The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption by Clay A. JohnsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The core message of this book is critical for just about anybody. I love the metaphor of physical dieting, as well as the emphasis on being an active citizen and consuming responsibly. This is a great review of digital literacy concepts I learned in a class last year, and I hope to be more digitally healthy as time goes on!
Once concept that really stuck out to me is the idea of the trophic pyramid as it relates to information. Just like the higher up energy goes on the physical pyramid the more it decreases, the further away from the source we get our information, the less truth and substance it carries. Thus we should be focusing more on local politics than national, and we should be engaging with issues rather than griping about large and abstract concepts we can do little about. Basically Johnson is issuing a call to action for all of us to become civically engaged and full participants in our society. To do this we need to cut back on our diet of media-affirmation and focus on the real issues that are going on.
The reminder of the "Filter Bubble" was very helpful and I feel even more dedicated to making conscious connections with people that see differently than I do in order to get a more truthful and charitable understanding of the issues around me. This book has lots of themes and connections to what I view media literacy to be all about. We need to learn how to filter and search through the vast vaults of information, but we also should learn how to create and synthesize, which is what media literacy is all about!
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