How does "text" influence our time?

We all know that some of the most popular novels of their time involve events, political or civil, and social emotions of the time period they were written in. Newspapers and magazines have socially relevant stories of the time in which they were written. The goal is to stay current so the texts of the day are very influenced by the time they are written in. However, have you ever stopped to consider how much those texts influence the times they are written in? I feel that today’s society is negatively impacted by the sheer number of texts available to it.

With the improvements made in technology, information travels around the world almost instantaneously. This means that texts can have a greater influence on the citizens of the world by reaching a broader audience more quickly. This allows for more people to be educated and aware of the events going on around them, and could be a great positive agent for society and humanity in general.

People could come together and support each other to bring many positive changes to global societies. Or people could use the wealth of information available to better themselves individually and make informed decisions regarding that issues that affect them personally.

 Unfortunately, the wealth of information so readily available has made people lazy. It means that people no longer take the time to read all the information they receive or to look for the information they need because there are so many results to sift through on a basic search. They skim, read only the parts that stand out, but rarely pay attention to the entirety of the information in a text.

The results of such skimming means that people are only partially informed by the information provided in the texts. This causes people to make uninformed decisions believing that they are fully informed on a situation. Such decisions have the capability of yielding positive results, however, the majority of decisions made without full information have negative consequences.

One such example of this is the fallout from the recent Miss America pageant. The newest Miss America, formerly Miss New York, is of Indian descent. People responded by attacking her race, accusing her of not being an American, but in fact an Arab and people also called her a Muslim.

The Miss America pageant requires its contestants to be American citizens and does have a requirement regarding religion. Yet due to recent events regarding terrorist activities involving people how claim to be Muslim and who happen to have brown skin (like so many of the different nationalities in the world). Uninformed people without the motivation to find out ALL of the facts have come to the conclusion that brown skinned means Muslim means terrorist means anti-America.  

The truth is that America has never been a country for only people of white skin. There are many texts available that will give that information. Muslim is a religion, not a terrorists. Yes, a terrorist may be Muslim, but just being a Muslim does NOT make you a terrorist. There are also many texts that will inform you of that available. There are also plenty of white Americans who happen to practice terrorism, not necessarily in the form of being anti-American but in the form of terrorizing any American who is different from themselves. Again, there are plenty of texts available with that information.

There is just so much information available these days on every topic a person could think of that people get overwhelmed or are too lazy to find out all of the information they need to make an intelligent, informed decision and the result is having a negative impact on the society of our time. This is why I believe that texts, the sheer number of them are having a negative impact on our society. But this impact can be mitigated by people making the decision to be completely informed about a situation or an event before making a judgment or decision regarding it. People can change this impact by their actions, because the amount of information is not going to lessen it is just going to grow. Technology will keep getting better and better and the wealth of information we have at our finger tips is just going to keep growing. We as the people managing that information need to be smart about the information we take in and commit to finding out as much as we can before making a decision or judgment on a situation. That is the only way to mitigate the negative effect of so many texts providing so much information.