My Information Diet
On October 4, 2007 I blogged about the fact that I had given up on television. I had accidently cancelled my cable connection so although the television itself was still working it didn’t show anything. We got used to not having tv pretty soon. Occasionally people will talk about something which I can’t place and then it turns out to be a commercial I dot know about or a television personality I have never seen. But besides those little inconveniences we do just fine.
Now I have another confession to make. I have been reluctant to talk about it before. The interesting thing about not watching any TV is that to some people you become more interesting and even seem more intelligent. I’m afraid my new diet will scare away those same people who applauded me for getting rid of my TV.
My new diet doesn’t concentrate on calories but on information. As a result I have stopped reading newspapers or any other general news. I do keep up to date with the bigger (and smaller) news stories by talking to people a lot. If something important happens I tend to know about it pretty quick.
Of course I do spend a lot of time reading about news about my work. I follow 200+ blogs about Internet, technology, start-ups and innovation. My diet is not simply about consuming less but more about consuming smarter. I want to know more about less so I consume more targeted information.
But still:
- Not watching any TV is considered smart and even hip
- Not reading any newspapers is considered stupid and lazy.
I wonder why that is and what the effect will be for me personally. Will I become disconnected with the world? Will the fact that I don’t exactly know what happens in Africa or any other part of the world make me less intelligent? Do I have a moral obligation to stay informed about the world around me?
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Ann Bernard said,
May 9, 2008 @ 2:53 pm (14:53)
Congratulations on shutting off your cable - albeit by accident. I’ve been without cable for well over 7 years. I have to admit that it has caused me to slightly fall behind on the news but than came in twitter and Ustream ;-) (someone Ustreamed the debates) It will be tough to be without cable during the election. However, the only time I really miss cable is during Football season.
The web with fill in many of the gaps - like you said you already read many blogs and you can also catch your news online from the same printed sources. You can find pretty much any sitcom or show online as well - be it from the stations or on Hulu.
The web has what you need…
David Petherick said,
May 9, 2008 @ 2:54 pm (14:54)
Aha! You need to read Timotthy Ferriss ‘ 4-Hour Work Week, Boris.
Tim recommends a “low-Information-Diet’ and he cuts out newspapers altogether.
I read the headlines of about 8-9 papers in my local shop when I pop in to get some milk or yoghurt - and that’s me done with newspapers most days.
I do go to my local library on Saturdays to catch up on anything specific or speed-read magazines and journals, and I have taken to photographing the headlines on my Nokia N95, which gets a few funny looks, but works very well for recall later.
I sometimes read a few stories on a Sunday as the papers are free at my health club, but I too do it all online, and find not reading newspapers makes me smarter, not stupider.
Some of the laziest people I know read papers from one end to another - as a result, they are full of other people’s opinions, and have few of their own.
Travis Choma said,
May 9, 2008 @ 3:05 pm (15:05)
On March 27th at 4pm I started an information diet, no papers, no ft, no cnn, no bbc, and no other news blogs I had in my rss reader. I set a timer on my desktop for 30 days to give it a trial run. I figured if it worked out well I would continue. After about 10 days I just couldn’t take it anymore, I needed my fix. I realized how much I like to read, think and talk about current events. But I commend your effort, it does give you more time in the day for sure.
Regarding the moral obligation, you can always skip the news and subscribe to a site like http://www.avaaz.org . That will give you alerts when ever there is a humanitarian crisis and the opportunity to help via a donation or a signing a petition . So you can be socially conscious without reading the daily news.
May 9, 2008 @ 3:08 pm (15:08)
Same with me, Boris. From my blog post linked to my name here:
“When I do watch TV and read mainstream media publications it’s mostly to get a read on the zeitgeist, often from a contrarian perspective, especially with my investments.”
That post covers my food diet too.
-Chris
May 9, 2008 @ 6:50 pm (18:50)
Very useful tip, Boris. To switch off the most of the info mess, which surrounds us at all times. I remember Dr.Richard Bandler, who promotes his famous ‘Shut the f*** up!’ (He and Dr. John Grinder are fathers of NLP).
