The Micro Era

The Micro Era

This article was written on July 29, 2013

Author: Lü Jianfeng

I believe we are now in a micro era. What does the micro era refer to?

Professionally speaking, it means that much of our data and information is fragmented. In layman's terms, we obtain a large amount of unrelated information every day. We need to organize this information to form our own cognition; otherwise, we merely know it and follow others blindly.

For example, a white-collar worker, in the morning while washing up and eating breakfast, turns on the TV to listen to morning news, reads newspapers or scrolls through Weibo and WeChat on their phone while taking the bus or subway, chats with colleagues and learns about company and street gossip during lunch, in the evening at a restaurant the next table is analyzing stock market trends, on the way home they check Weibo, WeChat, Sohu, and Phoenix News, before bed they watch TV or a movie, and before sleeping they browse Weibo and WeChat again. You see, over the course of a day, they learn about major domestic and international events, street gossip, politics, finance, hot topics, a celebrity making a movie or singing, urban management beating someone to death, who is dating whom, and the Diaoyu Islands possibly involving US intervention. They know and understand all of this, and if interested, they can read in-depth analysis reports and commentary articles. Isn't the information obtained in a day very abundant, very chaotic, and fragmented?

Another example: as you know, I sell Pu'er tea online. Let's take Pu'er tea as an example. If you come across an article about Lao Banzhang on the internet and you are very interested, you search extensively for materials about Lao Banzhang, and eventually you find you cannot continue your research. Why? Because you discover that many articles are contradictory, and each viewpoint has many people supporting it.

Each of us can express our own views on everything, but are these truly your thoughts? The vast majority of opinions are seen from elsewhere; the views you express are merely resonating with what others have written. The opinions you see on WeChat and Weibo are mostly recycled, having been rehashed countless times. Many viewpoints are taken out of context, distorted, and spread as rumors. In a sense, this is losing oneself, and most rumors originate this way. We are accustomed to speaking from our own standpoint, filtering out parts that are unfavorable to us or that we don't want others to know, then embellishing or even lying about what we want to say. This is the reason for the contradictory information about Lao Banzhang mentioned earlier.

Why do WeChat and Weibo both have the character "micro"? Of course, it relates to their positioning, and Weibo also has character limits. But I believe it's not just that; it tells us that we can only micro-watch and micro-listen, and can only micro-believe. We should analyze the information we obtain, filter out unreliable or irrelevant parts, and deeply analyze what interests us. For any viewpoint, we must always look at the opinions of opponents. Those who immediately resort to insults should be blacklisted. Persist daily, do not easily form conclusions, and if conditions allow, investigate personally. For example, with Lao Banzhang, you can buy it and drink it yourself, or go to the tea mountain to see for yourself. Once you form such a habit, you will find that you are no longer confused about everything, that much online violence is manipulated by others, and that the internet is not that important after all. Reading books is also a good choice.

The micro era has arrived. Are you ready?