The Information Diet

Title: The Information Diet
Author: Clay A. Johnson
Pub: 2012; O'Reilly
Pages: 150
Genre: Non Fiction, Sociology, Media, Culture
Etc: Shouts to LibraryThing

I love me some information.  I mean it.  I'm a self-proclaimed media wh0re.  I have news feeds galore, apps that buzz me with up-to-date information; I check my twitter feed frequently, as well as facebook and Google Reader.  If I'm sitting and there's a computer by, it's on and I'm perusing the netosphere.  I constantly exchange ideas with my colleagues and students.  We chat during lunch about anything from politics to The Bachelor.  I'm a reality television junkie as well.  They are nothing more than controlled social experiences aired for my personal amusement.

And really.  It's always all about my amusement.

Back in college, back when LiveJournal first became popular [we're looking at over ten years ago folks.  More than ten, but less than fifteen] my roomies and I would sit around and talk about all of the cool things we were learning.  I was taking classes at night and working as a receptionist during the day.  You wanna know how much time that left me for reading?  It was totally The Awesome.

'Course why am I going into this extra exposition?  Because back in college we would chat about information overload.  Our running mantra was:  too much too much.  In fact, I even had my phone programmed with that phrase to appear every time I woke it up from sleep.  We couldn't help but imagine what life would be life when the information took over.

S'course, when I saw this book on Library Thing's Early Review I was all hell to the yeah, sign me.  Teach me how to nutritionalize [1] my information diet.

And instead what I found was a campy infomercial.  There were cutesy little jargons comparing the overindulgent of information to food...which I was trying to buy.  Truly.  But, if this was a paper turned onto my desk for a grade, I would implore the author to GO DEEPER.  Don't just throw a headline term at me, define it and then say you see?  YOU SEE?  As if the answer is right in front of me.

Oh and let me tell you how much I loved being told I need to simplify my media digestion but BTW check out this website that I've created that will link you to all of this OTHER great information.  Ummm, really?

The thing is, Mr. Johnson appears to be a well read, highly intelligent, definitely passionate, filled with credentials kinda guy.  But while being told how to wade through the fat of media, I couldn't help but question if this book had deeper ulterior motives since there were so many political agenda talk.  SURE, he's going off of his Experience with media.  I GET that.  BUT! I would bet the book, if a little wordle was created, would have more bubbled-filled words in the politics category rather than media/information.

Overall a bit disappointing.