Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [3]
For both Busy Man and the passive user, the problems stem from not knowing or acknowledging the weight of bits. Bits are heavy whether you consume too many or try to ignore them. They have other attributes, too, that are worth knowing. These attributes reveal bits to be a brand new material, bringing with them new challenges and opportunities. Like paper, or steel, or gunpowder, bits must be fully understood, and respected, if they are to be used to any advantage.
As a comparison, consider the qualities of paper, the material that bits are often meant to replace. Paper has been carrying data for thousands of years, plenty of time for people to understand its many advantages, like low cost and durability. A spiral notebook—bought for a few cents—can hold a stack of handwritten notes, and yet if it’s dropped on the floor, the words stay on the page (unlike, say, a document on a laptop). What’s more, the paper can remain intact for decades or more, never needing an upgrade. Paper requires no energy source but ambient light for readability.
Paper also occupies physical space, which allows for an elegant “user interface”: turning pages and writing words are easy and intuitive, and accompanying technologies like staples and bookmarks are always compatible. Physical size gives paper another benefit: overload is hard to ignore. A big stack of reports, bills, or magazines may sit in plain sight on a table, or a desk, until it’s carried away—at which time the physical weight gives another reminder of its quantity. Overload by paper is certainly possible, but at least it is accompanied by familiar real-world properties.
An obvious disadvantage of paper, though, is the time, energy, and material it requires for production and transportation. Paper is a very particular blend of atoms: some harvested from trees, others synthetically made and slathered on as inks and glues. The resulting combination (a stack of newspapers, say) requires yet more expensive atoms, to burn as fuel, in order to move the vehicle carrying the paper atoms to their destination.
Bits are different from paper in almost every way. For one thing, they don’t kill trees. Although computer hardware can be poisonous to the environment, the bits themselves are just made of electrons: tiny impulses with no physical weight, taking up no appreciable space. This is an amazing benefit: a practically infinite amount of information can be stored without any increase in physical space or weight! And transmission speeds allow bits to travel across the world within seconds, powered only by the electricity required to send the signal. It’s easy to create large quantities, too. With a single click, an e-mail newsletter or website update can reach hundreds of thousands of people in seconds—no printing press or delivery truck required. And once in the e-mail inbox, or on the Web page, the bits will display exactly the same words and graphics, in exactly the same colors, year in and year out, never fading, until they’re deleted.
Bits have unique properties, then, that we can use to our advantage: they’re super-small, super-fast, easily acquired and created and copied and shared in near-infinite quantity, protected from the ravages of time, and free from the limitations of distance and space. In practice, though, bits reveal several paradoxes: they’re weightless, but they weigh us down; they don’t take up any space, but they always seem to pile up; they’re created in an instant, but they can last forever; they move quickly, but they can waste our time.2 Avoiding or ignoring these paradoxes inevitably brings on overload; bit literacy teaches you how to accept and work with them, in order to take control of your bits.
Chapter 2: Users
Many people know they’re overloaded.