The Information Diet Page 6

  May 21st was a tough day for Mr. Camping and company. The New York Times’ headline read on the front page: “Despite Careful Calculations, the World Does Not End.” The believers had to face up to the facts: Mr. Camping’s prediction, and all of their certainty, had gone down the tubes. But did they admit defeat and pack up their bags?

  Ervinclark24, May 22nd: “How significant is it that this verse Joshua 10:13 tell us that the earth is essentially a day behind? Is this not saying that yesterday, May 21 was really May 20th?”[70]

  No. For these zealots, it first meant searching for reasons why Mr. Camping must have been right. It was a time zone issue, or maybe there’s another Bible verse? On May 22, Mr. Camping simply proclaimed that the rapture on May 21 was a spiritual judgment, and that the actual end of the world would happen on October 21.[71] Supporters were relieved.

  G Agate, May 26th: “It was a Spiritual Judgment that took place on May 21. This may take a bit of time for it to sink into our human minds, Spiritual truth does not usually come quick or easy from the bible. But the main point and purpose of the day did come to pass, and most of us all were allowed to think of other things relating to it from the bible, in a literal way, so that we would get the message out to the whole world.”[72]

  Tony V., May 29th: “I love [Family Radio] and [Harold Camping] I learned a lot from his teachings, and I am praying for him. And I still believe that Oct.21 will be the last day, only because I personally checked out the time line of history… Now I can understand what the Bible says( No man knows the DAY OR HOUR OF CHRIST RETURN) but we can know the year. I send my love and prayers to all the brothers and sisters on this web site and through out the world.”[73]

  In the group, there were a handful of messages questioning their faith that judgment happened.

  Britton95624, May 24th: “It seems as if we are hastily jumping to conclusions about all of this without having real biblical support for any of it. Just grasping at anything. Its almost as if people are saying ‘well then it must have been a spiritual judgment because we can’t be wrong.’ That seems like pride creeping in. We are ALL confused right now, and I hope we aren’t beginning to trust in our understanding over and against God. My dad said to me last night that, Solomon was the most wise person in the world. God clearly used Solomon for many wonderful things. But in the end of his life, he exhibited behavior that was not becoming of a child of God. Wisdom in a sense can be like money. It’s not bad in itself, however when placed into the hands of a man in large quantities, we may not be able to handle it. It can bring you down.”[74]

  Raynakapec, May 25th: “I cannot bring myself to listen to FR anymore. I am sick at heart imagining how the dear people feel who put their beloved pets down, out of their love for them, in response to HC adamantly saying that after May 21 it would be hell on earth. He repeatedly said ‘It’s going to happen.’ I seem to remember someone asking him on OF whether the caller should put her pets down, and HC as best I can remember said ‘Do what you feel best,’ or something to that effect. What hell they must be going through.”[75]

  What hell indeed. The posts kicked off a flood of replies in the group, all— though sympathetic—assuring the doubters and dissenters that the answer was to pray, and wait for the real judgment day on October 21, 2011.

  If you’re reading these lines, the end of the world hasn’t happened.

  The stories of Mr. Camping and his followers are severe cases of reality dysmorphia. These people aren’t classically ignorant. Most of them have scoured the Bible, and probably read it more thoroughly than your average church attendee. What’s different is that they’ve picked up a bias, sacrificed something for it—their time, their money, or even their dogs—and now they’re vested in it.

  Brand Loyalty

  Any human with an active and alert mind can fall prey to epistemic closure. There are plenty of less extreme examples to point to besides evangelical doomsdays.

  You can see the same fervor in the eyes of political activists. Look in the eyes of a Code Pink supporter on the left, or someone looking for Barack Obama’s birth certificate on the right, and you’ll see the same kind of radical devotion to what they want to believe over the facts—and you’ll also likely find that most of their social network is comprised of people who feel the same way.

  Brand affiliations work this way, too. Attend a major corporate developer conference like Apple’s WWDC, Google’s I/O, or Facebook’s F8, and you’ll find the latest technologies and advances from these companies paired with sermons in the form of keynotes not just telling you why their software is the future, but why the competition’s values are wrong and misleading.

  Attending Google I/O with my iPhone was a mistake. People looked at it, scowled, and scoffed. If I tried to explain that it was an older model—one that was out before any Google phone had been released—and that I was still on a two-year contract for the subsidized phone, and couldn’t switch carriers, it didn’t matter. Eyes rolled.

  A few weeks later, I sat outside Apple’s WWDC with the HTC Evo 4G (a Google-powered phone) to see what would happen. Again with the remarkable judgment over something so foolish as a phone—and coming from someone wearing socks with sandals!

  Having attended the keynotes from both companies, I can see why the attendees of the conferences thought that way. For them, this wasn’t about the use of a phone. This was about the triumph of good over evil. Through the lens of a charged up Googleist, I was but a poor infant letting Apple decide what was good for me. To the Appleist, I was dumb enough to fall for Google’s corporate messaging.

