 We've
all heard about the explosion of 'information' (or at least data)
produced and available in the world. At the same time, there are some
real questions about the value of this information. In his new book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell warns that over-reliance on information, and getting too much information, can both lead to worse
decisions and actions. Terms like "information overload" and "analysis
paralysis" suggest that more information does not always lead to more
knowledge ("information that allows you to do something better than you
could without it"), or improved decision-making.
At this month's Ontario Library Association Superconference
(BTW quite a few of the presentations are online -- this site is worth
checking out), Barbara Fister, a librarian from Minnesota, provided a
presentation on Information Literacy and the Marketplace of Anxieties.
Here are two intriguing excerpts from her presentation:
The National Forum on Information
Literacy 1998 Final report stated: "The workplace of the present and
future demands a new kind of worker. In a global marketplace, data is
dispatched in picoseconds and gigabits, and this deluge of information
must be sorted, evaluated, and applied. When confronted by such an
overload of information, most workers today tend to take the first or
most easily accessed information--without any concern for the quality
of that information. As a result, such poorly trained workers are
costing businesses billions of dollars annually in low productivity,
accidents, absenteeism, and poor product quality. There is no question
about it: for today's and tomorrow's workers, the workplace is going
through cataclysmic changes that very few will be prepared to
participate in successfully and productively unless they become
information literate..."
Joel Best suggests there are four key players in the formation of social issues: the media who seek compelling stories to tell, activists who want to promote their agendas and solutions, governments that can use issues to gain support for regulating behavior, and experts, such as scholars who want their work to have influence. To this list, Mary DeYoung adds audiences.
For an issue to take off, it must resonate with people's lived
experience so their attention can be recruited and retained even after
the "facts" have been challenged. Lets take crime as an example.
Everyone fears crime, yet crime stories are immensely popular. One
study of Canadian news outlets found that over half of all news
coverage was focused on crime, law, and justice.
She goes on to explain how these key players innocently or deliberately
distort the information they present to audiences, often to induce fear
and anxiety to provoke a desired response (such as political or
financial support). Information is hence viewed as a political or
economic weapon, rather than a commodity to inform players and audiences.
There is as a result enormous skepticism about information, and
cynicism around the reasons for its promulgation. What's worse, the
purveyors of information are increasingly charged with bias for the
information they ignore, discount or suppress
as much as for the information they distort and then present. The
blogosphere, and the increased interest in alternative press and
investigative journalism, are in no small part a result of that
skepticism and cynicism -- people want to hear different views so they
can make up their own minds, or they want to hear reassurance that what
they already believe is true, even in the face of 'conflicting
information'.
So an enormous amount of this 'information' is produced, recycled,
restated, misstated, strictly for purposes of political and economic
argument, to affect actions no more significant than who and what
people will vote for (or against) or what they will buy. The 'audience'
is hence reduced to a passive information role: The role of voter and
consumer. Mountains of information is created and disseminated to
influence these passive voter and passive consumer decisions.
But these decisions are a minuscule proportion of the total number of
decisions, actions and problem-solving activities that the average
person faces in their lives. The more important decisions, actions and
problem-solving activities -- such as how to make a living, who to
spend one's life with, and how to live -- are astonishingly uninformed
by all this 'information'. If knowledge is the ability to do something
better than would be possible without it, what does this say about the
quantum of knowledge -- actionable information -- in our world? I would suggest that this quantum is actually declining,
that we are less capable of making informed decisions on how to make a
living, who to spend one's life with, or how to live, than those of
previous generations. Not
because those previous generations had any better information (and they
certainly didn't have any more) but because they were better taught how
to do these things, how to make use of the information that was
available to them, and to distinguish critically between good (useful)
and bad (unhelpful or dubious) information. They were simply more grounded
than we are today. The consequences of lack of 'information literacy'
(defined by the ALA as "the ability to recognize what and when
information is needed and to locate, evaluate, and use it effectively")
goes far beyond the business
costs (low productivity, business errors and poor product and service
quality) cited above. The consequences of today's lack of information
literacy include:
- Learned helplessness -- the sense that we are incapable of
looking after ourselves and need other people and technologies (guns,
mini-nukes, SUVs, big brother) to keep us safe and make decisions for us
- Mental illness -- stemming from the endless anxiety that information overload and learned helplessness lead to
- Conservatism -- arising from fear, longing for simplicity,
nostalgia, and desperately seeking reassurance that "everything is all
right, nothing needs to change"
- Civil, political and economic incompetence and dependency -- inability to take responsibility and make informed decisions
- Violence -- borne of frustration and an inability to see
root causes, inarticulateness, ignorance of the lessons of history and
of human nature, and inability to persuade others rationally
- Fragility and vulnerability -- from lack of exposure to
alternatives, from passivity and reliance on others to take action, and
from the increasing centralization of power, authority, and
decision-making this has led to
- Inaction -- in the face of crisis, due to an inability to decide, to know what to do
There's more, but you get the idea. What is the opposite of
knowledgeability and decision-making ability? Stupidity ("inability to
understand or learn from experience")? Incompetence ("lack of ability
or capacity to do something")? Because that is the attribute that
characterizes an increasing proportion of the population whose brains
have atrophied from lack of practice in acting on information, even as the amount of information soars.
If this is the information age, I'll take whatever comes next, please.
I hope it's something we can use to make the world better, 'cause
information isn't getting the job done.
Painting "Anxiety" by Regina Lafay from the amazing Survivor Art Gallery
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
