The Information Diet

The Information Diet Clay A. Johnson

Editor Julie Steele

Editor Meghan Blanchette

Copyright © 2011 Clay Johnson

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Dedication

To my dad, Ray Johnson. When he and my mom dropped me off for college, he told me that there were three lessons he’d learned from many decades of practicing psychiatry:

Don’t jump in anybody else’s drama

Always believe in yourself

Don’t believe everything you think

Talk about a healthy information diet.

Preface

The things we know about food have a lot to teach us about how to have a healthy relationship with information. It turns out that foods that are bad for us have analogues in the world of information. In the world of agriculture, we now have factory farms churning out junk food; and in the world of media, we now have content farms churning out junk information. Consuming whole foods that come from the ground tends to be good for you, and consuming news from close to its source tends to inform you the most.

That’s what this book is about. My hope is that by reading it, you will gain the knowledge and incentive to transform your relationship with information and have a healthier lifestyle as a result. You’ll have more time to spend with your loved ones, be more effective at work, and be a more empowered citizen in your community.

For me, this book isn’t just a book—it’s a mission. Information overconsumption is a serious health problem for the American electorate, and we can see it from the halls of Congress to the tents of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Party. In any democratic nation with the freedom of speech, information can never be as strongly regulated by the public as our food, water, and air. Yet information is just as vital to our survival as the other three things we consume. That’s why personal responsibility in an age of mostly free information is vital to individual and social health. If we want our communities and our democracies to thrive, we need a healthier information diet.

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Acknowledgments

I’d first like to thank my incredible wife, Rosalyn Lemieux. She’s been a valuable sounding board for this book, helped me clarify some of my own ideas, and probably read more drafts than anybody. And she was a good sport in allowing me to expose Zombie Roz and Email Roz.

Both my parents, Joy and Ray Johnson, are remarkable, and their input into this book, over more than three decades, should not go unnoticed either.

My editors, Julie Steele and Meghan Blanchette, are also magnificent. They’ve made this book not a weird rambling of strange ideas, but a cogent story. When I first started the journey of writing this book, I thought about self-publishing, but the value of strong, smart editors still justifies the existence of publishers.

Rebecca Bell was also instrumental in the writing of this book by allowing me to use her wonderful home off the coast of Georgia to escape the distractions of high bandwidth and focus entirely on writing. I could not have done it without that amazing gift.