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Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut
Media scholar ( and Internet Enthusiast ) David Shenk examines the troubling effects of information proliferation on our bodies, our brains, our relationships, and our culture, then offers strikingly down-to-earth insights for coping with the deluge. With a skillful mixture of personal essay, firsthand reportage, and sharp analysis, Shenk illustrates the central paradox of our as our world gets more complex, our responses to it become increasingly simplistic. He draws convincing links between data smog and stress distraction, indecision, cultural fragmentation, social vulgarity, and more.
But there's hope for a saner, more meaningful future, as Shenk offers a wealth of novel prescriptions--both personal and societal--for dispelling data smog.
But there's hope for a saner, more meaningful future, as Shenk offers a wealth of novel prescriptions--both personal and societal--for dispelling data smog.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
4 people are currently reading
311 people want to read
About the author
David Shenk
24 books94 followersDavid Shenk is the award-winning and national-bestselling author of six books, including
The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ
("deeply interesting and important" - New York Times),
The Forgetting: Alzheimer's, Portrait of an Epidemic
("remarkable" - Los Angeles Times),
Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut
("indispensable" - New York Times), and
The Immortal Game: A History of Chess
("superb" - Wall Street Journal). He is a popular lecturer, a short-film director, and a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com. He has contributed to National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Gourmet, Harper's, Spy, The New Yorker, NPR, and PBS. Shenk lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 30, 2016
Almost 20 years ago, journalist David Shenk wrote this book on the Information Age and the unintended consequences that access to more data was creating for those of us in industrialized countries. Much of it now feels prophetic.
Shenk's main concern about the growth of access to information is simply this: Humans cannot process all of the data they now have at their disposal, nor will having access to it make them better people. Information, or data, is not the same as wisdom or even knowledge. And based on his own observations of where things were headed in the late 1990's, Shenk postulates a handful of rules about what he calls "Data Smog" and its consequences. I won't quote all 13 of his axioms here, but they are provocative.
For example, rule #6 postulates that "Too many experts spoil the clarity." If one thinks of how certain social or political debates have played out in the last decade or so (e.g. gun control, economic bail-outs, etc.), one can see what Shenk meant. Statistics, facts and figures are thrown out willy-nilly, with little corroboration or context, each one purported to be the "definitive" scientific answer to the problem at hand. Does science provide evidence of man-made climate change or not? Are immigrants more likely to be criminals? Will a reduction in taxes stimulate the economy? Pick your expert and get your answer.
Another example: Rule #8 of Data Smog says that "Birds of a feather flock virtually together." This is observably true as well, with the increased options for segmentation and fragmentation allowing us to hear only the voices we want to hear. In fact, the algorithms that decide what we see in our social media news feeds reinforce this axiom for us, so the rule has been aided and abetted by the machines themselves.
What Shenk did not or could not have foreseen was the rise of social media, machine learning and advanced data analytics. Social media mainly reinforces his conclusions about too much information and not enough wisdom (Rule #11: Beware stories that destroy all complexity). But machine learning and data analytics are a double-edged sword. The ability to sift and sort Big Data may have the ability to shift the balance in the war against information overload. Can we use the very computers that created the access we now have to vast amounts of data to search for patterns that then allow us to glean actual insights from the Data Smog? Or will those with access to these tools simply use analytics and machine learning against the rest of us? Are we doomed to continue to have louder, less civil conversations about things that matter less and less? Are we fiddling while Rome burns?
Shenk proposes several antidotes to the issue of Data Smog, and most of them come down to personal choices we need to make to be better citizens and better people. He suggests that we simplify our lives by consuming less, become more judicious editors of the content we consume and that we de-nichify so that we gain a broader set of perspectives (among other recommendations). These are optimistic offerings, but they're probably still good ones. And as on-line conversations get louder, shriller and more banal (Rule #7: All high-stim roads lead to Times Square), the need to unplug and step back from time to time has never been more acute.
I think I'll go hiking today.
Shenk's main concern about the growth of access to information is simply this: Humans cannot process all of the data they now have at their disposal, nor will having access to it make them better people. Information, or data, is not the same as wisdom or even knowledge. And based on his own observations of where things were headed in the late 1990's, Shenk postulates a handful of rules about what he calls "Data Smog" and its consequences. I won't quote all 13 of his axioms here, but they are provocative.
For example, rule #6 postulates that "Too many experts spoil the clarity." If one thinks of how certain social or political debates have played out in the last decade or so (e.g. gun control, economic bail-outs, etc.), one can see what Shenk meant. Statistics, facts and figures are thrown out willy-nilly, with little corroboration or context, each one purported to be the "definitive" scientific answer to the problem at hand. Does science provide evidence of man-made climate change or not? Are immigrants more likely to be criminals? Will a reduction in taxes stimulate the economy? Pick your expert and get your answer.
