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Infobesity
- 07/31/10
- 17
A couple of years ago the British journalist John Naish released a book titled Enough (I don’t think it ever made it in substantial numbers to this side of the Atlantic). He subtitled the book, "Breaking free from the world of more." He uses the book to encourage people to stop when they have enough--enough stuff, enough food, enough work, enough information. The book is a bit uneven with some parts being much better than others; one part I thought was particularly strong was his discussion about information and the near-ridiculous volume of information we are exposed to today. In part of this chapter he writes about his approach to tackling information overload. I was writing on this very topic earlier in the week and I thought I'd share a short quote from Naish:
It involves fighting--and here's my own new word--infobesity, by restricting one's data diet. There are compelling reasons. The glut of information is not only causing stress and confusion; it also makes us do irrational things such as ignore crucial health information. The British Government's latest survey on our food-buying patterns shows that while we are given more information than ever about healthy eating, our consumption of fresh food has fallen. This is partly because we are too busy getting and spending to enjoy the simple pleasures of cooking. But Catherine Collins, of the British Dietetic Association, says that info-overload is often to blame for this food-choice paradox: "We are so informed that we can't be bothered." That's a fantastic slogan for the twenty-first century. We are so wired to gather information that often we no longer do anything useful with it. Instead of pausing to sift our intake for relevance and quality, the daily diet of prurient, profound, confusing and conflict information gets chucked on to a mental ash-heap of things vaguely comprehended. Then we rush to try to make sense of it all...by getting more.
As I read this, I thought of the Golden Labrador Retriever (i.e. Golden Lab), that ridiculous (but family-friendly) breed of dog that has a far bigger stomach than brain. The Lab, or at least the Labs I've known, cannot be trusted around food. They will eat until they are sick, throw up, and eat some more. Indefinitely. Some dogs have more common sense; they will eat for a while and save a portion of their food for another time. Not so the Lab. It will eat, and eat, and eat.
I do wonder if we are this way with information today--we eat and eat and eat, never pausing to digest, rarely showing any sensible moderation.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
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Comments (17)
You make a compelling case to remove you from my RSS feed. :)
When the author says “stop when they have enough”, does he mean enough at one sitting, or enough during your lifetime. If the former, I agree 100%. We need to get enough information to take action, then go do it. Get enough to eat and push away from the table. But if he means the latter, that we should stop when we have enough during our lifetime, this concept is not Biblical. God created us for work, so if we stop doing work at some point in our lives, paid or unpaid, we will quickly diminish physically and mentally. How much is “enough” when it comes to ministry?
I never heard that Golden Retrievers were like that. I have a friend who had the best Golden I have ever known. What a great dog he was. I can’t recall him being a glutton.He did like to retrieve things though, even the neighbors chair cushions, ground hogs, footballs, and lots of other things.
I did see a Goldendoodle the other day. That was a first for me: http://dlsands.blogspot.com/2010/07/goldendoodle-which-is-golden-retreiv…
Good post Tim. Good stuff to think about not thinking about too much stuff.
Have a terrific Lord’s day.
Communion Sunday tomorrow for me! I love to reflect on our Lord’s love for us as we all partake in this most privileged of all charges from our Lord, as we receive His grace in such a special way- and genuine way,- for us sinners.
The Christian who actively refuses to absorb new information is the kind of Christian that secular people laugh at. I would have thought that Tim Chailles would argue against the dumbing down of Christians in the Western World.
Tim, you should change the motto of your blog to “disinforming the reformed” if you want to live up to this blog post.
Brad,
You didn’t really read the post, did you? And if you did, you’ve proven that you lack the ability (at least in this instance) to “sift [your] intake for relevance and quality,” which is, if you had read carefully, the point Tim is making in this post. Tim is arguing for increased attentiveness and selectivity amongst the information we take in, not for a decrease in information intake.
Read, man, read. Better, not more.
Gotta comment on the dog info…you’ve mixed names of dogs, there are Golden Retrievers and Yellow Labs…there are no “Golden Labs” even though people sometimes call the darker yellow labs “Golden”. As far as intelligence goes, labs are among the most intelligent dogs as evidenced by their use as working dogs, from Wikipedia: Labradors are an intelligent breed with a good work ethic and generally good temperaments (breed statistics show that 91.5% of Labradors who were tested passed the American Temperament Test.) Common working roles for Labradors include: hunting, tracking and detection (they have a great sense of smell which helps when working in these areas), disabled-assistance, carting, and therapy work. Approximately 60-70% of all guide dogs in Canada are Labradors; other common breeds are Golden Retrievers and German Shepherd Dogs.The high intelligence, initiative and self-direction of Labradors in working roles is exemplified by dogs such as Endal, who during a 2001 emergency placed an unconscious human being in the recovery position, retrieved his mobile phone from beneath the car, fetched a blanket and covered him, barked at nearby dwellings for assistance, and then ran to a nearby hotel to obtain help. A number of labradors have also been taught to assist their owner in removing money and credit cards from ATMs with prior training.
