Kony 2012 as Symptom: Disregard for Knowledge

White guilt! Child Soldiers! Evil dictators! Oh, Kony 2012.

Now, I'm going to be honest, I have not watched the video. Nor will I. I have also done very little research about the issues, aside from an article or two critiquing the video and its response. Kony--and the discussion about Invisible Children's video--brings out many important problems, most of which involve Uganda's social problems and how Western culture interacts with Africa. But the discussion as a whole provides a telling example of how modern Americans take in information.

The reason I refuse to watch the video or research the responses to it with any depth is that learning of global problems from the poorly thought out work of a pretentious organization or the discussion of that work on social media sites and mass emails is problematic. Kony 2012, itself as a social issue, is a symptom of the fact that Americans don't take the time to understand systemic problems.

The sheer fact that only after a YouTube video--whether good or bad--do the complexities surrounding globalization come to the fore is worrisome. The advertising theories of information have taken hold. Individuals take brief bits of information, use slogans or persons that can be put in bold on banners to provide the label that is supposed to represent something larger. But with something as intertwined as a history of failed state dictatorships, un-developed economic sectors, ethnic conflicts, and severe public health shortcomings, a slogan is always too simplistic.

Whatever benefit a slogan does have, whatever information it does carry, remains as a small bit. It cannot contain the systemic relations that determine so many of the world's current problems. The surface problem is that the trend to simplify information that arose with capitalist advertising wasn't designed to inform anyone about large social dilemmas. The mode of dissemination is not robust enough.

But the other issue that arises is the fact that Americans know many bits of information, but show no interest and have little way to organize it all. The obverse of the internet's informational capacity is the fact that individuals are now bombarded with facts, figures, and opinions that bounce off one another, contradict one another, and, perhaps worst of all, drown one another out. The influx of information, at times, forbids actual knowledge.

Of course, this problem isn't a necessary one. Google's focus is often on building new ways to sift through information, to organize it for users. But we require a new focus. Moreover, that focus has to be on knowledge, not encapsulation of data. Only by fixing the way we systemize information in presenting it to others can we begin to understand systemic problems like what lies behind Kony 2012.

However, Google is most likely not the answer. This problem came from finding a way to sell information. This is advertising's marring of our world. Knowledge cannot be capitalized without creating a culture that does not value or understand information. And that culture is the one that creates Kony 2012.