Another example: Rule #8 of Data Smog says that "Birds of a feather flock virtually together." This is observably true as well, with the increased options for segmentation and fragmentation allowing us to hear only the voices we want to hear. In fact, the algorithms that decide what we see in our social media news feeds reinforce this axiom for us, so the rule has been aided and abetted by the machines themselves.
What Shenk did not or could not have foreseen was the rise of social media, machine learning and advanced data analytics. Social media mainly reinforces his conclusions about too much information and not enough wisdom (Rule #11: Beware stories that destroy all complexity). But machine learning and data analytics are a double-edged sword. The ability to sift and sort Big Data may have the ability to shift the balance in the war against information overload. Can we use the very computers that created the access we now have to vast amounts of data to search for patterns that then allow us to glean actual insights from the Data Smog? Or will those with access to these tools simply use analytics and machine learning against the rest of us? Are we doomed to continue to have louder, less civil conversations about things that matter less and less? Are we fiddling while Rome burns?
Shenk proposes several antidotes to the issue of Data Smog, and most of them come down to personal choices we need to make to be better citizens and better people. He suggests that we simplify our lives by consuming less, become more judicious editors of the content we consume and that we de-nichify so that we gain a broader set of perspectives (among other recommendations). These are optimistic offerings, but they're probably still good ones. And as on-line conversations get louder, shriller and more banal (Rule #7: All high-stim roads lead to Times Square), the need to unplug and step back from time to time has never been more acute.
I think I'll go hiking today.
December 3, 2014
Are we drowning in a sea of information? Blinded by a smog of data? That's David Shenk's premise, and I have to admit I'm in somewhat of an agreement with him. It's either agree with him, or admit that I'm getting old and can't keep up anymore. We are of an age, however--he relates how his first computer was a Macintosh in 1984. He talks about becoming involved in the early days of digital communication (back then, there was Compu$erve, the $ource, and local BBSes). He went on the reporting route, while I took the technology route. Now we both feel surrounded by too much stuff, data being the prime component. Shenk blames it on the new medium, whereas I think that maybe it is the nature of our general society.
Don't get me wrong. I love data. Databases are your friend, and they've certainly been mine, as I make my living off maintaining them, writing interfaces for them, and creating reports from them. The problem seems to go back to something much older than the Internet, but to the early days of computing. There is a term, not in much use today, called GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Too much data being stored in databases these days was dumped there, without editing, without sorting, without review. Just because modern tools allow you access to data in these storage areas better, faster, and cheaper, does not mean that data poorly stored has any more value. I am sure many of you have run into a case where the computer was supposed to help you with a task, but instead it just seems that you were able to process more data, not necessarily do the job quicker or easier. More data, as Shenk discusses, is not a solution. Better data would be, but no one is providing quality.
And this is where I say the problem is not the technology but the society. Americans have a hard time with quality. We give it lip service, but what we really want is quantity. The tagline for Godzilla, "Size matters," was perfect for us. Yes, we want more. We want a biggie fries and a biggie shake. We want to Super Size that Extra Value Meal. We purchase Range Rovers and the only range we rove is the median when there's a traffic jam. Let's go to CostCo and get the five-pound jar of spaghetti sauce, even though we only eat spaghetti at home once every two months. We'll take 52 channels of crap on the cable, although only four are worth watching. Bigger, we imply, is always better. Our hardware store here has a tagline that says they have "more of everything."
Shenk says, more is less. You are a limited creature; you can only handle a limited amount of input. Why not get some quality input for a change? I like the idea, and I have to admit that Jill and I were already working towards this goal before our move. Jill calls it "divesting ourselves of the material culture," but mainly it's just getting rid of stuff. Why did we have 700 CDs? We couldn't listen to them all, and hadn't listened to more than 5% in the last year. Why did we have 2000 books--did we intend to reference or reread all of them? I have been keeping bank and billing records for the last 15 years? Why? We cleaned out the closet, evaluating the things we really needed to meet our goals. And it isn't that much. Why did we have all that stuff. Because we were being good little members of the consumer society.
This simplification of the life style is one of Shenk's answers to Data Smog. The others include being your own filter (limit your inputs--cut off the TV, unsubscribe from those lists), being your own editor (take your time to understand what you read and hear, don't settle for sound bites), become a generalist (Robert Heinlein said, "Specialization is for insects."), and, lastly, take part in government rather than forsaking it. These antidotes are strong medicine towards regaining control of your life. Shenk probably didn't mean this as a self-help book, but if the tool pouch fits....