There are many ways of how to get rid of too much buzz, but your way is so simple and easy to perform and it cost nothing (actually,it is wallet friendly & even environmentally sustainable):
Mathijs Maliepaard said,
May 9, 2008 @ 7:38 pm (19:38)
You’re absolutely right. I stopped reading newspapers, following news sites and watching television years ago. If something important happens people will tell you so you’ve got yourself some ‘information workers’, people who shift all the information and tell you about the most important stuff so that you don’t have to go trough all the bullshit anymore and you’ll have more time for other stuff! Occasionally I’m even informed about the latest gossip about the real-life soap Gouden Kooi (Dutch), so I’m pretty up-to-date without spending half an hour a day watching it, haha
I think more and more people will stop letting themselves be overloaded with information from several media and instead go after the facts themselves. The push vs pull revolution is moving from the on line world to the off line world and I think that’s great!
But how about your kids? Don’t they miss television?
Alper said,
May 9, 2008 @ 10:38 pm (22:38)
I think all those people in the train reading free newspapers with cheap opinions, literal outtakes from the press wires and stupid celebrity and local news are funny. Not only can you survive without a newspaper, you can indeed survive without consuming any news.
If you follow the news for a while, you will noticed that it is filled with repetitions and it is usually caught up in today’s hype instead of focusing on the big and important trends and contexts.
I have no television nor a steady newspaper or magazines. I get by on torrents and an à la carte selection of the world’s publications linked up on the blogs and tweets I read for free. I think that makes me more informed and more balanced than most any newspaper afficionado.
erwin blom said,
May 10, 2008 @ 12:25 am (0:25)
But still:
- Not watching any TV is considered smart and even hip
- Not reading any newspapers is considered stupid and lazy.
To be honest Boris, i find both stupid. Being part of society i think you should know what’s going on in society and not limit yourself to technology feeds.
May 10, 2008 @ 3:31 am (3:31)
My strategy is similar: practically no TV and no newspapers. Online tech news can also become poisonous due to the amount of noise. One of the great challenge for me is finding the best “sampling” interval on which to read what’s going on out there. The biggest one would be finding the right sources to pay attention to.
I’ve written more about it at http://blog.isnotworking.com/2.....noise.html
May 10, 2008 @ 10:51 am (10:51)
throughout the last couple of years i’ve been watching less and less television to the point where it is now, nothing at all and i love it. it all started with a media center. instead of watching ‘the unmissable programs’ live, i recorded them to watch them later, but i hardly watched them later, so i stopped recording them and now, i don’t watch anything anymore. somehow i can’t stand it either anymore and that’s mostly because of the advertising, when i watch a regular channel right now, i get annoyed after two blocks of advertising and i turn the thing off. i do watch documentaries/movies and sometimes stuff on uitzendinggemist, but than i’m in control and not the other way around. there’s an end to stuff you decide to watch yourself, there’s no end to television, it goes on and on and on…
>To be honest Boris, i find both stupid.
well, for me personally, before you know it, you spend two/three/four hours watching television and gaining *nothing* at all. how stupid is that? i read some news feeds, i scan headlines on newspapers when i buy cigarettes and i check the online version of teletekst and that’s about it. i haven’t had a subscription to a newspaper for almost ten years now and i never ever had the feeling i missed out on something.
what do i gain? time, lots of it, to do stuff i want to do. i rather sit on the couch, feeling slightly uncomfortable because i don’t know what to do with my time, than to be enjoyed by some ad-driven freak show on the television and forget about time at all.
my 2 cents,
oh btw, a nice read, also slightly dealing with this subject:
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
http://www.herecomeseverybody......mouse.html
Abdul-Rahman Advany said,
May 10, 2008 @ 3:53 pm (15:53)
I don’t watch TV (but I do watch online showns like TED, Google TechTalks, enc) and I don’t read news (expect limited pool of feeds about tech, creativity, organizational theory, enc).
I disagree with Erwin Blom in this matter. I feel connected to a society, but a different one, one thats busy with stuff that the mainstream news ignores and tv doesn’t cover. For a big part its a internet oriented society, its global. But also its a great group of creative and passionate people, people who try to do stuff differently, who try to innovate in there field, if its arts, tech, or something else. And somehow that group of people don’t expect me to know the latest soccer scores or the last things Wilders said about muslim… or something else I don’t care about!
