We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely. ~ E. O. Wilson

Apparently the rise of consciousness is linked to certain kinds of privation.  It is the bitterness of self-consciousness that we knowers know best.  Critical of the illusions that sustained mankind in earlier times, this self-consciousness of ours does little to sustain us now.  The question is: which is disenchanted, the world itself or the consciousness we have of it?  ~ Saul Bellow