Don't get me wrong. I love data. Databases are your friend, and they've certainly been mine, as I make my living off maintaining them, writing interfaces for them, and creating reports from them. The problem seems to go back to something much older than the Internet, but to the early days of computing. There is a term, not in much use today, called GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Too much data being stored in databases these days was dumped there, without editing, without sorting, without review. Just because modern tools allow you access to data in these storage areas better, faster, and cheaper, does not mean that data poorly stored has any more value. I am sure many of you have run into a case where the computer was supposed to help you with a task, but instead it just seems that you were able to process more data, not necessarily do the job quicker or easier. More data, as Shenk discusses, is not a solution. Better data would be, but no one is providing quality.
And this is where I say the problem is not the technology but the society. Americans have a hard time with quality. We give it lip service, but what we really want is quantity. The tagline for Godzilla, "Size matters," was perfect for us. Yes, we want more. We want a biggie fries and a biggie shake. We want to Super Size that Extra Value Meal. We purchase Range Rovers and the only range we rove is the median when there's a traffic jam. Let's go to CostCo and get the five-pound jar of spaghetti sauce, even though we only eat spaghetti at home once every two months. We'll take 52 channels of crap on the cable, although only four are worth watching. Bigger, we imply, is always better. Our hardware store here has a tagline that says they have "more of everything."
Shenk says, more is less. You are a limited creature; you can only handle a limited amount of input. Why not get some quality input for a change? I like the idea, and I have to admit that Jill and I were already working towards this goal before our move. Jill calls it "divesting ourselves of the material culture," but mainly it's just getting rid of stuff. Why did we have 700 CDs? We couldn't listen to them all, and hadn't listened to more than 5% in the last year. Why did we have 2000 books--did we intend to reference or reread all of them? I have been keeping bank and billing records for the last 15 years? Why? We cleaned out the closet, evaluating the things we really needed to meet our goals. And it isn't that much. Why did we have all that stuff. Because we were being good little members of the consumer society.
This simplification of the life style is one of Shenk's answers to Data Smog. The others include being your own filter (limit your inputs--cut off the TV, unsubscribe from those lists), being your own editor (take your time to understand what you read and hear, don't settle for sound bites), become a generalist (Robert Heinlein said, "Specialization is for insects."), and, lastly, take part in government rather than forsaking it. These antidotes are strong medicine towards regaining control of your life. Shenk probably didn't mean this as a self-help book, but if the tool pouch fits....
January 18, 2016
Feels odd to read a book about the impact of the Internet and data written 20 years ago. I did so on the suggestion of a friend who knows David Shenk.
But it was interesting to see how Shenk viewed the onslaught of data and the Internet in comparison to how things have evolved since its publishing. His major concerns were that people couldn't handle the enormous amount of data that was being thrown at them and that there would be unintended negative consequences of the data and Internet revolution, some of which we've seen and others not so much.
A key take away for me from this book is that new technology is often oversold for its benefits without consideration of its problems.
But it was interesting to see how Shenk viewed the onslaught of data and the Internet in comparison to how things have evolved since its publishing. His major concerns were that people couldn't handle the enormous amount of data that was being thrown at them and that there would be unintended negative consequences of the data and Internet revolution, some of which we've seen and others not so much.
A key take away for me from this book is that new technology is often oversold for its benefits without consideration of its problems.
February 9, 2009
As a society we are becoming Obese from too much information and becoming too dependent on technology. This book brings to light some interesting reprocussions of the information age that no one really predicted.
My particular book was published in 1997...1997! Which gave an almost prophetic feel while reading. Think of all the new information excess we encounter everyday that wasn't available or popular back in 1997. Text Messaging, in home broadband internet, digital photography, youtube, and so on.
My particular book was published in 1997...1997! Which gave an almost prophetic feel while reading. Think of all the new information excess we encounter everyday that wasn't available or popular back in 1997. Text Messaging, in home broadband internet, digital photography, youtube, and so on.
December 31, 2016
Written in 1997, now 20 years ago, a great deal of what Shenk predicted has come true. And what hasn't is on it's way there. It's frightening--how clearly in the late 90's he could already see what was coming at us, but he's helpful in terms of thinking about how to deal with lives that have become impossibly complicated by demands made digitally. This book remains relevant.
January 1, 2021
As with the printing press, radio, television, and other new media that has influenced the course of human history, the Internet brings with it a tide of change that will continue to affect every one of us. As with all media before it, some of these changes will be beneficial, and some will not. One thing we do know is that changes in the way we live have already occurred, and we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. We have a choice. We can either attempt to comprehend what these changes mean so that we can deal with them in a healthy manner, or we can ignore them. Data Smog makes an attempt to qualify what some of the negative changes might be and to provide some suggestions on how we might cope with them.
