The world of internet is flooded with the information, daily we encounter limitless bits of a different kind of information through various sources. But do we really become conscious while believing any information coming our way?

The source of our knowledge is the information and when we let any information become our knowledge we are not doing justice to our intellectual powers. Those powers which we have acquired with many years of education and getting the certificate of being an intellectual human being in the form of our degrees.

Every now and then we are trapped with rumors, we share the information without checking its validity, getting information from unreliable sources and sharing it with our network using social media platform. It also signifies that we are not using our intellectual power where it is much required to use, checking the validity of the information.

Remember whenever any information is disseminated from us we become the secondary source of that information and if the information proved to be wrong this has a negative impact on our online reputation. If we want to build our personal brand we can not compromise on our online reputation and even if we don’t use online platform it is still not good for our personality to share a wrong information with people.

Let’s have a look on information funnel to understand it better:

When we apply the filter of our intellect to the information we receive from different sources that information becomes our knowledge and when we apply the filter of intelligence to our knowledge it becomes our wisdom. When we fail to apply any of these filters we harm our wisdom.

So the question is, should we not believe any information or we always need be conscious all the times?

No, what matters is the source of information. Let’s see few sources and their reliability index:

1. Books – Books are still the most reliable source of information, read books and gain knowledge because books are the reflection of authors’ hard work and experience in gaining that knowledge and sharing it with you.
2. Magazines/Journals – They are also one of the reliable sources of information because there are professional who have already used their intellect before choosing and printing the content.
3. New Papers – Yes, by and large, they are a reliable source of information but need to check the reputation of the publisher.
4. New Channels – Yes, they are unless they completely deviate from the purpose of sharing knowledge to being an entertainer. Many channels have a reliable reputation in broadcast media.
5. Internet/Search engines – the reliability of the information lies in the reliability of the website.
6. Social Media – Can’t say. Let our common sense decide what to believe and what to ignore.

In the era of this digital world and social media, we are bombarded with the information from everywhere. We need to be careful enough when we let it become our knowledge and impact our wisdom.

This is where the role of education comes. Education does not mean acquiring degrees, getting them laminated and keeping at a safe place forever. Our education should reflect in our personality, the decisions we take and knowledge we share with this world. As an individual, become the reliable source of information so that people trust you and start imbibing your information to become their knowledge.

“Don’t let any information become your knowledge, apply the filter of intellect.”