下のスクリプトは事前提出されたものですので、ビデオの音声とは一部異なる場合があります。

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F.Y.I. : For Your Information

KATO, Soichiro (Ishikawa National College of Technology)

When you watch a TV show or look at a web page on the Internet to get information, you routinely assume that the information consists of factual data and it tells you the truth. But depending on the way it's interpreted and spread, it can have an unnecessarily powerful effect on people. Here's a story that made me think about how information influences me.

The first thing that came to my mind when I heard the news that Michael Jackson died was this question: why is his death such a big deal to everyone? Having heard a lot of bad press and strange stories about him, to me it seemed that he had ruined his career and he was a freak. Yet many people were saddened by his death.

So I went on YouTube to watch his music videos and performances from the past, wondering, “Was he really that great?” What I found both amazed and ashamed me. His voice, his moves, his passion… I was instantly addicted to everything I saw. He was a unique, true genius. As I was watching his videos, at one point, I got to thinking “Even though I have known his name for as long as I can remember, why haven't I ever seen his work?” Then I realized that I had been judging the artist by all the gossip and negative images so blindly that I didn't even think that it was an option to actually listen to his music and appreciate his art and talent.

And there came another question, “What did I really know about who Michael Jackson was?” I thought, probably nothing. I believed everything that was being said about his life in the media and this information painted the full picture for me. However, they were only telling us the stories that were going to catch our attention, bending the information just as they wanted. I'm sure those TV shows were only doing their jobs but I felt like there was a huge gap between what I thought I knew about him and what he really was.

Here's another story related to information. Very recently, Shoichi Nakagawa, Former Minister of Finance of Japan was found dead in his house. The cause of his death is still unknown but before his death, all I knew about him was his heavy drinking. He was being criticized on many TV shows for seeming drunk and slurring his words during a particular public meeting. When he resigned and then lost the election, I thought, “Well, maybe he deserved it. He was just a drunk.” But when I was watching news coverage about his funeral, one TV show started to commemorate the great achievements in Nakagawa's work. I then realized that I knew nothing about his hard work. As I'm 21 years old and old enough to vote, I couldn't help but think, “What if the media had said a lot more about the serious, industrious side of the politician? What if a lot more people had actually known about his work as well as his gossip ?” Perhaps things would've been different for him. Something didn't feel right.

I feel that unnecessary gossip blows away the important events in the world and people are deeply affected by the unimportant stories. Because it has become so much easier to spread any kind of information all over the world with technology, there is now much more freedom in choosing what information you want to get. For example, on the top page of Yahoo!, you can see news flashes about wars in Iraq and celebrities' breakups right next to each other. Because of this given freedom, people now tend to see only what they want to see, and this causes unbalanced values of information among the people.

Living in a modern society where you're constantly surrounded by a ridiculous amount of information that others have purposely chosen to publish, it is so easy to have your minds and thoughts controlled by the media. When your life, your world, is based on the partial, controlled information rather than your personal, precious experiences, I imagine it will be difficult to have decency and common sense. Therefore, you have to remember that a lot of the time information is someone else's interpretation of truth. And it is becoming more important to have enough sense to wisely construe what you hear, rather than accepting everything you hear as unquestionable facts.

Jackson and Nakagawa's stories serve as important examples of how the information that we choose to believe greatly affects our perception of the people and things around us. When you turn on the computer, television or the radio, or pick up a newspaper, don't you find yourself trusting the information without question? Instead, information should be used as a tool for better knowledge, not as your only means to judge the rest of the world.

Next spring I will be transferring to a university to study international development and information technology. As I am going to learn more about communication and information, my hope is to contribute to creating a society where people and information have a better confidence and relationship as we should.