Of course, you don’t have to (and probably shouldn’t) start in federal politics. Join your local civic association first, and find new ways to help your local community. You’ll discover plenty of opportunity and many open arms there. But again, don’t wait for someone’s permission, unless it absolutely requires their adoption and sponsorship in order to work.
Finally, for those of you who aren’t engineers, know that the most vital thing after basic literacy for the education of yourself and your children is digital literacy and STEM education: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. History shows us that perhaps a century from now saying “I’m not an Internet person” may be much like saying “I don’t know how to read.” Organizations like CodeNow are helping transform our concepts of literacy by making sure computer science education is accessible to everyone who wants it, and is constantly looking for volunteer engineers who can help teach classes. While it’s not the key to solving all of our problems and differences, those skills, combined with the ability to communicate, give us the greatest ability to see the truth.
Appendix B. Further Reading
People
The concept of an information diet is a relatively new one, and the thoughts and ideas in this book come from research and interviews with scores of people. In addition to pointing you towards the research papers and books I’ve read and recommend to further your study, it’s also important to follow the people who are leading this field, who are studying how the mind works, the economics of information, and the ever-changing face of our news media.
As much of our scientific research still sits behind paywalls, interacting directly with the scientists who use social media has an added payoff: you’ll gain exposure to their work without having to subscribe to the various scientific publication services. In the spirit of infoveganism, I advise you to connect directly with these researchers and scientists.
Matt Cutts is the head of the web-spam team at Google, the person with the job of managing Panda, and maintaining Google’s delicate search relationship with content farms. He’s been called “Google’s Greenspan.”
http://twitter.com/mattcutts
http://mattcutts.com
Dr. Iacaboni’s insight on the consequences of neuroplasticity and how we affect each other is tremendously important to follow.
http://twitter.com/marcoiacoboni
http://iacoboni.bmap.ucla.edu/
Dr. Kanai’s research links our brain’s structure to our political affiliations. His continued interests are around our perception of time, the neuroscience behind our attention, and distractibility.
http://twitter.com/kanair
http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/Research-Groups/awareness-group/group-members/MemberDetails.php? Title=Dr&FirstName=Ryota&LastName=Kanai
Dr. Nyhan’s work on measuring the effectiveness of messaging on the public and the outcomes of our information consumption is leading the field. Read his papers and engage with him online. He’s responsive and smart.
http://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com
Robert Proctor invented the term
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/proctor.html
Julian Sanchez is the person who brought the idea of epistemic closure into the modern political dialog. He’s a writer for Reason magazine and the CATO institute.
http://twitter.com/normative
Linda Stone’s research on conscious computing, email apnea, and our attention spans is amazing to watch. Follow her work at:
https://twitter.com/LindaStone
http://lindastone.net
John Tierney is a science columnist for the
http://twitter.com/JohnTierneyNYT
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/columns/johntierney/index.html
Jeff Jarvis is an associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program and the new business models for news project at the City University of New York’s Gradute School of Journalism. While he’s not directly quoted in this book, his thought leadership around the field of journalism is worth paying attention to.
http://twitter.com/JeffJarvis
http://buzzmachine.com
Dan Gillmor teaches digital media entrepreneurship and is founding director of the Knight Center on Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. His work is trying to make sense of the new fields of journalism and how the digital industrialization of it can yield new business models.
http://twitter.com/dangillmor
http://dangillmor.com
Jim Gilliam is the consummate civic hacker, using his skills to try and connect people to each other and to the levers of power in their local communities. He’s the founder of 3dna, a startup in California that builds tools to shake up a political system, most recently NationBuilder, an affordable tool that allows people to organize effectively.
http://twitter.com/jgilliam
http://3dna.us/blog
My hope is that this book isn’t the end of something, but the start of something: an exploration into how our information affects our health. I certainly have not provided all the answers in this book, and there’s still so much more work to be done. Please, be in touch.
You can find me on Google+ at: http://gplus.to/cjoh
I use Google+ to have discussions with people about the topics of this book, and to do the occasional video chat with people interested in the field. Please stop by and interact with me.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/cjoh
I tend to use Twitter to broadcast my latest writing, and to share simple links about the field of
