In his famous ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘, written in pre-internet times (1985), Neil Postman wrote down his fascinating fear that reality might be reflected more by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where the public is oppressed by pleasure, than George Orwell’s 1984, where the public is oppressed by pain. In the Orwellian vision of the future, totalitarian governments seize individual rights, while in Brave New World, people medicate themselves into bliss and voluntarily sacrifice their rights.

Shortly put, Postman thinks that mankind surrenders its rights in exchange for entertainment (television). He says that a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas, and that television (in 1985, up to you to decide if that’s still – or even more – the case today) cannot sustain any of the conditions needed for honest intellectual involvement and rational argument, since everything gets diluted on TV.

He gives a striking example: the first fifteen U.S. presidents could probably have walked down the street without being recognized by the average citizen, yet all these men would have been quickly known by their written words. The reverse is true today. The names of presidents call up visual images, typically television images, but few, if any, words come to mind. The few that do almost exclusively consist of carefully-chosen soundbites.

Sounds intriguing but still a little vague? Look at this nice cartoon by Stuart McMillen (2009) (his site is now and then temporary unavailable, sorry for that..)

Source: Wikipedia and Stuart McMillen

In order not to add too much extra’s to the information pile, I’ll keep this intro ultra short. Over.

Information overload, of all time (since the invention of printing in the 15th century), but how to deal with it? Some modest tips..

1. Read and remember. So don’t scan, but read slower. You can’t read it all, so you’d better read better. It’s also good to counter the erosion of your concentration skills.

2. Pick one established, reliable – which basically means as independent as possible – information source for everyday reading. But let some very obscure, crazy, and wicked ones in as well. Alternate between these underdog ones (frequency depends on your time), but keep the established one.

Examples of – generally accepted – reliable ones: The New York Times – The Guardian (plus their BBC section) – NRC handelsblad. Also a pleasure to read are Vrij Nederland, HP/De Tijd, de Groene Amsterdammer, Newsweek, the New Yorker, Times Online, Time. A good counterpart for the regular media, are sites like Indymedia, but they are often a little dull to read. New Scientist is a very well written and inspiring science source. Lifelounge, Designboom, Wired, Monocle, Designobserver, are a few culture/digital/design oriented sites. Some a bit more posh (Monocle), some very brisky (Lifelounge). But all real jems.

3. If you are looking for a bird’s eye view, try these meta-sites: Arts & Letters daily, Welingelichtekringen (former HP/De Tijd journalists). They scan other media, and make a selection of the most important content according to them. Sometimes one-sided and just scratching the surface, but the topics are often well chosen. It’s up to the reader to explore further.

4. If you don’t like reading, or if you like reading too much and lack time to read it all, try this new series of books. I didn’t check them out yet, but they appear to be reliable: Essentie.

5. Pay special attention to self-critical journalists who sometimes admit they don’t know, like Joris Luyendijk. They are of great value for humankind.

6. Distrust all news flashes/shows on television. It’s puppetry. It has to do with the nature of the medium (see Neil Postman’s ‘form excludes content’), with the omnipresent need for entertainment, and with vanity. Even watching tv-news daily may be harmful (unconsciously). Journalists mean it well, mostly, but think pretending they know helps humanity forward. And they are chained up by time. Heerlijk eerlijk Heertje was a beautiful attempt to unravel the mechanisms behind television and mediatization phenomena.

7. Stay critical, but don’t become paranoid.

8. Let technology not distract, but help you. Delicious (tagging), Netvibes (feedreader), Upgrade your life gives tips on how to handle your email overload etc.

9. To finish, some interesting thinkers on mediazation, mediatization & information overload: Rob Wijnberg, Nick Davies’ Flat earth news, Thomas De Zengotita, Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Nicholas Carr ‘Is Google making us stupid?‘, etc.

I will update this article along the way. Because everything is fluid.

Bye bye.
Julia

‘Recycled churned* drawing with ennoying superfluous borders’ – by Suzy Creamcheese

* like in churnalism, you see