Skip to main content

The Information Diet

I am so convinced the way we consume information is terrible for us that Clay Johnson had me on his side just by choosing to write a book on this subject - The Information Diet. Given my bias, I don't know that I can be the most dispassionate and objective reviewer. Ironically, I might be going exactly what Johnson cautions the reader against when it comes to consuming information - taking affirmation over information. That said, I highly recommend this book to believer and non-believer alike. If you consider that the filter bubble Google, Facebook et al are creating for us is in our best interest, this book is for you. If you want to break free, assert your autonomy and consume information in the raw sans spin, filter, churn or bias, this book is for you.
Johnson starts by describing his background and credentials for writing this book. He goes on to draw parallels between an unhealthy diet and its effects to the human body to lack of deliberation and consciousness in consuming information and its effects on our minds. Simply stated, Johnson wants us to evaluate our relationship with information consumption and get on a fitness regimen so we can work ourselves out of our mental obesity. He paraphrases Micheal Pollan's exhortation on diet "Eat. Not too much.Mostly plants" as "Consume Deliberately. Take information over affirmation"
Johnson recommends an Infovegan lifestyle to combat Information Obesity. It involves " mastering data literacy - knowing where to get appropriate data, and knowing what to do with it, using the right kinds of tools. It means making sure you're not put into situations where you situations where you're forced to consume overly processed information"
I could not completely agree with the Information Diet that Johnson recommends for a few reasons. Cancelling cable or satellite TV is great but to I am not sure that the best replacement is a combination of Youtube, Hulu and Netflix. Navigating them is an art and science that most of us are not well-versed in. While we may be in the driver's seat in consuming information, we may not be able to direct ourselves optimally. As such, we may become malnourished through our information diet. There is value is listening to talking heads on television. If they are in the business of churnalism and agnotology (I learned both words from this book), there is value in subjecting ourselves to both in low doses so we remain inoculated. 
I do agree with the idea of incorporating diversity into the information sources you consume from. I read Eli Pariser's The Filter Bubble recently and have become even more deliberate than I was before about avoiding personalization. I love Johnson's examples of websites that do a terrific job of being information synthesizers. He names Khan Academy, TED and Kickstarter ( I was not aware of this one)
Even if you do not agree with the prescription, this book will make you think about information consumption, educate you on the research in this field and prompt you to take control of that diet.
Labels:

Comments

oneandonly said…
I read few initial pages. I am very surprised by author's nitpicking. According to the author if someone writes "Enlist here to die for Haliburton" at the gates of an Army Hospital, that person is ignorant - because no one comes to Army hospital for enrolling to Army.

That could have been written by a frustrated soldier.
Even if it was written by an outsider, it's ok. Because venue of the protest need not be same as the venue of wrongdoing. According to me this is plain nitpicking.

Will try to read further and come back.
1:01 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more