Your Information Diet - The Next (Learning) Frontier
There are 4.4 million blog posts written, 720,000 hours of video uploaded to YouTube and 5,519 podcast episodes published online. Every. Single. Day… It is overwhelming — and the problem is only getting bigger. The dominance of social media, the emergence of the creator economy, and developments around web3 are all accelerating the speed at which content is put out to the world. Consequently, the need to talk about our information diet increases every day.
Just 30 years ago access to knowledge was sparse. At best, it meant finding the right person, at worst, weeks in a library sifting through books. The information available to us was limited by gatekeepers with their own agendas, publishing or curating what they deemed appropriate. On the one hand, we should celebrate these barriers disappearing, on the other, it means we are confronted with a new problem: information overload.
And that information is not one of great quality:
The speed of change has increased how much information we consume, leaving everyone stuck in a race to stay on top of whatever is getting put out. The fear of missing out (FOMO) makes us sift through tons of rubbish, just to find the occasional gems we stumble upon.
Current solutions to this problem fall into two categories:
- Shallow engagement — trying to stay on top of it all; and/or
- Narrow engagement — employing simple filters at the top of the information funnel, removing what we don’t agree with
Both are fundamentally flawed.
Solutions focusing on “doing it all’’ are doomed to fail. If you think Blinkist allows you to read a book in 15 minutes, you’re wrong. If you think speed-reading doesn’t affect your understanding, you’re wrong.
(And although social media provides us with a filter on what we engage with, if you think that provides anywhere near an objective view, you should probably read-up on filter bubbles.)
All of this leads to the dangerous situation of ever more divisive rhetoric we are seeing play-out right in front of our eyes. On the one hand, people that stay on the surface form a somewhat shallow view of what is happening and how the world works. And on the other hand, people go really deep, but get so caught-up in their own filter bubbles that they engage only with what confirms their view to begin with.
Both of these effects are bad practice for individuals, but they lead to true disaster when played out across society. The first group results in a silent majority with weakly held beliefs and the second a vocal minority, amplified through social media. The result is a world of dramatically divisive rhetoric, with people having lost the willingness and/or ability to engage with the other side.
This is why it is time we start talking about the serious need for our information diet: the set of systems, tools and practices we employ to ensure the information we engage with
- Represents good sample of the “spread” of information on a particular topic,
- Is optimised to remove the noise,
- Exposes the factually false and
- Invites rather than discourages active discussion
Just as Calm and Headspace helped millions deal with faster, busier lives by slowing down, so our information diet helps us cut through and remove the noise in a world of information overload.
And just like “exercise routines” gained importance as our economy (and our daily activity) became less physical, so our information diet will grow in importance as our day-to-day lives are exposed to ever more content.
Information overload is only getting worse and the players that got us there (Silicon Valley), won’t get us out of it. To stay sane as well as effective in this new reality, it’s time we take ownership of the solution by playing an active role and being mindful of what we are consuming.
Do this, and we might just get out of a never-ending rat-race. Do this, and we reap the true benefits of the creator economy.
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