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reading (The Information Diet)
Feb. 13th, 2012 06:40 pmI finished "The Information Diet" last week. I had been waiting for its print release, but I ended up getting it direct from O'Reilly Books as an epub because of a ridiculously attractive sale price. First, I must admit a prejudice in favor of O'Reilly books. Their technical books tend to be readable while packing as much learning punch as possible. In general, their programming books are top notch. With that prejudice firmly in hand, I was looking forward to reading "The Information Diet" quite a lot.
Perhaps I built up a bit of excess expectation. This book was a disappointment, I think it suffered from the need of every published to be a full length book. It felt like the content was stretched to make a minimum page count, with unrelated or tangential bits and pieces stuck in like play dough. The first section works through some interesting material, some of which is related to the subject at hand. The brief middle section talks about actioning an Information Diet. The last third of the book is tangential call to action content that really belongs in an essay or blog. A lot of the bits feel like self-advertisement and it gets old fast.
I like the concept, but I think this could have been executed with much more grace and much less self. In the end, if you're looking for affirmation that you're overwhelmed by your data and your brain is being affected by your media, you'll get it. Wait, isn't that kind of affirmation just the thing that I'm supposed to be shunning as a junk diet? Oh, crap. If you're a disbeliever, this doesn't have enough hard content to convince you and according to one chapter, even if it did you wouldn't be convinced anyway. Why are you here again?
I hope that Mr. Johnson's book gets wide circulation because maybe a few of the people who purchase it will pick it up off the coffee table and read it, and a few of them may take some small action based upon it. These things need to get thought about, talked about, and acted on. But to be great this book needs to go back and get rearranged. After reading this book Sunny Baudelaire would say, "Zydeco." *
7. Clay A. Johnson "The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption
* The term zydeco comes from the French 'les haricots ne sont pas sales", which means the "beans aren't salty." It means you don't have any ham to put in your green beans. A bit of meat makes them much more tasty.
Perhaps I built up a bit of excess expectation. This book was a disappointment, I think it suffered from the need of every published to be a full length book. It felt like the content was stretched to make a minimum page count, with unrelated or tangential bits and pieces stuck in like play dough. The first section works through some interesting material, some of which is related to the subject at hand. The brief middle section talks about actioning an Information Diet. The last third of the book is tangential call to action content that really belongs in an essay or blog. A lot of the bits feel like self-advertisement and it gets old fast.
I like the concept, but I think this could have been executed with much more grace and much less self. In the end, if you're looking for affirmation that you're overwhelmed by your data and your brain is being affected by your media, you'll get it. Wait, isn't that kind of affirmation just the thing that I'm supposed to be shunning as a junk diet? Oh, crap. If you're a disbeliever, this doesn't have enough hard content to convince you and according to one chapter, even if it did you wouldn't be convinced anyway. Why are you here again?
I hope that Mr. Johnson's book gets wide circulation because maybe a few of the people who purchase it will pick it up off the coffee table and read it, and a few of them may take some small action based upon it. These things need to get thought about, talked about, and acted on. But to be great this book needs to go back and get rearranged. After reading this book Sunny Baudelaire would say, "Zydeco." *
7. Clay A. Johnson "The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption
* The term zydeco comes from the French 'les haricots ne sont pas sales", which means the "beans aren't salty." It means you don't have any ham to put in your green beans. A bit of meat makes them much more tasty.
