Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [24]
TV shows
Radio programs
Online:
E-mail newsletters (one publisher writing to many readers)
E-mail mailing lists (many readers contributing to one ongoing conversation)
Websites, including blogs
Newer types of online content: podcasts, “vlogs,” “moblogs,” and others
We have more media choice than any generation in history. Most reasonably well-off people living in urban or suburban areas have easy access to dozens of choices in each of the offline categories, and any user with an Internet connection has access to thousands or millions of choices in each of the online categories. The range of choices alone is staggering, without even trying to read, view, or listen to any of them. We might as well consider counting every grain of sand on the beach; just the scope of the issue is almost too big to grasp.
Such an overload of media can bring the same problems as a bulging inbox: it weighs on people, causing stress and anxiety. It may sound enticing to subscribe to the latest trade magazine or e-newsletter, but it’s demoralizing to see a pile of issues awaiting reading—whether on the office desk or in the e-mail inbox. It cuts into productivity and generally decreases quality of life outside of work. (For that matter, seeing magazines and other media piling up at home can affect quality of life, too.)
The first step in achieving control over this media overload is not to feel guilty. You receive too much information, and it’s not your fault. Just accept that there is more information than time, and that it’s increasing every day. The free availability of bits ensures that whatever deluge exists today, there will be more tomorrow.
Just as with e-mail overload and todo overload, bit literacy offers a solution to media overload. Even though we have limited time for a limitless supply of media, bit literacy gives us the ability to survive, even thrive, in the deluge. We just have to learn the strategy and then be disciplined about practicing it. It does, however, require an active choice.
There are three possible ways to deal with too many media sources:
Live by reaction: feel increasingly stressed and confused as more information sources appear and ask for more of your attention.
Opt out: avoid the problem entirely by not reading or watching anything, digital or analog. (Ignorance is bliss.)
Practice bit literacy: get some information—the right information—without trying to get all of it.
The bit-literate approach involves creating and maintaining a media diet, a constantly pruned set of publications (digital, print, and other media) that keeps us informed about what matters most to us, professionally and personally. Like every other part of bit literacy, this is a discipline that users must take responsibility for. No one else can create our media diet. If anything, the established media don’t want us to have a media diet. We’re more pliable as consumers and citizens if we live by reaction. Creating a media diet is thus somewhat subversive because it allows us to survive independently of what the publishers want us to do, which is to consume more media. But it’s our only reasonable choice. In this environment of abundant information and scarce time, our job is to say “no”—early and often, more often than we might expect—and to say “yes” rarely, only when it suits our purposes. We still need the publishers, but we must engage them on our terms, not theirs.
A media diet isn’t all that different, in fact, from the everyday diet of food and drink. Regardless of how serious you are about maintaining a healthy diet, it’s essential to at least know that there is such a thing as a diet. Awareness is an essential first step toward health. And this is the problem that many technology users face: they have never even heard of a media diet, let alone tried to create and live by one. Imagine if, ignorant of basic dietary practices, someone lived exclusively on hamburgers, french fries, donuts, and whatever else the fast food corporations sold; the person would experience serious health problems. The results of not following