Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut by David Shenk

Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut Reviews

• 
  Mark Oppenlander

  Almost 20 years ago, journalist David Shenk wrote this book on the Information Age and the unintended consequences that access to more data was creating for those of us in industrialized countries. Much of it now feels prophetic.
  
  Shenk's main concern about the growth of access to information is simply this: Humans cannot process all of the data they now have at their disposal, nor will having access to it make them better people. Information, or data, is not the same as wisdom or even knowledge. And based on his own observations of where things were headed in the late 1990's, Shenk postulates a handful of rules about what he calls "Data Smog" and its consequences. I won't quote all 13 of his axioms here, but they are provocative.
  
  For example, rule #6 postulates that "Too many experts spoil the clarity." If one thinks of how certain social or political debates have played out in the last decade or so (e.g. gun control, economic bail-outs, etc.), one can see what Shenk meant. Statistics, facts and figures are thrown out willy-nilly, with little corroboration or context, each one purported to be the "definitive" scientific answer to the problem at hand. Does science provide evidence of man-made climate change or not? Are immigrants more likely to be criminals? Will a reduction in taxes stimulate the economy? Pick your expert and get your answer.
  
  Another example: Rule #8 of Data Smog says that "Birds of a feather flock virtually together." This is observably true as well, with the increased options for segmentation and fragmentation allowing us to hear only the voices we want to hear. In fact, the algorithms that decide what we see in our social media news feeds reinforce this axiom for us, so the rule has been aided and abetted by the machines themselves.
  
  What Shenk did not or could not have foreseen was the rise of social media, machine learning and advanced data analytics. Social media mainly reinforces his conclusions about too much information and not enough wisdom (Rule #11: Beware stories that destroy all complexity). But machine learning and data analytics are a double-edged sword. The ability to sift and sort Big Data may have the ability to shift the balance in the war against information overload. Can we use the very computers that created the access we now have to vast amounts of data to search for patterns that then allow us to glean actual insights from the Data Smog? Or will those with access to these tools simply use analytics and machine learning against the rest of us? Are we doomed to continue to have louder, less civil conversations about things that matter less and less? Are we fiddling while Rome burns?
  
  Shenk proposes several antidotes to the issue of Data Smog, and most of them come down to personal choices we need to make to be better citizens and better people. He suggests that we simplify our lives by consuming less, become more judicious editors of the content we consume and that we de-nichify so that we gain a broader set of perspectives (among other recommendations). These are optimistic offerings, but they're probably still good ones. And as on-line conversations get louder, shriller and more banal (Rule #7: All high-stim roads lead to Times Square), the need to unplug and step back from time to time has never been more acute.
  