  It’s West Side Story. About phones.

  Symptoms and Severity

  These are all symptoms I’ve faced or observed in my own life as a result of information consumption, but it’s certainly not an exhaustive list. There’s also research on Internet addiction, screen addiction, and a variety of other addictive disorders that come alongside information overconsumption.

  It’s likely that if you picked up this book, then you’re suffering from some of these problems, and may not realize that you’re suffering from others. Though they’re all frightening, they, along with a slough of social problems, aren’t the real case for going on an information diet. The real case is the incredible benefits. Just like a healthy physical diet and exercise can help you live a longer, happier life, an information diet can contribute to the same, as well as more meaningful, tangible relationships with the ones you love.

  Part II. The Information Diet

  The Infovegan Way

  In biology, the trophic pyramid is a simple construct we use to think about how energy flows through the food chain. In the food world, the people eating strictly at the bottom of the trophic pyramid are called vegans—and that’s exactly what we want to emulate with our information consumption. Building on that philosophy, I coined a term in 2010—infoveganism—and started a blog called Infovegan.com to describe this lifestyle. Infovegans try to emulate the consumption habits and ethical habits of vegans in the world of information.

  I’ll admit: it’s quite an intimidating term. A lot of people view veganism as an extreme diet, and for some, it triggers visceral reactions. Veganism is not without controversy. Even some food vegans take offense at the term, either angered at the co-opting of their name, or pointing out that the metaphor isn’t perfect: lots of vegan foods are highly processed.

  If you can get past the baggage that the term has, infoveganism is a valid description of what we’re trying to do. Like a vegan diet, infoveganism connotes that there’s more to the choice of going on an information diet than seeking a healthy lifestyle. It’s also a moral decision.

  At the heart of veganism is ethics. Vegans largely believe that animals, as living creatures, deserve basic moral consideration. Eating meat, they claim, has all kinds of moral implications: animal cruelty, high carbon consumption, and support of an industry without much concern for public health.

  Agree with the vegans or not, you have to r
espect their stance. It captures perfectly what we’re trying to do here with an information diet: respect the content providers that consistently provide us with good info-nutrients by sticking only to those providers, and avoiding everything else.

  Like veganism, infoveganism requires conscious consumption, planning, and to a greater extent, sharpened and honed skills. To be a vegan means you’ve got to consistently put yourself in situations where you can maintain your diet. You cannot simply agree to go to McDonald’s to grab lunch unless your diet is to consist entirely of french fries. You’ve got to know how to cook good-tasting vegan recipes, and know what kinds of food might be sneaking animal products in.

  Being an infovegan means mastering data literacy—knowing where to get appropriate data, and knowing what to do with it, using the right kinds of tools. It means working to make sure you’re not put into situations where you’re forced to consume overly processed information.

  It means that when you are consuming processed information, you consistently check the ingredients—if you’re reading news on a new medicare proposal in Congress, it means you want to take a look at the bill itself, not just what the Huffington Post has to say about it.

  Finally, it means a moral choice for information consumption: opting out of a system that’s at least morally questionable, for a different way—a way that chooses to shun factory farmed information, politically charged affirmations—and choosing to support organizations interested in providing information consumers with source-level information and reporting that contains more truth than point-of-view.

  Chapter 7. Data Literacy

  “To invent out of knowledge means to produce inventions that are true. Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the machine breaks down. If you’re going to write, you have to find out what’s bad for you. Part of that you learn fast, and then you learn what’s good for you.”

  —Ernest Hemingway[76]

  Search

  Knowing how to effectively and efficiently use Bing, Google, or any other major search engine is now a critical form of literacy. I suspect most people reading this book will have used Google once or twice in their lives, but it’s worth noting that Google in particular has a tremendous amount of information available via search besides its web index.

  Knowing, for instance, that Google offers not only web search, but also the ability to search through scientific papers, patents, and laws through scholar.google.com gets you closer to the facts. And though most scholarly papers, even ones funded by taxpayer dollars, sadly sit behind paywalls, it’s possible to find the title of the research paper you want to read, search for the title, and find either the document itself or a decent take on it.

  Knowing Google’s advanced search techniques—to search through news, blogs, discussions, and social networks, and filtering by date, time, and source—gives us a good handle on how to get the best search results.

  Finally, a lot resides inside of large data repositories that aren’t findable through Google. Search literacy also means the ability to find the data you’re looking for outside of a search engine, and to constantly be on the lookout for these repositories. USASpending.gov, for instance, is an attempt by the United States government to catalog every dollar it spends on contractors. It’s an incredible resource for watchdogs and budget hawks, but you won’t find its data through Google search. Search literacy means being keenly aware of these kinds of sources, and constantly looking out for them.

