A friend of mine once remarked (re-said not exact words; "Never do the mistake of looking up your diseases on the net. They make it sound/look more horrible than it is."

One of the first things I have grasped from Michael Crichton's State of Fear, is the state of fear we are perpetually forced to live in. The above line could as well be applied to it, though some may vehemently deny its relevance here. But, as I said, why is this so?

This is because a lot of medical terminology, sometimes straight out of the book, makes it way into the public domain. This may sometimes, scare the be-god out of us. Anyway, that's not the point here.

Coming back to the theory, somewhere along the research in human brain might have revealed the fact that human brain can actually process only some amount of the information that is thrown at it. And when this happens repeatedly, the same kind of information that is actually not relevant to the brain or the body or the person, the brain/person gets used to it and becomes reasonably nonchalant/unresponsive/apathetic to any of the stimuli applied or present around him, including it/him/her. (Read again).

This works same as the repeated stimuli being applied leads to a lesser or milder response than when first applied. What this means is that when one actually feels or faces any of those stimuli (like bomb blasts, floods etc etc) they react with a lesser than usual response.

One of the other "advantages" of this information overload is that with so much information being broadcasted, the target may or may not sift through it completely to find news relevant to him/her. This would lead to, over a period of time, laziness to find anything and take whatever is available unless otherwise specified. This way, whoever is leading this campaign can effectively drown any authentic piece of news.

The so called "netizens" also play a crucial role in this. Some of the earliest "netizens" (read bloggers and their ilk) may actually be part of this evil campaign. The one who got people started to feel that the INTERNET is actually a public domain, your/mine/our domain. That includes me too by the way. With such messages going round, gullible people actually started to feel that they "OWN" Internet hence giving their ideas and thoughts a place to be read by others, which usually would have been subdued inside them. (Again, this includes me too).

So what would happen here? Hoardes of people- good, bad and the foolish, all come to the party, effectively creating a mess of intangible gibberish (sometimes, like this one). Wikipedia is one such example. When people are given the chance of "creating" history, who wouldn't be tempted to change a few lines here and there? And include their own names or exclude?

If not wiki, then there are our good own blogs too!!!

A reason (among many) why this theory is constituted is because I did a brief (read brief) search on the truth of global warming. Considering myself an above-average science student (who is unfortunately studying Biotechnology... LOL), I started off reading about the GW issue. The data and evidence, supporting and opposing it. There are prominent people opposing it, which makes the issue to be noticed and not just brushed off that GW due to humans is actually an unproven phenomenon, if not a complete hoax.

When I was discussing with my Professor, he came down on the opposing side very heavily, taking me out in the process. What started off as a casual talk turned into a full-scale debate, at one point doubting my own science credentials. I could have balked at that moment and accepted that GW has a huge human input but, not to be forced into believing I rather towed to a neutral line of "waiting for more evidence". When I was searching, I found that there was no single credible source on the whole Internet* (*credible here depends on what you take as a credible source), hence I can't say for sure, cos neither am I a geologist nor a very smart person who can grasp things that are not being said.

To Be Continued...