Blog Post #4 How does the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge shape human societies and contribute to progress?

Hello everyone, this is my fourth blog post for my inquiry project, “How does the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge shape human societies and contribute to progress?”

This is my second step of the research, about how the dissemination of knowledge helps shape our societies, this will help me to research how spreading knowledge could contribute to the development of our society.

The dissemination of knowledge shapes human societies through the creation of communities that are bound together by shared interests, the dissemination of knowledge would also allow more creative and critical minds to contribute to societal growth, and the dissemination of knowledge is one of the most important building factors of a culture and a country.

1. The dissemination of knowledge shapes human societies through the creation of communities that are bound together by shared interests. For example, people learn about the Russo-Ukrainian war online, and through this shared information, kind people in Canada have created programs dedicated to helping Ukrainian families settle down in Canada. Chris Millers, who is a Coquitlam librarian, saw the hardships Ukrainian people had to face settling down and initiated the program to help them. Through the creation of the program, I was able to help many Ukrainian families get better accustomed to living in Canada through this program and made many Ukrainian friends in the process. The dissemination of knowledge and information that we have access to today provides us with the privilege of understanding the hardship that people go through in their lives and therefore allows us to be more understanding and caring to others. Through people sharing information with each other, communities are established and the relationships between people are strengthened. It is through the active sharing of informations between that we are able to achieve the society that we have right now, and sharing information and knowledge with other people we know will continue to help us make the world a better place, and for us to strengthen our relationships with others.

2. The dissemination of knowledge would also allow more creative and critical minds to contribute to societal growth. The act of sharing knowledge with others is often done with a trusted official with adequete knowledge to someone who have less knowledge in the subject, a common example of this can be schools, universities, or even educational YouTube videos. Through education at school, the children accumulate “skills essential to daily living”, ability to critically think about complex issues, and “how to discern right from wrong”(1). This is essential to the growth of a society because it ensures the next generation to be starting on the right path, and to start farther than the previous generation as many information are taught to them instead of having themselves figure it out. Moreover, as more and more people get better educated, their lives and lifespans also increase, because they learn about things they don’t have, and they will fight for themselves and others around them to have these rights (1). They learn about the life they could have, and as they learn about the lives that they could have, they become more motivated to create new things, they become motivated to improve their lives; often times, as they try to make their own lifes better, they also improve lives of people around them as they create more oppertunities for others, creating a positive influence loop for countries and communities in need of growth and advancements (2) (5).

3. The dissemination of knowledge is one of the most important things shapes a culture and country as people can be influenced based on what they see and learn. Before the invention of the internet or cell phone, people talked to each other either face to face, or via mail, communication was slow, but word still got around if something big were to happen, like a war, royal marriage, or even the finding of a brand new continent. People shared their informations and experiences with others, using the common language they spoke, and that is what created the various cultures that we have in our world now (4). The different cultures are results of many differences in the means of communication, and it is also what seprated two adjacent areas into two countires, because their culture did not get along. In 2024, the most common way to share knowledge with other people is though digital means. With digital means of sharing information, online news websites are undoubtably one of the most prominent and trustworthy ones, yet we often ignore their enfluence on the public’s opinion, our behaviour, and even how a country progresses (4). Online news organizations have such a drastic influence on the public because of their trust on the validity of the information, and the professional sounding articles that are presented in front of them. Online news organizations are often capable of altering people’s political opinions through posting articles only about right-winged views, or only about left winged views (3).

For my next round of research, I will be concluding on how the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge shapes human societies and contribute to progress to a greater world.

Sources:

(1) https://www.worldvision.ca/stories/education/why-is-education-important

(2) https://insight.ieeeusa.org/articles/creating-opportunities-for-others-can-create-opportunities-for-you/

(3)https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200512-how-the-news-changes-the-way-we-think-and-behave

(4)https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/ConwaySchaller2007.pdf

(5)https://hbr.org/2000/01/communities-of-practice-the-organizational-frontier