  I think I'll go hiking today.
• 
  Shonna Froebel

  This book has been on my "to read" list for many years and, noticing it in the library, I decided to tackle it. For a book written 14 years ago, it is surprisingly relevant today. If anything, the smog has gotten worse.
  The book illustrates the "laws of data smog" and discusses some ways to tackle the problem.
  Here are the laws, with some explanation:
  1. Information, once rare and cherished like caviar, is now plentiful and taken for granted like potatoes.
  This one is pretty self explanatory. Information, or data, comes to us from many sources through many mediums, with information overload replacing information scarcity as a problem. Information is not knowledge and needs to be considered in context and as part of a bigger picture.
  2. Silicon circuits evolve much more quickly than human genes.
  The power of technology has grown more quickly than our ability to process it. We are overwhelmed and have trouble dealing with the deluge. ADD is on the rise, along with cardiovascular issues, vision issues, and confusion. This leads to impaired judgment and overconfidence. We have grown dependent on technology and it has become like a drug we rely on.
  3. Computers are neither human nor humane.
  Technology has unexpected consequences (kind of like kudzu) and we are losing control to the machines that were supposed to serve us.
  4. Putting a computer in every classroom is like putting an electric power plan in every home.
  Computers help access are deliver large amounts of information quickly. They are not filters, but pumps. They can be useful tools, but are not a substitute for learning. Measurement of factual knowledge of various groups from schoolchildren to adults has shown that we know less about the world we live in than we used to, not more.
  5. What they sell is not information technology, but information anxiety.
  This is the sales call to upgrade to new technologies constantly. The faster and faster pace takes hold of us are instead of helping us be more efficient places more expectations on us.We are forever playing catch-up.
  6. Too many experts spoil the clarify.
  The opportunity of immense amounts of information allows groups to manipulate and spin data to prove pretty much any point of view. With so much expert opinion, determining which ones are reliable becomes more and more difficult.
  7. All high-stim roads lead to Times Square.
  It is no longer difficult to get your message out, but finding a receptive audience can be a problem. It takes more to get our attention, and that has led to more extreme efforts to get that attention (shock jocks, trash TV, excessive violence, extreme rhetoric, noisier advertising are all part of this). Everything is a crisis that demands immediate attention and we become jaded and less caring.
  8. Birds of a feather flock virtually together.
  This is nichification, the more and more specialized places where people of like minds can come together. Instead of information leading to more communication and discourse among people from different backgrounds and with different perspectives, there is more fragmentation and less understanding. Less information is truly shared.
  9. The electronic town hall allows for speedy communication and bad decision-making.
  People have more of a voice, but less ability to self-govern. Instead of government being leaders of the people, they respond to surveys and research on what people want and respond to that. The government ends up being followers to citizens that don't understand the full nature of the problems that are being faced.
  10. Equifax is watching.
  Personal privacy has become harder to maintain as information on our habits obtained from merchants, government, and other sources is more easy for others to obtain.
  11. Beware stories that dissolve all complexity.
  The good story, whether selective, exaggerated or wrong, spreads quickly and without barriers around the globe. This can have great effect to individuals, companies, and even countries that get caught in these apocryphal stories.
  12. On the information highway, most roads bypass journalists.
  Because it is easier to disseminate information without going through traditional media, anyone can send out information and the average person is less able to assess the quality and factual basis of the information given. This leads to misinformation, misunderstanding and more confidence in less knowledge. The age of the news bite, without the education needed to analyze what it means to us is ultimately less relevant.
  13. Cyberspace is Republican.
  Technology favours the ideals of libertarian, free-market Republicans towards a decentralized society with little regulation and public infrastructure. This utopia is always long-term with little attention paid to the short-term costs to society.
  
  This book is still extremely relevant and provides much food for thought on how to change the flow of information to make it work for us in a healthier and more helpful way.
• 
  Glen Engel-Cox

  Are we drowning in a sea of information? Blinded by a smog of data? That's David Shenk's premise, and I have to admit I'm in somewhat of an agreement with him. It's either agree with him, or admit that I'm getting old and can't keep up anymore. We are of an age, however--he relates how his first computer was a Macintosh in 1984. He talks about becoming involved in the early days of digital communication (back then, there was Compu$erve, the $ource, and local BBSes). He went on the reporting route, while I took the technology route. Now we both feel surrounded by too much stuff, data being the prime component. Shenk blames it on the new medium, whereas I think that maybe it is the nature of our general society.
  
  Don't get me wrong. I love data. Databases are your friend, and they've certainly been mine, as I make my living off maintaining them, writing interfaces for them, and creating reports from them. The problem seems to go back to something much older than the Internet, but to the early days of computing. There is a term, not in much use today, called GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Too much data being stored in databases these days was dumped there, without editing, without sorting, without review. Just because modern tools allow you access to data in these storage areas better, faster, and cheaper, does not mean that data poorly stored has any more value. I am sure many of you have run into a case where the computer was supposed to help you with a task, but instead it just seems that you were able to process more data, not necessarily do the job quicker or easier. More data, as Shenk discusses, is not a solution. Better data would be, but no one is providing quality.
  
  And this is where I say the problem is not the technology but the society. Americans have a hard time with quality. We give it lip service, but what we really want is quantity. The tagline for Godzilla, "Size matters," was perfect for us. Yes, we want more. We want a biggie fries and a biggie shake. We want to Super Size that Extra Value Meal. We purchase Range Rovers and the only range we rove is the median when there's a traffic jam. Let's go to CostCo and get the five-pound jar of spaghetti sauce, even though we only eat spaghetti at home once every two months. We'll take 52 channels of crap on the cable, although only four are worth watching. Bigger, we imply, is always better. Our hardware store here has a tagline that says they have "more of everything."
  
  Shenk says, more is less. You are a limited creature; you can only handle a limited amount of input. Why not get some quality input for a change? I like the idea, and I have to admit that Jill and I were already working towards this goal before our move. Jill calls it "divesting ourselves of the material culture," but mainly it's just getting rid of stuff. Why did we have 700 CDs? We couldn't listen to them all, and hadn't listened to more than 5% in the last year. Why did we have 2000 books--did we intend to reference or reread all of them? I have been keeping bank and billing records for the last 15 years? Why? We cleaned out the closet, evaluating the things we really needed to meet our goals. And it isn't that much. Why did we have all that stuff. Because we were being good little members of the consumer society.
  
