Data Smog
Surviving the Information Glut
Chapter One
Spammed!
I opened the front door and unlocked the iron gate. A man came into my home bearing a prolific new machine, an appliance I mistook to be generous in much the same way that people frequently mistake credit cards for currency. It was the infancy of my career as a freelance writer, in Washington, D.C., and somewhere in my enthusiasm for the latest generation of electronic tools, I had gotten the old saw about knowledge and power turned around in my head: I was thinking that information was power. I now regard this as one of the great seductive myths of our time and do not feel so silly about falling prey to it; I think it happens to people all the time.
A friend had mentioned this affordable new electronic wire, the Federal News Service, which provided transcripts of key political and cultural events. I felt sure that it would give me a leg up. The pleasant man installed a small off-white printer on a plastic stand on the right rear corner of my desk. Below the stand, he plopped a box of several thousand sheets of perforated paper. He pushed ... read full excerpt from: Data Smog ebook
