The Information Diet

There Are 11625 people on
The Information Diet including:

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  I've decided to be much more selective about what information I feed my head.

  Gina Trapani
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  "Unconscious consumption squanders our precious attention."

  Ev Williams, Obvious Corporation
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  "This book convinced me I was eating too many empty mental calories."

  Tim O'Reilly, CEO, O'Reilly Media
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  "80 percent of Americans suffer from information obesity. That's not true, but it could be!"

  Baratunde Thurston
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  "Hoping to have a tasty and balanced information diet for 2012."

  Joi Ito, Director of MIT Media Lab

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  "My goal is to consume a balanced information diet with no unchecked hype or fear mongering"

  danah boyd, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research

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  "I'm cutting out low-quality information and I feel happier and more productive!"

  Jennifer Pahlka, Founder, Code for America

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  "My attention is the most valuable resource I have. I can protect it with an information diet."

  Hilary Mason, Chief Scientist, Bit.ly

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Get a Taste of the Information Diet

Get your copy of the first chapter of The Information Diet on Scribd

Some Quotes from the Book

“We know we’re products of the food we eat. Why wouldn’t we also be products of the information we consume?”

“Just as food companies learned that if they want to sell a lot of cheap calories, they should pack them with salt, fat, and sugar—the stuff that people crave—media companies learned that affirmation sells a lot better than information.”

“As much as our television, radios, and movie theaters would have us believe otherwise, information consumption is as active an experience as eating is; in order for us to live healthy lives, we must move our information consumption habits from the passive background of channel surfing into the foreground of conscious selection.”

“As long as good, honest information is out there about what’s what, and people have the means to consume it, the most dangerous conspiracy is the unspoken pact between producer and consumer.”

“Anthropomorphized computers and information technology cannot take responsibility for anything. The responsibility for healthy consumption lies with human technology, in the software of the mind.”

“There always has been more human knowledge and experience than any one human could absorb. It’s not the total amount of information, but your information habit that is pushing you to whatever extreme you find uncomfortable.”

“The seeds of opinion can be dangerous things. Once we begin to be persuaded of something, we not only seek out confirmation for that thing, but we also refute fact even in the face of incontrovertible evidence.”

“Our media companies aren’t neuroscientists, nor are they conspiratorial. There’s no elaborate plot aimed at driving Americans apart to play against each other in games of reds vs. blues. … Through the tests of trial and error, the media companies have figured out what we want, and are giving it to us. It turns out, the more they give it to us, the more we want. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop.”

“Personalization is just a mirror that reflects our behavior back to us, and while some might argue that the best way to make our reflections look better is to change the shape of the mirror, the fairest way to do it is to change what it’s reflecting.”

“Unplugging, “internet sabbaticals,” “social media vacations,” and “email bankruptcies” are all ways to avoid the real problem: our own bad habits. Ask any nutritionist, and they’ll tell you that a diet isn’t about not eating—it’s about changing your consumption habits.”

“Information obesity isn’t new. Just as it was possible to be obese 500 years ago, it was possible to experience this new kind of ignorance 500 years ago, too. It was just more expensive, and you had to work much harder for it. But now we’re living in a world of abundance…”

“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.”

“Mass affirmation is the carbohydrate of the mind.”

“Going on an information diet is as difficult as going on a food diet. For a lot of us, it requires the support and ideas of our family and community. And it’s personal, too—our minds, just like our food palates, have different and unique tastes. Building a healthy information diet means discovering what works best for you, and creating a routine that you can stick to.”

“Transparency isn’t a replacement for integrity and honesty; it’s an infrastructural tool that allows for those attributes to occur—but only if the public is willing act upon the information that they receive as a result of transparency in a conscious, deliberate way.”

“Going on a healthy information diet restores our ability to be pragmatic. Let’s take our country back, not from the right or from the left, but from the crazy partisanship.”