If thats stupid! I am glad to be stupid :-)
May 10, 2008 @ 9:41 pm (21:41)
I think every time you cut something that you do (too) often out of your daily life for some time, it’s a good thing. This shows your in control of your life and don’t get controlled by it. This accounts for reading and watching news, but also for having a drink or a smoke or eating hamburgers.
On the other hand I agree with Erwin that television also offers a lot of things that good be considered our culture, be it only the selection of programs and commercials.
May 12, 2008 @ 2:59 pm (14:59)
If you don’t read any quality newspapers, you miss important information about your society, economy and government. If more people were to cut out newspapers from their information diet, it would probably hurt the democracy. Since people won’t be informed anymore, how will they find out for who they should vote every four years?
And more specific, I think the technology industry is awesome and of the utmost important, yet like for all industries, it’s dangerous to get totally sucked up in it. It limits your view and inspiration if you just stick to news about tech, before you know it you’re Scoble… Just posting blabla about minor details most of the time.
However, I think throwing out the TV is a great move. Most of it is crap anyway, and the things that ARE worth your time, are available on the web.
Abdul-Rahman Advany said,
May 12, 2008 @ 3:45 pm (15:45)
@ernst-jan: do you really miss important information if you don’t read it yourself? Last week I talked about politics, society, economics, and government with people who do keep up with the news without reading much of it myself. These people filter out the issues I don’t care about and just get me up-to-date about that I want to know.
If you don’t read anything and you only hang out with crowd that doesn’t care about anything else, I agree you would miss a lot. But thats why diversity of people you know is important!
Alper said,
May 13, 2008 @ 11:26 am (11:26)
Checking back on this discussion, it’s funny how people with a vested interest in the media industries stand up to defend it.
Anyway I just started to read the Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and he promises to prove that reading a newspaper may actually make you more stupid. I’ve yet to finish the book, but I think the premise is that standard media follows and even amplifies society’s reflex to be reactive instead of being thoughtful.
Michiel Ebberink said,
May 14, 2008 @ 3:36 pm (15:36)
Same here. I don’t read newspapers much and I try to avoid the news on television. News is never positive.
Yonga Sun said,
May 18, 2008 @ 1:32 am (1:32)
Good post!
I stopped watching TV a couple of years ago and am not missing it a bit. I watch a couple of TV series and movies either on DVD or via torrents (oops.. probably shouldn’t say that here..) with the big advantage being NO F….. COMMERCIALS.
They have TVs in the cardio equipment at my gym so that’s a bit of fun every once in a while.
I tried a newspaper subscription a couple of years ago, but that just didn’t work for me. Still, not being informed about the most important world events is not a good thing in my opinion. To each his own, of course, but I think it’s rather important to keep track of the goings on on our planet. News may never be positive, as Michiel said, but some things happen that we, as a human race, should not ignore.
In Europe, for example, the integration (or not) of Islam is an ongoing issue that will have quite an influence on the quality of our living situation in the future. Just to name one example.
By the way, Boris, I love that you wrote “Design and Content © 1971-2008″ at the bottom of the blog. You were creative quite early on! ;-)
Alef Arendsen said,
May 28, 2008 @ 2:23 am (2:23)
Now Boris, don’t worry, you won’t be disconnected from the world or anything. I’ve not a television set for almost three years, haven’t been reading any serious dailies for two and a half years and I’m still commenting your blog (albeit only a few weeks after the initial posting of your entry).
My online information diet consists of a few blogs I scan every month, another few I scan every week and just three or four I scan daily. Other than that, on paper I read The New Yorker, Monocle, Economist and (yes, sorry to admit) Esquire and I’m happy with it… The more important will reach you anyway.
And by the way, who’s cares Erwin Blom thinks you’re stupid :-)
cheers,
Alef
erwin blom said,
May 28, 2008 @ 6:59 am (6:59)
@Alef Ho Ho Ho ! ;-)