Review of “The Information Diet”

Should you buy and read The Information Diet? Definitely not.

Should you Google the Information Diet? Yes.

This is an awful book with so much promise. I got this for Christmas, and it has taken me 6 months to read this book. Not that I’ve waited 6 months to read this book, but it has been 6 months from the time I started reading this book, to the time I finished it.

The author takes up about 75% of the book explaining why we need an information diet. The problem is, you probably picked up this book because you wanted to have a better information diet. You wanted to know, in this world of near infinite information, what you should spent time reading and spend time not reading. So why is the author trying to convince his reader of something he’s convinced about? I mean, you won’t spend 75% of a diet book explaining why you need a diet, right? Maybe 10%, or 20% max, I understand, to lay the foundations and principles. But not more than half the book.

What then, are you looking for in such a book? Why, ways to start an information diet. And you get… 4 pages of this advice (13 pages if you’re kind).

4 pages of constructive, usable, practical advice in a 150 page book.

Also, you get poorly presented graphs like this.

Can you tell the difference between the shades of grey? Neither can I.

As mentioned earlier, the author waxes lyrical about the need for a physical diet, and compares it to a need for an information diet. He goes on for pages about how the information obesity problem clouds our judgement and makes politics ineffective.

Then in the last chapter, he talks about political reform via an information diet.

I’m not sure if he can see the irony in his book. The last chapter was spent on espousing his political views and how to get a better government with a better information diet.

Truly, I was better off Googling ways to increase my attention span and be productive than to read this book. On to some comics next.