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INFORMATION OVERLOAD
AUGUST 1, 1997TRANSCRIPT |
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Author David Shenk discusses the overabundance of information in today's society and its effect on people's daily lives.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Finally tonight, a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor at large of U.S. News & World Report engages David Shenk, journalist and author of Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut.
DAVID GERGEN: David, a central premise in your book is that we’re drowning in information. Can you tell us about the dimensions of the problem?
DAVID SHENK, Author, "Data Smog": Sure. One "New York Times," which we read in one day, that was a whole lifetime of information for someone in the 17th century. The average businessperson reads about a million words a week now. Advertising has increased five or six-fold in the last twenty-five or thirty years.
Paper consumption per capita tripled from 1940 to 1980 and then tripled again from 1980 to 1990. So it’s just amazing what’s going on. When I finished the book in the fall of ‘96, there were 22 million Web pages out there. That was the latest number. By the time the book came out this spring, it was up to 150 million web pages. Now "Wired" Magazine is estimating a billion web pages.
DAVID GERGEN: Now, you open the book by saying that there’s something marvelous happening, and you give--you praise the information revolution. But then you go on to say for most of us it actually diminishes our control over our own lives, while those already in power find their positions considerably strengthened.
DAVID SHENK: Yes.
DAVID GERGEN: Tell me about those two propositions.
DAVID SHENK: I’m talking about the marketing apparatus, the consumer world. It’s ironic. Generally speaking, technology does enhance our individual control over our lives, but with information overload, we end up getting so distracted that a lot of the time a distracted consumer is a weakened consumer. It’s a very vulnerable consumer and citizen, so we’re open to manipulation.
DAVID GERGEN: All right. But it also means that people feel less in control even though they have more information at their fingertips. You argue that they feel more stressed; that they can’t keep up with the flood.
DAVID SHENK: Well, it’s a very stressful situation. Actually, one of the things I found is that people can feel overconfident because one of the studies showed that the more information we get, we constantly increase our confidence about our decisions, but actually, the performance starts to level off, so at a certain point we become overconfident about our decisions that we’re making.
DAVID GERGEN: I was interested--you actually have spent a lot of time on computers. You’ve owned a number of computers, yourself. You’re not a cyber foe.
DAVID SHENK: I’m a big fan of computers, and I spend time on the Internet every day and write a column on the Internet, so I just tried to gather all the skepticism that I could about the information revolution that I didn’t see anywhere else.
DAVID GERGEN: Because you, yourself, became skeptical about aspects of it?
DAVID SHENK: Yes, that’s right. I discovered in my own life that as much as I loved all these tools, it was also very stressful; it was also moving; it was putting me in places that I didn’t enjoy. I realized that I hadn’t read a book in a few years because I was so busy keeping up with the latest information.
DAVID GERGEN: I see. Well, your skepticism, interestingly enough, extended to the wiring of schools. That is obviously a--there’s a lot of talk in Washington, as well as money going to wiring up all the schools all over the country as an answer to the problems in public schools. You express skepticism about that.
DAVID SHENK: That’s right. President Clinton says that when we wire the schools, it’s going to be a revolution in education. I think we ought to take a hard look at that claim. The way to fix schools is not to wire the schools.
Actually, it’s ironic that we’re talking about pumping more information into schools because education is not about access to raw information. It’s about taking actually small bits of information and getting quality teachers in there and small classrooms and a good physical infrastructure and teaching information and helping kids build intellectual building blocks.
Now at a certain point computers can be a lot of--a lot of fun and tremendously educational, but we shouldn’t assume that access to this enormous amount of information is just going to sort of equal this great improvement in education.
DAVID GERGEN: Well, if you had a choice--you were Solomon and could decide here’s how we’re going to use this money, this extra money, would you put it into teachers’ salaries, or would you put it into wiring the schools?
DAVID SHENK: I think I’d put it into making the classrooms smaller first. I’d make sure that the classrooms had pens and pencils and good books and a good library and help manage, you know, this enormous amount of information. And then if, you know, it’s a very well-funded school and everything else is going very, very well, yes, I’d bring in some computers. I don’t think I’d put them in the classroom. I think I’d put them probably in the library, where they’re great as reference tools.
DAVID GERGEN: I see. Now, let’s talk about public discourse. Many people have observed that there’s a coarsening of the public discourse in recent years. Your argument is that the information glut is contributing significantly to that deterioration.
DAVID SHENK: That’s right. I make a parallel between what’s going on in the information revolution and what people experience every day in big cities. You’re walking down a sidewalk and there--horns are honking and signs, big neon signs are blaring, and everyone’s trying to get your attention, and so in order to get your attention, they just keep raising the volume and being more vulgar.
And they’ll do anything to get your attention. I live in New York City, so I experience this every day. Well, the same thing is going on in virtual society as well, everywhere in society. We’re more distracted. More people are trying to get our attention, so we’re actually pretty good at weeding out most of those people, but as we get better at weeding out people, the people trying to reach us have to try harder.
And the natural thing to do is to raise the volume, to be more vulgar, to do anything we can, to be more outrageous. That’s why the culture of our celebrities now is a culture of celebrities who are basically outrageous. And that’s why they’re celebrities.
DAVID GERGEN: That brings me to the question of what we--how one deals with this--this glut of information. All of us feel that we have more information coming out of this than we can possibly consume. A business executive now reads on average of a million words a read.
DAVID SHENK: That’s right.
DAVID GERGEN: Five to ten books a week. How do you--I could suggest--after looking at this, what are the best tools a citizen can have to deal with it?
DAVID SHENK: Well, we need to really be responsible for the information we put out. I said before that we’ve all joined the media. It’s true. If you’re on the Web and you’re putting stuff--you’re putting web pages out there, that means you’re a publisher now. You’re a part of the media. That means you need to be responsible for--you need to articulate the information you’re putting out there well.
You need to make sure that it’s--that it’s compelling information, and you need to make sure that it’s credible. I think that we can also work to step away from the speedy technology some of the time. It’s difficult to feel the richness and meaning of being alive when we’re connected to this sort of vibrant, you know, conversation of data. So I think we all need to take a step back. We also need to resist the vulgarization of culture.
DAVID GERGEN: Let me ask you one last question. Your book--while saying that the cyber revolution is wonderful in some ways is actually--is pretty damning of it in others. And basically people are losing control of their lives. "Wired" Magazine, which is in this field, has a big cover story in its most recent issue called "The Long Boom," and it says that the changes in cyberspace are fueling a 25-year boom in economics internationally, as well as a great expansion of freedom. It’s an extremely positive, as well as provocative, view of what’s coming from this revolution. Do you disagree with that?
DAVID SHENK: Overall, I believe that the information revolution is a wonderful thing. I don’t know that I agree with that particular assertion--and I’m not an economist--so some of that is difficult for me to judge.
I do think that overall technology is improving our lives, and we have every reason particularly in this country to be very optimistic about how technology affects our lives. The problem is when we convert that optimism to zeal, when we forget that there are also things that we don’t like about it, that we need to be skeptical about how each and every technology affects our lives.
DAVID GERGEN: David Shenk, thank you very much.
DAVID SHENK: Thanks for having me.
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