in the “Sunset of the information age.”
We had achieved
information maturity and were preparing to move to the next great era.
The industry experts were wrong.
We were nowhere near the
sunset. In fact, we only just made it to dawn.
Before the sun puked all over the landscape and promptly
disappeared behind the clouds,
leaving us stuck in the aborted pre-dawn of the information
age.
I’ll elaborate with a few anecdotes.
- On December 14th 20 year old Adam Lanza went on a shooting rampage in a school. Two months later, the news stories were still inaccurately describing the weapons used.
With global news networks, cheap cameras on virtually every
phone, and the all-pervasive internet, somehow, two months later, nobody is
able to produce solid, irrefutable documentation. We are still relying on “He
said she said”, further convoluted by “they meant…”.
- Two weeks ago, I signed on to dogforum.com to get some help with a particular problem we were having with a new puppy.
The site is decidedly
against discipline (they will kick you off for recommending it). I happened on
a discussion where an individual asked why, and giving some examples of
practical, humane use of discipline to differentiate from abuse.
The first
response was a whole slew of videos from “Dog Experts” explaining how
discipline can traumatize a nervous dog, etc… and how it is entirely
unnecessary if you just take the time to understand canine language.
This was
followed by lists of various canine behaviors and what they mean. One contained
a picture of a dog licking its nose and indicated this was a calming signal, a
signal a dog gives to let you know it is okay. Below that link was a link to
another chart, which showed the same behavior, and indicated that it meant the
dog was nervous. So combining the collective wisdom of these revered experts, I
can tell you that if your dog licks its nose, it is definitely nervous, or not.
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