This book was surprisingly written more than 20 years ago but no doubt it's still relevant today!
This book was surprisingly written more than 20 years ago but no doubt it's still relevant today!
March 20, 2018
Wow. This book is 20 years old. In some ways it's prophetic, but in one place he says that technology is about to hit a natural limit, and he was obviously wrong there.
But yes, the inability to focus, the fixation on novel stimuli, the fragmentation of society into a lot of segments, all of that was well underway 20 years ago.
Suggestions for how to avoid being glutted include quaint ideas like turning off the TV and getting the government to create a do-not-call/do-not-spam list.
(More notes in my progress bar)
But yes, the inability to focus, the fixation on novel stimuli, the fragmentation of society into a lot of segments, all of that was well underway 20 years ago.
Suggestions for how to avoid being glutted include quaint ideas like turning off the TV and getting the government to create a do-not-call/do-not-spam list.
(More notes in my progress bar)
May 11, 2020
I enjoyed reading this book in 2020 and seeing how essentially all the problems of 1998 are still with us. In fact, they have pressed themselves upon us so strenuously that we collectively have become numb to many of them as “problems” and only choose to deal with them pragmatically, as barriers to productivity or personal and professional quality of life. With hindsight I can say that Shenk’s antidotes at the end of the book are quaintly naive. The truth is that these conditions seem here to stay. I would love to know what he thinks about his assessment now, almost 25 years later!
September 21, 2020
Though it was written quite a long time ago, this is an extremely good account of the effects of the seemingly harmless information superhighway (that has become only worse ever since), and what we could do to keep ourselves sane. The one that striked me the most was his explanation for extreme polarisation among communities, that is so common today. A great book to read with some not-so-obvious perspectives.
August 8, 2023
Zuviele Informationen überfordern die Menschen. So lassen sich die Menschen leichter beeinflussen, was Türen für große Firmen offenlässt ihre Produkte zu vrrmarkten. Auch führt es zu schlechten Entscheidungen, weil das Gehirn überfordert ist. Freiheit ist an sich eine gute Sache, nur profitieren davon nicht alle Menschen gleichermaßen. Folgen der Informationsflut sind Frustration, Selbstüberschätzung, mangelnde Hilfsbereitschaft...
February 12, 2019
Interesting and relevant.
May 18, 2013
While I actually do embrace my profession, works such as this re-inforce my self-determined need to have a simpler view of the life; that is, to be able live without technology if required. Although he never quite displays his own political or philosophical stance, he does build a very clear case against the continual surge of fragmentation in our daily lives and the onslaught of technology anxiety. In just a few pages, he discusses psychological research involving the tracking of eye movements while a subject flips through evocative photes, a similar study involving brain waves, store tracking of purchases, and the plan for ETS to sell academic reference checks. The examples were scary, but even more convincing were his conclusions regarding the message (McLuhan) of the newest media. Our society is becoming less able to concentrate on one topic, requiring a "two-by-four" effect to get attention, which doesn't last long anyway. He especially deplores the effect of that trend on journalism, though taking it too far in disclaiming the value of internet news because if bypasses traditional journalism (I note MSNBC). Shenk also writes about the movement for true democracy through on-line voting -- he's right, be afraid. In addition to proposing several legislative steps, he also advocates a very basic "downteching" to combat, or at least minimize, the unavoidable problem.
Read
August 9, 2011Un livre qui m'a beaucoup marqué lors de sa sortie, vers 1999. Une démonstration éclatante du vieil adage "Trop d'info tue l'info". Avec de multiples exemples à la clef, en parlant d'Internet mais aussi des chaînes d'information continue (et en allant même chercher un exemple au 19e siècle!) l'auteur fournit un portrait éloquant, et convaincant, du fait que, comme société, nous sommes très, très loin d'être adaptés au déferlemnet d'informations.
May 28, 2007
All about our current predicament of having too much information thrown at us in this society. Using a lot of interesting statistics, Shenk refutes the technophile point of view in the 1990s (and still today?) that more information, regardless of its usefulness or quality, would make our society better.
February 9, 2010
Shenk himself acknowledges he writes "thinky" books, and this is one of them. A bit Gladwell, a bit self-reflection. Though it was written over 10 years ago, still very relevant about our positioning in this "information" (as in "over-information") age. Upon reading it, I decided to forego an iPhone and am reconsidering my Facebook addiction.
July 23, 2008
contemporary issues,data overload,information technology,non-fiction,stress
August 1, 2015
Holds up as a surprisingly prescient read 17 years after publication.
January 21, 2017
Should be required reading today for anyone trying to make sense of what is going on.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews