JP Rangaswami ponders the idea of treating our consumption of information like we treat our consumption of food. In this age of information production, can you imagine labels on our information, like the labels on the side of a cereal box? Instead of seeing the total percentage of saturated fats, we'd see the total percentage of verified facts.
Video running time: 8:08
Points to ponder:
- Rangaswami discovered two distinct paths concerning information preparation: one being the idea that content is distilled, value is extracted, separated and served up. The second is that everything gets mashed together (fermented) and the value emerges from the mash up. Do you see these food-information analogies?
- Have you considered the idea of information consumption in the same way you've considered the consumption of food? Does the analogy fit?
- If yes (the analogy fits) what actions do we take to be 'healthy consumers'?
- What's your preferred method for consuming information: do you like a complete package (go to a restaurant and have someone bring you a complete meal = read the entire paper or book, listen to a complete podcast, watch each of the 60 Minutes), do you like to pick & choose (go to the grocery store, buy the ingredients and prepare it yourself = subscribe to specific, content-driven RSS feeds, read just selections of newspapers or news sites, head to HULU for the highlights or 'most watched' scenes) or some combination?
- 38,000 books? Where does he keep them and how does he keep count?
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While I can see the analogy between info and food (i.e. breaking down concepts in order to understand vs. extracting and combining ideas to create theory vs. fermenting), I just didn't find it an interesting concept. Perhaps maybe because it is Monday, or I've never tried to equate my PC with a bag of M&Ms as a source of energy. Have a good week all!
ReplyDeleteActually I have thought of information as food for the brain. I haven't taken it to the same level as Rangaswami. We do grow with the amount of information that we consume. That's what we are trying to get our students to do-grow their knowledge base by feeding them information. I would LOVE to see some type of labeling put on certain types of information,ie:imagine a political advertisement with a built in fact checker, or date of expiration. I can certainly relate to his love of books. I remember having similar thoughts when walking into the library and seeing all of the books--so much to read and so little time but I wanted to know what was in all of them! I find it had to be on a diet. All the good food that would help me loose weight is not as easy to eat as the candy. Probably the same with information, the really useful stuff is not easy to read or obtain so it doesn't taste as good.
ReplyDeleteYour line relating the 'good food that would help me lose weight..etc." makes me think of standing in the check-out line at the grocery store. In the food-information analogy I'm faced with paging through People or US magazines or bending down a bit and finding the Real Simple, Martha Stewart or other marketed-to-women-but-not-entertainment-news selection. I view the People/US is the candy...I'm really not gaining anything, but it's like candy (it gives me laugh). If I choose the Real Simple, I might actually get a fact or a recipe or an inspiration for doing something better in my home.
DeleteI wasn't as captivated by this concept as I was last week's. Maybe part of the problem is I need more time to digest what he is saying (pardon the pun). While I appreciate a speaker getting right to the point and not rambling, I felt Rangaswami could have spent a little more time and gone deeper into specific points. I would like to add one comment to Teresa's above: Just as M&Ms, if consumed at night, would keep a person awake due to the increased sugar intake, so too I've heard that working on a PC at night makes it more difficult to sleep. One refers to consuming candy and the other consuming data or electronic imagery with the result the same.
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ReplyDeleteThere is "comfort food," high in carbohydrates and low in nutritious value, and there's "comfort information" as well. What struck me about Rush Limbaugh when he first burst onto the national scene in the 90s was that, however controversial he was to people who didn't like him, his main appeal to his fans was that he comforted them. It's OK if you have a lot of money and want a tax cut, if you don't like minorities or gays, if you want gas prices down and don't care about global warming, if women's claims for rights annoy you. Don't feel guilty. You're not 'privileged'... you DESERVE everything you have, and people who are less well off are grasping meanyheads. I'll give you some snarky comments or partially-to-completely fabricated information to prove it.
ReplyDeleteAfter consuming this "meal" the original problems remain, and too many meals like this will make a person out of shape, but maybe you feel a little better.
As an information professional (read librarian) I found Rangaswami's talk interesting, but am having a difficult time responding to it. Information as food is a good analogy. Knowing where your next meal will come from, how to get it, and how to safely consume it, are all bits of information that are just as vital to survival as the food its self.
ReplyDeleteBut, information isn't as cut and dry as food, where everyone has more or less the same nutritional requirements. Different people respond to different kinds of information. No matter how "nutritional" facts may be some people just don't respond to them. Other people just don't get why one would want to read a fictional novel when it is essentially a big lie. In the classroom different students learn by different means, some need facts, some visuals, some need it framed as a story, and so on...it’s the same in life. Nutrition labels wouldn't do much for information because not everyone has the same information needs. What is needed is education on how to evaluate and question information as it is being consumed.
On a last note I disagree with Rangaswami about information overload. There are studies that show too many choices can create information anxiety, and although it isn’t called food overload it is possible to have too much food.
Rangaswami makes a good connection between food and information preparation. I often find myself seeking information about a subject that is either broken down for me in a way I can understand it (distilled) or the opinions of others as a group (reviews on Amazon products as fermented) in order to inform my decisions. In this way the analogy fits. As someone who may enjoy information more than food, I think the analogy fits for me. I know that I need to limit (diet) myself at times because my information seeking can get in the way of my health, relationships, and productivity just as overeating can do.
ReplyDeleteIn an attempt to be 'health consumers', some of us try to limit from where we receive information. Of course, that's easier to do now since we have access to so much more information in the Internet Age. That limitation can and does lead to us only having to seek information that is comfortable to us and keeps us from having to challenge our information or the source from which it comes.
As for my preferred consumption method, I prefer to have it all at once but feel I can do that well because I have developed a strong filter that allows me to disregard, ignore, or delete anything I don't feel as necessary. I do this with email daily in my attempt to get to Zero Inbox at the end of each day. It took me years but I rely on that filter daily to get rid of any information overload I might experience.
I found the food = info interesting in a way. For example, there's healthy and nutritious food, and there's "healthy and nutritious" info. It's possible to have too much food--maybe it's also possible to have information overload.
ReplyDeleteYet I agree with Dan and wished Rangaswami had gone into more depth. Maybe he could have shared some studies that show what happens when people get non-nutritious information. The Fox News joke was cute, but maybe too easy.
We know what happens when people eat non-nutritious food--they get sick or maybe too fat. Is there information about what happens to us when we "consume" information (bad or good)? That might be a good study to share when discussing this metaphor.
Rangaswami said he's been thinking of info this way for a long time (did he say 20 years?), so I wonder if he's done some sort of research about it. Or maybe he's just sharing a metaphor that hasn't really been tested.
I think I enjoyed this more than the rest of the group.
ReplyDeleteOf course he is incorrect that there are only "consumption" issues and no "production" issues related to information. There are plenty of places in the world where information does not flow freely, or where it is deliberately restricted.
I also wonder about the places that our minds go when we hear the term "information." I suspect he is thinking of information as material found in books or accessible digitally. But there is of course plenty of information that doesn't fall into this category, and so isn't accessible to be processed, consumed, and so forth.
I liked the idea of the competition of the mind vs the stomach, and wonder if that research is solid. It would explain why graduate students are paid $8,000 a year.
Finally, I think his metaphor may be useful for thinking about how we "retain" information. I realize that by this point, the amount of "information" that my students have retained from last semester is approaching zero. However, we do seem to place a greater emphasis not on that statistic, but on whether the information was digested, processed, turned into something...
My first reaction was to reach for my gym shoes & hit the fitness center! I feel most of us in education motivate ourselves by being consumers of information, seeking to know and understant our given field and then know how to relay this knowledge better to our students.Personally, I perfer to consume info by both looking at the larger picutre then diving into subsets in those areas I either wnat more info on or don't understand as well.Rangaswami or others should investigate his hypothesis as I do see some connection but would consider this a useful analogy until research supports this concept.
ReplyDeleteMistrust anyone who thinks information's "nutritional value" can be objectively measured and labeled.
ReplyDeleteHumans can not safely consume all parts of some plants that we eat regularly. Mushrooms, castor beans, rhubarb, tomatoes, and even apples and cherries (beware of the seeds/pits)may all contain poisons that can prove fatal in sufficient doses. Is there an analogy to our consumption of information? Do we need to be sure that information is properly prepared for human consumption and that some parts are either discarded or used very carefully and only in small amounts?
ReplyDeleteThe first time I watched this I was distracted by his comment re: 38,000 books. My mind wandered as I wondered how he knew he had this many books and how he keeps track of them all-- does he maintain an excel spreadsheet with title, author, and storage location? Does he take an inventory once a year? Does he maintain his own lending library? Does he have grad students whose job it is to count all of his books? I also had a hard time wrapping my head around how much space 38,000 books would take up. If he likes information as much as food, I then wondered how big his pantry was! By the time I got done thinking about all of this, I had to restart the video to get to his actual point.
ReplyDeleteRegarding, his analogy of food and information I, too, thought he could have fleshed out his argument more. I was also troubled by the underlying notion that some pieces of information have more value than others (i.e., are more nutritional) and wondered who decides what is most valuable. This was troubling as it brought me to the notion of objectivity. As Jon's and others' comments suggest, I worry about the attainability of objectivity. One of my favorite books regarding research methods is titled _How to Lie with Statistics_. As the title suggests, presumably "objective" information can be framed in very subjective ways which brings into question whether that original information was objective in the first place.
I remember reading _How to Lie with Statistics_ and it reminded me of a logic course I took as an undergraduate. You can extract data from a study and make a syllogism to fit your theory. Likewise, you can rationalize your diet choices because you need the comfort, energy or nutrients from that particular substance.
ReplyDeleteI think the food analogy is intriguing. Some individuals concentrate on only eating a certain classification of food to the exclusion of all others -- not healthy without taking some supplements. Propaganda or lack of freedom of expression causes an individual to become deficient in making logical, rational decisions (according to some) and a few organizations and countries do not allow for supplemental information.
Of course any analogy can be carried to the extreme and so a more in-depth look at Rangaswami's conclusions is needed.
The best idea to take from this TED talk is that it is healthy to consider the nutritional value of food and this can also be said of information. Just because information is available on TV, radio, print, internet, etc does not make it a fact.
ReplyDeleteThe difference, I think, is that there is information out there that is nearly impossible to filter/research/etc. We are told things and overhear conversations, see things in a newspaper or article when we are flipping through to find a new one, see commercials when we really only want to watch one show, etc. If you really treated food this way you would be in big trouble. If you consumed every single thing that you saw, or passed by, we would be even more unhealthy than we already are. Most people don't do that, but we easily fall victim to receiving information that we don't want or need. So we have to go back and try to filter out unnecessary or untrue pieces. I'm not sure which way is easier, or more effective, really. It would be hard to spend the time upfront to "research" our information. It would be unhealthy to eat everything at once and then go back and fix what we shouldn't have eaten or "known".
ReplyDeleteOverall, it is a stretch of a comparison, although I certainly see where it comes from.
I think the cliche applies in either case: Everything in moderation!
As with most analogies they work to a certain extent and break down at some point in the detailed comparison. Maybe the comparison to the body type diet that identifies certain foods to eat and avoid based on body types compares to different learning styles or mindsets enjoy certain types of information uptake. My concern is what if like the foods you like (ice cream) is not good if you make it your whole diet, what if the information you like is not good for you?
ReplyDeleteI share the concerns of Emily and Jon, it seems that MSNBC and Fox have different “Facts”. I would be very skeptical of anyone rating the information I am about to consume. What would happen if all news sources produced the same messages? It is concerning to think of the power the “source” of the information would gain over the population. I think it was Collin Powell that said if everyone is thinking the same thing someone isn’t thinking.
I think the best idea to come from this discussion is the concept of a “balanced diet”. Maybe we all need to consume information that we do not want or enjoy. I have noticed that consuming news from Fox and CNN that one seems to cause blood pressure issues while the other seems to be more truthful… Which is better for me? I am not sure I trust anyone to make that call for me. Perhaps this is a good 30 day challenge in the making.
I offered some brilliant and insightful comments last night, but they vanished into cyberspace, so these comments will have to do.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of thinking of food much as we think of information. Certainly, there is junk food and junk information. There is also highly nutritious food, which, like information-rich sources, often appear a bit less readily available and less appetizing. For me, the question the video raises is how we can get students to dig into information-rich materials - especially if it requires a trip to the big building with books.
I also see a connection in that, in addition to the food pyramid, there is also an information-circulation pyramid. The junk food of information is at the top of the info pyramid, while the base is Haagen-Daz: sources rich in in-depth, reliable information. The circulation pyramid is inverted because people are prone to consume junk info, while not too many of us venture into such scintillating sources as scholarly journals.
The learner in me wants to read, view and listen to the complete "meal" of information, but I often get overwhelmed with the vastness of information. I find myself taste testing many different resources, but never enjoying the full meal--this is much like my visits to the grocery store--if only I could stick to the list! On the other hand, it is the food selections that were not on the list that inspire new menus; waken taste buds... much like the information gained when grazing.
ReplyDeleteThe filter failure is something I see in my own management of information as well as my students'--kindergarten-college level. Sure, digestion of information can occur, just as it does with unhealthy nutrients, but would it be better to be reflective before consuming the information, just as choosing healthy foods to eat is better?
What is the quote....."Man cannot live by bread alone"..... I think the same is probably true of information for most people. I love to learn. If there was a job to be a student for life that paid well and had health benefits, I would be first in line. I am curious about tons of things....religion, history, literature, graphic design....however, I also like "junk" information. I religiously watch trashy TV shows about housewives and bachelorettes. I am not sure that makes me unhealthy, though. I think it makes me a more well-rounded individual and isn't that the goal of a liberal arts education?
ReplyDeleteI thought this video was interesting - I can understand how he identified the different ways - like distilled and fermented. It made a lot of sense to me and made me consider how I'm actively consuming and producing information.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea where he'd keep 38,000 books, but I'd sure like to see his collection!