Life gets in the way of blogging.

Please read this article:

Better news bites for your information health | NewAmerica.net.

This article has been on the queue for a week now, so I figured it’d be best to relay my thoughts on the matter.  Lovehandled had its origins as a potential diet site, partially inspired by my close friends at Outofcontrolfatroll.com (who tweeted about this article), but the overall theme seems to be office work and mass communication.  Gluttony is also a recurring theme because of my love of food and drinking with friends.

In terms of information, the sheer amount of data hitting us is ridiculous.  If you ignore the information you take in from work, consider the amount of advertising from TV, radio and print.  Also take in the amount of actual info you get from TV, radio and print.  And then on top of all that, the data coming in from your phones and computers.  From the article:

“Fast news has had the same effect on our minds as fast food has had on our physiques.”

I agree with this to a lesser extent.  I see the detriment of being bombarded with information.  For me it’s the lack of sleep.  I am constantly thinking at times and it keeps me from drowsing off.  Is this really a bad thing though?  I’ve long believed that information is power – organizations that rule by fear often use information restriction as a means of control.  I’ve felt that information leads to the truth and the top of the Main building at #UT says, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”  Perhaps this is the warning the article lends — the glut of info makes it difficult to discern truth from BS.

– Update –

I am fortunate to have experienced a few milestones in computing.  From Geocities to WordPress, from 14.4 kbps to cable modems, from Yahoo! to Ask Jeeves to AltaVista to Google, from AsianAvenue to Friendster to Xanga to Blogger to MySpace to Facebook, from Juno to Hotmail to Yahoo! Mail to Gmail to Twitter — I’ve had the opportunity to be an early adopter and fan of a lot of these services and tools.  But with all of the technologies maturing, it’s alarming how integrated these “information” portals are with everyday life.  If information exposure is bad, but being informed is a way of life, where does the balance exist?

My transition from college life to the real world has led me to the harsh realization that most of my immediate future will be spent at work.  For me, the information I want to know is about my friends.  The lack of proximity and contact in some of my friendships is supplemented by my ability to keep up to date on them, their opinions and their moods on a near-instantaneous basis.  Since my friends inevitably mold my opinions, it will affect the type of news that I am exposed to.  Mashable had a great article that explained this further:

“…there’s no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter failure.” [...] “The social stream is a means to filter success.  Relying on friends and a personal network to filter the news and point out the best stuff solves that problem…”

Perhaps the key to the information glut is similar to actual gluttony.  Consumption of mass media is okay in moderation.  The filter known as my social circle is like my friend, Kat, who (sometimes passively) keeps me from eating too much unhealthy food at any one time.  The one great benefit is instead of relying on the opinions of spin-heavy outlets like CNN and Fox News, I can rely on the opinions of those who really matter.

articles: Better news bites for your information health | NewAmerica.net
How News Consumption is Shifting to the Personalized Social News Stream | Mashable

img credit: daniellehelm