As far as the food thing…yeah…they are incredibly food obsessed, everyone has faults…but it doesn’t indicate a lack of intelligence.
Great thoughts. Thank you, Tim.
I wanted to point out an important typo:
“The Lab, or at least the Labs I’ve known, cannot be trusted around found.”
I think you meant for that last word to be “food.” ;-)
“Techno-lust” goes along with this subject perhaps. We want everything and then have time for nothing of value when we get the new gadget.
When we have the latest and greatest gadget, we don’t have to know—we can google the answer. Two preschooler cousins in my family wanted to know some information and instead of asking their parents, my nephew and niece, they pretended they were googling to find the answer on their toy cell phone.
I say let’s go backwards. I have. No more texting and never got into Twitter. Unfortunately I enjoy writing on blogs some days.
You are wrong. Quoted from Tim’s quote: “It involves fighting—and here’s my own new word—infobesity, by restricting one’s data diet.”
Restricting one’s data diet means cutting back on the amount to be read but increasing the time for “digestion” that the author claims is lacking. I enjoy the irony from your post talking about reading comprehension when you failed to read even the most basic point from this post.
Carol, when you wrote “I say let’s go backwards. I have.” it is reminiscent of many of the complaints modern non-Christians have against Christians, that the “church” is backwards and that Christians would rather put an astronomer in prison than reconcile their limited worldview with the reality of a non-flat Earth.
P.S., you should join the Amish if you really want to “go backwards.”
I will attest to the comment about Lab’s. My wife and I babysat for my daughters chocolate lab last month. When I got home from work I discovered that “Ruger” had eaten about 4-6 lbs of my wife’s chocolate. My wife stores this stuff in large blocks because she has a cake business on the side. He found them and ate them. The first eruption occurred 20 minutes after I got home. What followed over the next 6 hours was 13 (count em’) piles of chocolate vomit in various places in my home. The worst one was when he threw up on one of the floor vents and I had to go in the basement at 3:00am and pull the whole duct out and hose it out in the front yard. Prov. 26:11 is true. He vomited in the front yard also and the next time he was let out, he went and ate that too.
“The Christian who actively refuses to absorb new information is the kind of Christian that secular people laugh at.” Talk about a misread.
And secular people laughing at Christians. Oh my.
Brad, my not texting any more is for us as senior citizens to save $30 a month.
I think you are rude to suggest we become Amish. First you are rude to me and secondly you are rude to the Amish. With such rudeness I may wish to give up blogging and go backwards even more.
However, I do use several blogs—one to blog about my husband’s dementia—a great outlet for me. And, by the way, Brad, the illness of a spouse puts all other modern got-to-haves in perspective.
Renee: the sacrifice of intellectual thought has been incredibly detrimental to the health of the Christian church in the U.S. within the last 50 years. Your careless sarcasm only serves as further proof of the dearth of earnest serious Christian thought today.
Brad,
I am responding to you ONE LAST TIME on principle because your lack of chivalry and disrespect toward two ladies on this thread cannot go unanswered. Otherwise, I am not deigning to respond except to say that lack of love (any irony there?) rather than dearth of earnest serious Christian thought may be more responsible for complaints non-Christians have against Christians.
As for me, I’m now waiting for the cavalry to cut down the troll(s).
“…the sacrifice of intellectual thought has been incredibly detrimental to the health of the Christian church in the U.S. within the last 50 years.”
You’re barking up the wrong tree. From what I’ve observed, intellectual thought is not amplified by taking in incessant information, especially from today’s media. If there’s a dumbing down, it’s universal. Intellectual thought begins when a bombardment of visual/auditory stimuli ends.
On the other hand, if you mean to argue that Christians overall do not have a solid answer for what they believe in, then I absolutely agree with you - but that has nothing to do with Christians turning off media and everything to do with Christians turning on to a greater study of their worldview and a study of the sciences that discredit it.
I agree with Mark that a lack of love (or kindness) is more the Church’ Achilles heel than a supposed lack of knowledge.
Thanks for this post Tim! I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I really need to reconsider the amount of time I spend on the internet.
I think the typically trivial nature of the content offered to us on the internet tends to limit the amount of reflection, or “digestion”, we do when we read. And it drastically impairs our ability to think deeply about whatever we are reading offline (i.e.; Bible, Theology, Biography). I submit myself as Exhibit A.
Have you heard of Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows? It is an extension of an article he wrote for The Atlantic titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” I’m convinced he’s on to something.
Juan Rodriguez recently wrote an article about how he is limiting his intake of the internet. It is well worth the read of anyone wanting to follow up Tim’s post: http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Line+Reconnected/3344840/story…
Thanks again!