What do you think?
Rate this book
Infoglut: How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know
Today, more mediated information is available to more people than at any other time in human history. New and revitalized sense-making strategies multiply in response to the challenges of cutting through the clutter of competing narratives and taming the avalanche of information. Data miners, sentiment analysts, and decision markets offer to help bodies of data speak for themselvesmaking sense of their own patterns so we dont have to. Neuromarketers and body language experts promise to peer behind peoples words to see what their brains are really thinking and feeling. New forms of information processing promise to displace the need for expertise and even comprehensionat least for those with access to the data."Infoglut "explores the connections between these wide-ranging sense-making strategies for an era of information overload and big data, and the new forms of control they enable. Andrejevic critiques the popular embrace of deconstructive debunkery, calling into question the post-truth, post-narrative, and post-comprehension politics it underwrites, and tracing a way beyond them.
216 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2013
About the author
Mark Andrejevic
17 books14 followersMark Andrejevic is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Fairfield University and author of Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 10, 2015
This is the third of Mark Andrejevic's insightful works about the growth of big data, surveillance, and digital capitalism. Here, Andrejevic is concerned with the coincidence of the emergence of “big data” and the emergence of what he terms the “post-reality-based community.” He observes that during the presidency of George W. Bush, those on the right in U.S. politics characterized the “reality-based community” as those who study reality, contrasting that community with those who act and create realities. Andrejevic argues that this dichotomous approach has emerged despite the optimistic claims that big data may help to provide for more insightful analysis, because what we have witnessed instead is the emergence of an argument that all data analysis is partisan. And, relying upon the claim that all knowledge is subjective and partial, some in U.S. politics have developed new strategies for utilizing the situation of information overload in their favor.
To make this argument, Andrejevic builds upon Zizek’s observation that a specific technique in the arsenal of obfuscation is the multiplicity of narratives, for in today’s landscape of media glut, any dominant narrative can be engulfed in an array of alternative narratives if one has the means to deploy enough resources. In other words, rather than answering specific questions, a flurry of narratives is released that is meant to confuse rather than challenge or clarify. Andrejevic explains that this is what occurred in the stories about weapons of mass destruction and climate change. What happens next is that there is an appeal to the emotions as a form of “cognitive shortcut,” and big data techniques are then harnessed to parse how people feel about unfolding events, which further moves the conversation away from “facts” and into the realm of feelings. Power then rests not with altering realities as reflected in facts, but with monitoring and shaping the feelings that reinforce “truthiness,” to use Stephen Colbert’s term.
Throughout this work, Andrejevic is concerned with the rise in predictive analytics and the devaluation of individual comprehension, for individuals are construed as potentially biased whereas information is deemed value-neutral. Yet Andrejevic argues that the move toward supposedly neutral data mining is a profoundly undemocratic one, particularly as access to large data sets is in the hands of elites. Data mining reveals patterns, not explanations of patterns. We have shifted from comprehension to correlation, he argues, and this has led to a collapse of critique in favor of what he terms “post-comprehension knowledge. “ He suggests that the response needed from those of us concerned about this turn of events is twofold: first, we need to reimagine infrastructural arrangements in all forms of communication. And second – and in order to get to the first - we need to find ways of reclaiming the forms of knowledge that have been suppressed so that we can call into question and regain control over the form of post-comprehension knowledge that now directs the work of big data.
I wish I were teaching a graduate seminar, as this would be required reading. The ideas of "post-comprehension knowledge" are important, and all of our students need to grapple with them, so I'm going to assign his interview in Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontli...
And probably I'll show an excerpt from Minority Report, too.
To make this argument, Andrejevic builds upon Zizek’s observation that a specific technique in the arsenal of obfuscation is the multiplicity of narratives, for in today’s landscape of media glut, any dominant narrative can be engulfed in an array of alternative narratives if one has the means to deploy enough resources. In other words, rather than answering specific questions, a flurry of narratives is released that is meant to confuse rather than challenge or clarify. Andrejevic explains that this is what occurred in the stories about weapons of mass destruction and climate change. What happens next is that there is an appeal to the emotions as a form of “cognitive shortcut,” and big data techniques are then harnessed to parse how people feel about unfolding events, which further moves the conversation away from “facts” and into the realm of feelings. Power then rests not with altering realities as reflected in facts, but with monitoring and shaping the feelings that reinforce “truthiness,” to use Stephen Colbert’s term.
Throughout this work, Andrejevic is concerned with the rise in predictive analytics and the devaluation of individual comprehension, for individuals are construed as potentially biased whereas information is deemed value-neutral. Yet Andrejevic argues that the move toward supposedly neutral data mining is a profoundly undemocratic one, particularly as access to large data sets is in the hands of elites. Data mining reveals patterns, not explanations of patterns. We have shifted from comprehension to correlation, he argues, and this has led to a collapse of critique in favor of what he terms “post-comprehension knowledge. “ He suggests that the response needed from those of us concerned about this turn of events is twofold: first, we need to reimagine infrastructural arrangements in all forms of communication. And second – and in order to get to the first - we need to find ways of reclaiming the forms of knowledge that have been suppressed so that we can call into question and regain control over the form of post-comprehension knowledge that now directs the work of big data.
I wish I were teaching a graduate seminar, as this would be required reading. The ideas of "post-comprehension knowledge" are important, and all of our students need to grapple with them, so I'm going to assign his interview in Frontline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontli...
And probably I'll show an excerpt from Minority Report, too.
March 8, 2018
Interesting but ponderous.
December 2, 2014
Good book to ponder (especially for researchers, academics, big data enthusiasts, readers and the likes) about the knowledge/ideas/facts being generated at a time when almost everyone has access to a huge amount of data/information.
Some points that stand out in this book are:
1)Too much analysis about the exploits of Glenn Beck. He is mentioned in chapters 4, 5, 6 & 7, makes me think that an entire chapter should have been dedicated for him.
2) Idea of big data creating more disparity between the developed and non-developed countries (where the former normally has capabilities and resources to build infrastructure and harness its potentials, and the latter normally having less resource can't match the former's capabilities). This was mentioned 3 times (e.g. p154) in the book but not elaborately.
3) If you don't have enough time to read the book check only chapters 1, 3, 7 and 8.
Overall,the book was able to prove that the digital era is changing the way we think (e.g. rise of conspiracy theories) but was swamped by all the critical and cultural studies jargon.
Some points that stand out in this book are:
1)Too much analysis about the exploits of Glenn Beck. He is mentioned in chapters 4, 5, 6 & 7, makes me think that an entire chapter should have been dedicated for him.
2) Idea of big data creating more disparity between the developed and non-developed countries (where the former normally has capabilities and resources to build infrastructure and harness its potentials, and the latter normally having less resource can't match the former's capabilities). This was mentioned 3 times (e.g. p154) in the book but not elaborately.
3) If you don't have enough time to read the book check only chapters 1, 3, 7 and 8.
Overall,the book was able to prove that the digital era is changing the way we think (e.g. rise of conspiracy theories) but was swamped by all the critical and cultural studies jargon.
November 25, 2015
Andrejevic does a nice job elucidating the various "gluts" that are so much a part of our contemporary information society and the conclusions he draws are all the right ones. Nonetheless, his prose is bogged down by so much academic jargon that the book becomes far harder to follow than necessary.
May 9, 2016
Very interesting other side of the implications and use of big data in political, economic, social, emotions spheres. Accessible for an academically written book.
See: Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ayers, Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die by Siegel
See: Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ayers, Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die by Siegel
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews