Myths of the Internet Age
In the Internet Age, some complain about information overload: too many mails, tweets, status updates…while others are happy to be in an era where we have access to every conceivable piece of information and point of view, with little or no censorship. Except that both of the above views might just be myths. Or at least that’s the view of these 2 books I will talk about. The first book, The Information Diet by Clay Johnson, argues that since time immemorial there’s been way more information than any one individual can absorb; and thus the only thing that has changed today is the ease of access to information. Now add to that the fact that nobody is forcing you to consume all that information; and the logical conclusion is that the real problem is voluntary information over-consumption! And isn’t over-consumption an easy problem to solve? As the blogger Shane Parrish said: “It is very difficult, for example, to overconsume vegetables.” But is that the entire reality? Some...