Glut, Data Smog, Or Information Tsunami

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

Competency: self-development

Who benefits: intellectually curious people, librarians

Consultant Usage: possibly useful to IT and systems consultants

What’s it about:  What’s not to like? Let’s start with what attracted me to this book.  First there is the author.  He is David Weinberger.  He bills himself as an Internet philosopher.  An Internet philosopher?  Hmmm, okay, I like that.    Didn’t hurt that his credentials include that he is a Senior Researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society. Check this book out I says to myself.

If you want a summary in one sentence, it is this: He writes about information overload.  Now that is a topic I am genuinely interested in.

Do you believe there is informational overload (also known as glut, data smog, or information tsunami)?  Here is a quick way to find out.  Google “information overload” and see how many responses you get.  I did.  I am still laughing.

When is the last time you came across a book title with 26 words in it?  The title alone takes up almost the space of a chapter and suggests a teaching point.  I must share a personal fantasy with you.  When I saw this book title I thought of 5 well-known radio talk show hosts and 7 well-known TV “news” show hosts all gathered in one room.  Yep!, I agree with the author of Too Big to Know.  The smartest person in the room would be the room.  I had to indulge in this book!

If you do read the book you will learn about collective intelligence, metadata and filter failure.  You will learn about digital dust.  And after reading the books you will know why those terms are so crucial to organizations, to information gathering and ultimately to knowledge itself.

You will learn about the limits of experts and expert knowledge in tackling complex problems.

You will learn about institutional biases that prevent us from acting once we know what we know.

And you will learn about something near and dear to my heart, “should we recognize that knowledge is always going to be degraded by politics and greed?”

Let me give you a tempting quote: “Our task is to learn how to build smart rooms – that is, how to build networks that make us smarter, especially since, when done badly, networks can make us distressingly stupider.”

It is written in easy to understand English, it has interesting stories, it has a “good feel” to it.  It is a likeable book.  But it is a book by a philosopher.  Its ideas are, like all good philosophy, open to debate.  You will be enriched by reading but won’t know what to do with it.  But if it gets you thinking, then it is a good book.

You can learn a lot more about David Weinberger at his Blog (kinda rambling, personal and geeky) and/or his website (kinda commercial).

Let me close by saying I was absolutely fascinated and captivated by this book.  I can’t stop thinking about the issues he raises.

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.