  This simplification of the life style is one of Shenk's answers to Data Smog. The others include being your own filter (limit your inputs--cut off the TV, unsubscribe from those lists), being your own editor (take your time to understand what you read and hear, don't settle for sound bites), become a generalist (Robert Heinlein said, "Specialization is for insects."), and, lastly, take part in government rather than forsaking it. These antidotes are strong medicine towards regaining control of your life. Shenk probably didn't mean this as a self-help book, but if the tool pouch fits....
• 
  Irfan

  As with the printing press, radio, television, and other new media that has influenced the course of human history, the Internet brings with it a tide of change that will continue to affect every one of us. As with all media before it, some of these changes will be beneficial, and some will not. One thing we do know is that changes in the way we live have already occurred, and we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. We have a choice. We can either attempt to comprehend what these changes mean so that we can deal with them in a healthy manner, or we can ignore them. Data Smog makes an attempt to qualify what some of the negative changes might be and to provide some suggestions on how we might cope with them.
  This book was surprisingly written more than 20 years ago but no doubt it's still relevant today!
• 
  Melanie

  Wow. This book is 20 years old. In some ways it's prophetic, but in one place he says that technology is about to hit a natural limit, and he was obviously wrong there.
  
  But yes, the inability to focus, the fixation on novel stimuli, the fragmentation of society into a lot of segments, all of that was well underway 20 years ago.
  
  Suggestions for how to avoid being glutted include quaint ideas like turning off the TV and getting the government to create a do-not-call/do-not-spam list.
  
  (More notes in my progress bar)
• 
  Ian

  I enjoyed reading this book in 2020 and seeing how essentially all the problems of 1998 are still with us. In fact, they have pressed themselves upon us so strenuously that we collectively have become numb to many of them as “problems” and only choose to deal with them pragmatically, as barriers to productivity or personal and professional quality of life. With hindsight I can say that Shenk’s antidotes at the end of the book are quaintly naive. The truth is that these conditions seem here to stay. I would love to know what he thinks about his assessment now, almost 25 years later!
• 
  Florin Pitea

  Interesting and relevant.
• 
  JP

  While I actually do embrace my profession, works such as this re-inforce my self-determined need to have a simpler view of the life; that is, to be able live without technology if required. Although he never quite displays his own political or philosophical stance, he does build a very clear case against the continual surge of fragmentation in our daily lives and the onslaught of technology anxiety. In just a few pages, he discusses psychological research involving the tracking of eye movements while a subject flips through evocative photes, a similar study involving brain waves, store tracking of purchases, and the plan for ETS to sell academic reference checks. The examples were scary, but even more convincing were his conclusions regarding the message (McLuhan) of the newest media. Our society is becoming less able to concentrate on one topic, requiring a "two-by-four" effect to get attention, which doesn't last long anyway. He especially deplores the effect of that trend on journalism, though taking it too far in disclaiming the value of internet news because if bypasses traditional journalism (I note MSNBC). Shenk also writes about the movement for true democracy through on-line voting -- he's right, be afraid. In addition to proposing several legislative steps, he also advocates a very basic "downteching" to combat, or at least minimize, the unavoidable problem.
• 
  Pascal Lapointe

  Un livre qui m'a beaucoup marqué lors de sa sortie, vers 1999. Une démonstration éclatante du vieil adage "Trop d'info tue l'info". Avec de multiples exemples à la clef, en parlant d'Internet mais aussi des chaînes d'information continue (et en allant même chercher un exemple au 19e siècle!) l'auteur fournit un portrait éloquant, et convaincant, du fait que, comme société, nous sommes très, très loin d'être adaptés au déferlemnet d'informations.
• 
  Beth Barnett

  All about our current predicament of having too much information thrown at us in this society. Using a lot of interesting statistics, Shenk refutes the technophile point of view in the 1990s (and still today?) that more information, regardless of its usefulness or quality, would make our society better.
• 
  Topmar

  Shenk himself acknowledges he writes "thinky" books, and this is one of them. A bit Gladwell, a bit self-reflection. Though it was written over 10 years ago, still very relevant about our positioning in this "information" (as in "over-information") age. Upon reading it, I decided to forego an iPhone and am reconsidering my Facebook addiction.
• 
  Wisteria Leigh

  contemporary issues,data overload,information technology,non-fiction,stress
• 
  Ian

  Holds up as a surprisingly prescient read 17 years after publication.
• 
  Christopher Strganac

  Should be required reading today for anyone trying to make sense of what is going on.