Seth Godin is a writer followed by marketers and entrepreneurs the world over but his ideas are universal and he speaks to anyone who is interested in being part of a better, more present, more aware and more engaged world.

This is from his daily blog, today 1 Mar.

Timely – or what?  

 By Seth Godin:

Ashamed to not know

Society changes when we change what we’re embarrassed about.

In just fifty years, we’ve made it shameful to be publicly racist.

In just ten years, someone who professes to not know how to use the internet is seen as a fool.

The question, then, is how long before we will be ashamed at being uninformed, at spouting pseudoscience, at believing thin propaganda? How long before it’s unacceptable to take something at face value? How long before you can do your job without understanding the state of the art?

Does access to information change the expectation that if you can know, you will know?

We can argue that this will never happen, that it’s human nature to be easily led in the wrong direction and to be willfully ignorant. The thing is, there are lots of things that used to be human nature, but due to culture and technology, no longer are.

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• Ashamed to not know (sethgodin.typepad.com)