My gluttonous piles of half-read periodicals contain much useful information. Useful information I will not read. Useful, perhaps even mind-altering, information that will help me navigate in this increasingly complex universe, it’s in a pile.
Why, why don’t I read what interests me, what is on my lists? My lists are too long, too long to possibly read everything in them and get the value that is contained.
The NY Times. I subscribe to this. I read it about once a week. The business section is particularly interesting. The news is particularly honest in the business section. Not the content so much, but the editorial around it makes no deceptions. We know what master the NY Times serve. This does not make it useless, rather useful.
If you fill your universe with only material you agree with, your media choices are the equivalent of corporate yes-men. To further my horizons, I attempt to intake media that I don’t agree with. I would have an extremely limited point of view otherwise.
Wired. I read this from issue one, more or less, and even the people I hear cursing about this magazine still read it. It seems to become less and less useful, but still needed. What is my real problem with Wired? Well, I’ll let you decide that, and it sounds like an essay of its own anyways.
Infoworld: very important. Weekly updates on the software industry let me see trends before they hit the marketplace, understand where we are going. Granted about a third of it appears strait out of PRNET, but what do I care, it’s still interesting.
Boing-Boing: I don’t read this as much as I would like, but this is a fine mag. Easy on the content, but with a killer attitude I appreciate. I hope to write for these folks one of these days.
The local paper: Well, our subscription is going to be killed. The best thing I can say for any local paper is that it’s generally better than the local TV news. It also has movie listings. The local paper is also a good way to hear Boeing or MS news - every footstep those local corporate giants make is gloriously reported by our papers. Mainly the local paper is an editorial power position, with "Human interest" stories and uppermiddle class department store ads - sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. Sometimes I find an intriguing story in the middle of some section, but never enough detail.
The local news: wow! This is a way to intake media. 10 minutes of "human interest", a murder or two, some slanted political story, the weatherman declaring rain, and sports. I must not forget the quipping between the anchors, to make us feel like we're "part of their family".
The national news: Some real news here. Too bad there is only 20 minutes to present it, some 4 minutes a story. Sound bites aren’t news. Every quote is sure to be out of context, because they don’t have enough time to cover any one story in any depth.
Covert Action Quarterly - Wow, this is some good stuff. I don’t see this in Time or my local news. Since this comes out only once a quarter, I have enough time to take it all in. They list their sources as well! If only the NY Times did this.
FAIR - fairness and accuracy in media; "left" media analysis. This is a very good source keep you aware of how untrustworthy all your other sources are.
New Media Magazine - Multimedia developers magazine. Very good content, not too technical for the average user to understand. My software wish-lists comes from New Media Magazine.
Nightline - where the pundits punt the issues. Where the idea of balance on a show is to have one of the four lawyer guests be african-american. All laywers mind you, but one black one. See Project Censored (1993) for a detailed statistical analysis of their guests. Their main defense seems to be along the lines of "well, most important people happen to be white, older, powerful men - that’s not OUR fault". Whose fault is it then, given they decide who the guests are. I still watch it.
There it is. A small list of my media input, BEFORE the net. This doesn’t include newsgroups, mailing lists, forwards, web browsing, or any net activity.
Now my point here wasn’t to endorse certain media inputs, or to slam them, but merely what my inputs are. My dilemma in trying to be an informed world citizen is to stay abreast of what is going on in the world, decipher the "spin" each media source puts on it (even my favorite "least impartial" sources have their spin), and intelligently discuss and influence opinions. Of course if any of my premises are incorrect (which is the case, given I’ve been fed ‘bad data’ in the past, as we all have), then my conclusions are potentially faulty.
I remind you that this list is merely a month of reading. This poses a problem. How can I learn anything about where the world stands currently. This is merely catch-up. This is a never ending battle for information, to be informed. I must analyze the content, the spin/perspective, the relevance, and continue to look for new sources of information. Watching ANY of these sources non-critically is an invitation to be a product of propaganda.
Then I have my reading list, which is getting very long. Probbaly over 50 books, 10 specific subjects, 4 or so areas of research, over a dozen authors, and this is just the beginning. Generally I consider non-fiction the only "useful" reading, but sometimes fiction allows changes in thought as well, albeit more subtly.
What amuses me about the educational system is that many people let their education end at school. It seems most of my education was not only self-inflicted, and most of the work was undoing the influence of school.
Where to go from here? I’m not sure. I *do* know that most employed people don’t have a chance at staying on top of the world, myself included.
This is information overload.
Information overload isn’t about computers, it’s about the amazing amount of information that is being generated every day. Relevant information, useful information, necessary information.
Now what? I don’t know. I don’t have any answers. I also don’t trust those who claim that the net is a self-developing utopia where all these problems will be whisked away by the glory of information. Yes, there is potential for utopia, but only as much as we're willing to create it, find it.
Remember too about this information that infects. The above sources are my media sources, not my sole sources of information. Remember that they effect my world, my outlook, and they were all chosen by me. Now think of your media sources, and how they effect you; and your neighbor, and your community. Each person’s sources are custom designed. This means we all live in different universes, different media environments.
I know that it is crucial to study the past, I only wish I had time to keep up with the present.
