Clay A. Johnson

There really is no government or private mechanism to regulate the information habits of the average citizen. Clay Johnson believes there should be voluntary dieting of information habits. We're reading to much crap, Johnson says. or rather, we're consuming to much crap from radio, television, and movies. Except, I don't listen to radio anymore and only turn on television to pick something off Netflix occasionally. I think Johnson isn't talkng about me, except he is, because he includes people who junk out on e-mail, Twitter, and, most assuredly, facebook. And how many people read newspapers anymore? At one end of the spectrum Johnson is a technocrat who suggests using technology to get at the facts and avoid all that self-affirmation stuff people get through their favourite information sources. It's not good enough to read lefty sources if you're a lefty. It's not good enough to watch Fox News if you're a righty. We end up just reading and hearing what we already believe and not gaining perspective. I kind of agree with Johnson and I try very hard to accumulate perspective through a variety of online tools, my favourites being Flipboard, Zite and (sorry) facebook. In the old days we used to send our children to school and hope they got educated. Today our schools are behind our children in knowing "what's going on." or even, how to find out what's going on. Really, "school" is an obsolete concept, at least it's obsolete in as a mechanism for giving us perspective. It's still a pretty good place to learn about the solar system, and arithmatic. But perspective? Eh.… (mais)

I like the message of this book and its metaphor. But for whatever reason, the abundance of computer-based solutions left me feeling cold. I plan on taking the advice to heart, but will use some of my own methods to reduce the glut of bad information "calories" and needless attention-stealers from my life.

I also feel like the already slim book was padded out to be an acceptable book length. Maybe because I've already books that critique the media, I found myself skimming or skipping many of the sections of the book. But on the positive side, that makes it easier to get the important points from the book!… (mais)

This could have been a great book. Unfortunately, the shallow treatment of the subject, the weak citations of often secondary or tertiary sources, and the failure of call to arms to utilize some of the most important components of digital literacy (librarians and other information pros as guides for literacy, for example) really killed the good mojo.

I think he also failed, in a big way to remind those who already have or want to have good information diets to become resources themselves by volunteering with their local officials to help them with their own information diets. Newly elected officials may find that they need help organizing or synthesizing the information they now encounter.

I was disappointed that his emphasis lay with the larger urban settings in many contexts. I also found myself wishing he used more seminal works in the field of neuroscience, information science, and learning. There are still good nuggets of information here, it just failed to live up to the hype for me.… (mais)

I picked this book up out of curiosity mostly. I found it somewhat underwhelming. Part of the reason I found it falling short is that, to be honest, a lot of what Johnson preaches is information literacy repackaged. It's what good instruction librarians, and just good librarians in general, have been doing for years, even long before the Internet that he seems so fixated on. That was the other thing that did not endear me to the book: the often elitist assumption that Internet access is easy to get and that everyone can get it. There is such a thing as a digital divide, and the author just seemed to either miss it or ignore it. Also, he tries a bit too hard to remain neutral, and I have to say, there are times when one side is wrong. Pure and simple. This is not something we need to get relativistic about. In addition, if you are well-read already, and you keep up pretty well, then a lot of the book up to the point he gets to the actual information diet is a backgrounder that you can either skim or skip. There are some interesting things now and then, but unless you don't keep up much, they are not really new. As for the plan itself, let me save you time: be selective of your information sources, be balanced, cancel your cable, get it all off the Internet (because we all know broadband is easy to get and ubiquitous). I did take some notes as I read, so I will likely do a longer write-up of the book in my blog. For now, I will say I was not really impressed. This book could have just been a long magazine article. Or the content could have just been left at the companion website.… (mais)