Watch this interesting insight on information: we treat it as food. In this 8mn TED video, JP Rangaswami asks: “what would change in your life if you considered that the information you take in everyday is food”?
He finds many similarities and points of comparison. We were hunter gatherers of information (free to roam) and moved to become farmers of information (create ownership). And there are as many ways to consume food as there are to consume information. Information as well as food as a “use by date” and, like food, major impact on the environment. Are we going to start looking for the ‘fact’ percentage? And what happens when information stops pouring in? Famine.
He quotes Clay Shirky who said: ‘we do not suffer from information overload, simply from filter failure’. Fundamentally, food issues are consumption issues, so how do we create diets and exercise within ourselves to digest and use it responsibly?
Apart from the interesting reframe on information, I found this musing interesting because this is exactly what NLP helps us to do.