  Filter

  In 2004, concerned with people’s willingness to believe everything they read, a 19-year-old George Washington University student named Kyle Stoneman created a website called gullible.info. The site was a daily diary of fake facts like:

  As of the end of 2010, there were at least nine countries in which public flatulence was illegal. Penalties for violating the statute ranged from the equivalent of a 50 cent (US) fine to public flogging of naked buttocks to 90 days in jail.

  Approximately one-half of 1% of the annual worldwide output of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is due to soft drink carbonation. Despite the availability of a nearly no-cost switch to nitrogen, soda manufacturers are thus far refusing to make the change.

  Prior to the discovery of antibiotics, horse urine was commonly used to treat pink eye.

  Contrary to popular belief, cats don’t actually sleep; their muscles relax and their breathing slows while the brain stays completely alert.

  On any given weekday, nearly 16% of the crowd outside the Today Show has been convicted of at least one misdemeanor. Only 3.5% have been convicted of at least one felony.

  Over the course of a few months, the site became immensely popular, and sometime in 2005, an overeager Wikipedia editor took one of gullible.info’s pieces of trivia: “LSD guru Timothy Leary claimed to have discovered an extra primary color he referred to as ‘gendale’” and added it to Mr. Leary’s living historical record. Shortly thereafter, The Guardian—the newspaper with the second largest online readership of any English language newspaper in the world—published:

  “He exhorted America to ‘turn on, tune in and drop out’ and claimed to have discovered a new primary colour—which he called gendale. Now Timothy Leary, the eccentric spokesman of the 1960s counter-culture, is to become the subject of a Hollywood movie.”

  A “fact” was born, and despite Stoneman’s petitions, it remained online without correction for three months. Fortunately for us, Stoneman’s purpose is social experimentation and humor—looking at his Wikipedia user page, it’s clear that he spends a significant amount of time clearing out and correcting gullible.info entries on Wikipedia.org for the greater good.

  Gullible.info is just a small example of what someone can do on a low budget to inject ignorance into culture. The fictitious color gendale went from Stoneman’s site through Wikipedia’s editorial process, made it through The Guardian’s fact-checking process, and stayed there for three months. The only person not presenting the discovery of gendale as fact in this scenario is the source.

  Search alone won’t help if we’re unable to find the most reliable and accurate sources of information, or we’re unable to draw accurate conclusions from the data we’ve found. We also must be able to think critically about the information we’ve received, and use the best tools we can to process the information effectively. The Internet is the single biggest creator of ignorance mankind has ever created, as well as the single biggest eliminator of that ignorance. It’s our ability to filter that eliminates the former and empowers the latter.

  We must judge good sources through filters such as: what is the intent of the author? Is it to inform you, or is it to make a point? How does the information make you feel? Is your intent in consuming this information to confirm your beliefs or find the truth? Are you capable of viewing the information objectively?

  The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, partnered with the Aspen Institute, provides a good overview of critical thinking skills. In the Knight Commission’s report[77] (available for free online, and a good read if you’re interested), they describe this skill as the ability to determine “message quality, veracity, credibility, and point of view, while considering potential effects or consequences of messages.”

  But the skills to apply these kinds of filters alone aren’t enough. Data literacy must also include the ability to do something with that raw information—to process it in some way. In an era where spreadsheets help us to make the grandest of decisions, we must have basic statistical literacy and fluency in the tools that allow us to make sense out of numerical data, not just words and ideas.

  Understanding how to use a spreadsheet like Microsoft’s Excel, Apple’s Numbers, or Google’s Spreadsheets will help you sort through and see the facts better. There is also a variety of other tools that move beyond the spreadsheet that make it easy to sort through information; these include Google’s Fusion Tables, Socrata, and Fac
tual. They take time and patience to learn, but when coupled with the enormous amount of public data that’s now available online, they give us incredible new opportunities to start seeing our world more clearly through the lens of data.

  Creation

  Data literacy also means the ability to communicate and exchange information with others. Knowing how to publish information and the ability to take feedback are both critical skills necessary for data literacy. Tools like Blogger, Wordpress, and Typepad, and the technologies that power them, like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—these aren’t just tools for keeping a personal diary; they’re tools critical to digital literacy and expression.

  Content creation and digital self-expression, through the creation of text, audio, or video content, are critical components of a healthy information diet. Content creation and publication are a critical part of literacy because they help us to understand better what we say, both through the internal reflection it takes to make our findings comprehensible to others, and through the public feedback we get from putting our content in front of others.

  The creation of this book—the writing and editing of it—has given me more clarity on the message within it. Many paragraphs have been tested: I’ve taken paragraphs that I thought may be controversial, copied them into Google+ and Facebook, and pursued dialog with those people who were willing to engage with me. It’s helped me strengthen some of my arguments, see things more clearly, and more importantly, recognize when I’m being nonsensical.