Endless Information on a Floating Rock
At about the midpoint in the semester, I was tasked with coming up with a research question that I would later write about. Unlike my normal process of trying to think of an easy question with tons of sources from the internet, I was asked to come up with a research question that I was genuinely interested in. When I thought about it, I had never been asked to pick a question that interested me. I always gravitated toward questions with the least amount of research. In the past, research tedious and annoying.
In order to find an interesting question, I was asked to wander through the “stacks” in O’Neill library. At first, I was annoyed that I had to physically walk through book shelves to generate a question rather than just browsing the internet. However, after climbing the steep grey stairs to the fifth floor, my mind completely changed. I turned the corner and found the entire floor filled with blue, metal book shelves that almost touched the ceiling. Each shelf was packed tightly with books of all different shapes and sizes. There were big books, small books, yellow books, blue books, thick books, skinny books, old books, and even new books. The shelves of books ran from one wall to another creating small little hallways for students to pass through.
While walking through the stacks, I was able to somewhat quantify the amount of information that is available in the world. I walked through the psychology section of the stacks that stretched for 6 rows top to bottom. In just one subject, there were hundreds upon thousands of sentences of information. If I were to take the traditional route and browse the web looking for sources, I would have never realized the sheer amount of information that had been gathered over time. Google tells you how many search results they have found but that is simply just a number on a screen. When walking through the “stacks” the information is all around you. Each book was created by a whole team of people that I didn’t even know existed.
My newfound understanding of how much information there is in the world made me realize how big the world truly is. I understood just how small my life is in comparison to the world around me. As it turns out everyone is the main character of their own world. Realizing how much information is in the world lead me to conclude how big the world really is. From this one experience I learned that even though I feel like the center of universe, in reality I am just one of billions of people on a floating rock in the middle of ever expanding nothingness.
FWYS Portfolio 