 | |
| Author | David Shenk |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | 1997 |
 | This article consists almost entirely of a plot summary .(August 2024) |
Data Smog is a 1997 book by journalist David Shenk and published by HarperCollins. It addresses the author's ideas on how the information technology revolution would shape the world, and how the large amount of data available on the Internet would make it more difficult to sift through and separate fact from fiction. [1] [2] [3]
According to Data Smog, with the advance of technology, we have been able to progress in terms of society, economy, and even health. Communication is instantaneous, knowledge is abundant, and as humans we try to keep up with this expansion of data that continues to accumulate from around the world.
However, it is the overwhelming amount of information that is defined as data smog; "this unexpected, unwelcome part of our atmosphere, an expression for the noxious muck and druck of the Information age." [4] The wealth of information is harming some because of sheer amount of it and rate of production: "The sheer volume of information which many of us are exposed to every day may actually impair our performance and add stress to our lives." [5] In fact, according to statistics provided by Shenk, "In 1971 the average American was targeted by at least 560 daily advertising messages. Twenty years later, that number has risen six fold, to 3,000 messages per day." [4]
It is argued that "Just as fat has replaced starvation as this nation’s number one dietary concern, information overload has replaced information scarcity as an important new emotional, social, and political problem." [4] As per David Lewis, PhD in psychology, this attempt at consuming the majority of data, the result is what he calls "information fatigue syndrome." [6] This term refers to the data smog that we encounter daily that ultimately interferes with our sleep, concentration, and even affecting our immune systems. [6]
According to clinical psychologist Michelle Weil "the problems stem from people’s overuse or misuse of technologies and from technology’s ineffective presentation of information, researchers are finding." [6]
In 2004, Shenk's original term "data smog" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary [7]
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively.
The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is capable of harnessing and using. The measure was proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev (1932–2019) in 1964 and was named after him.
In the philosophy of mind, the explanatory gap is the difficulty that physicalist philosophies have in explaining how physical properties give rise to the way things feel subjectively when they are experienced. It is a term introduced by philosopher Joseph Levine. In the 1983 paper in which he first used the term, he used as an example the sentence, "Pain is the firing of C fibers", pointing out that while it might be valid in a physiological sense, it does not help us to understand how pain feels.
Neil Postman was an American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, who eschewed digital technology, including personal computers, mobile devices, and cruise control in cars, and was critical of uses of technology, such as personal computers in school. He is best known for twenty books regarding technology and education, including Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1970), The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Conscientious Objections (1988), Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992) and The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995).
New media are communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for the influx of interactive CD-ROMs for entertainment and education. The new media technologies, sometimes known as Web 2.0, include a wide range of web-related communication tools such as blogs, wikis, online social networking, virtual worlds, and other social media platforms.
Information overload is the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information (TMI) about that issue, and is generally associated with the excessive quantity of daily information. The term "information overload" was first used as early as 1962 by scholars in management and information studies, including in Bertram Gross' 1964 book, The Managing of Organizations, and was further popularized by Alvin Toffler in his bestselling 1970 book Future Shock. Speier et al. (1999) said that if input exceeds the processing capacity, information overload occurs, which is likely to reduce the quality of the decisions.
The ethics of technology is a sub-field of ethics addressing ethical questions specific to the technology age, the transitional shift in society wherein personal computers and subsequent devices provide for the quick and easy transfer of information. Technology ethics is the application of ethical thinking to growing concerns as new technologies continue to rise in prominence.
Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. Misinformation can exist without specific malicious intent; disinformation is distinct in that it is deliberately deceptive and propagated. Misinformation can include inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or false information as well as selective or half-truths. In January 2024, the World Economic Forum identified misinformation and disinformation, propagated by both internal and external interests, to "widen societal and political divides" as the most severe global risks within the next two years.
Civic journalism is the idea of integrating journalism into the democratic process. The media not only informs the public, but it also works towards engaging citizens and creating public debate. The civic journalism movement is an attempt to abandon the notion that journalists and their audiences are spectators in political and social processes. In its place, the civic journalism movement seeks to treat readers and community members as participants.
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: Academic criticism by film scholars, who study the composition of film theory and publish their findings and essays in books and journals, and general journalistic criticism that appears regularly in press newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outlets. Academic film criticism rarely takes the form of a review; instead it is more likely to analyse the film and its place in the history of its genre, the industry and film history as a whole.
In psychology, the human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser due to the tendency of humans to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways, regardless of intelligence. Just as a miser seeks to avoid spending money, the human mind often seeks to avoid spending cognitive effort. The cognitive miser theory is an umbrella theory of cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attributional biases to explain when and why people are cognitive misers.
The 1980s oil glut was a significant surplus of crude oil caused by falling demand following the 1970s energy crisis. The world price of oil had peaked in 1980 at over US$35 per barrel ; it fell in 1986 from $27 to below $10. The glut began in the early 1980s as a result of slowed economic activity in industrial countries due to the crises of the 1970s, especially in 1973 and 1979, and the energy conservation spurred by high fuel prices. The inflation-adjusted real 2004 dollar value of oil fell from an average of $78.2 in 1981 to an average of $26.8 per barrel in 1986.
In common usage, data is a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted formally. A datum is an individual value in a collection of data. Data are usually organized into structures such as tables that provide additional context and meaning, and may themselves be used as data in larger structures. Data may be used as variables in a computational process. Data may represent abstract ideas or concrete measurements. Data are commonly used in scientific research, economics, and virtually every other form of human organizational activity. Examples of data sets include price indices, unemployment rates, literacy rates, and census data. In this context, data represent the raw facts and figures from which useful information can be extracted.
David Shenk is an American writer, lecturer, and songwriter. He has contributed to National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, Gourmet, Harper's, Wired, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, The American Scholar, NPR and PBS. In mid-2009, he joined TheAtlantic.com as a correspondent. He is a 1988 graduate of Brown University.
The California Smog Check Program requires vehicles that were manufactured in 1976 or later to participate in the biennial smog check program in participating counties. The program's stated aim is to reduce air pollution from vehicles by ensuring that cars with excessive emissions are repaired in accordance with federal and state guidelines. With some exceptions, gasoline-powered vehicles, hybrid vehicles, and alternative-fuel vehicles that are eight model-years old or newer are not required to participate; instead, these vehicles pay a smog abatement fee for the first 8 years in place of being required to pass a smog check. The eight-year exception does not apply to nonresident vehicles being registered in California for the first time, diesel vehicles 1998 model or newer and weighing 14,000 lbs or less, or specially constructed vehicles 1976 and newer. The program is a joint effort between the California Air Resources Board, the California Bureau of Automotive Repair, and the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
In computational complexity theory, a transcomputational problem is a problem that requires processing of more than 1093 bits of information. Any number greater than 1093 is called a transcomputational number. The number 1093, called Bremermann's limit, is, according to Hans-Joachim Bremermann, the total number of bits processed by a hypothetical computer the size of the Earth within a time period equal to the estimated age of the Earth. The term transcomputational was coined by Bremermann.
Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, and data and information processing, and storage. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system is generally an information system, a communications system, or, more specifically speaking, a computer system — including all hardware, software, and peripheral equipment — operated by a limited group of IT users, and an IT project usually refers to the commissioning and implementation of an IT system. IT systems play a vital role in facilitating efficient data management, enhancing communication networks, and supporting organizational processes across various industries. Successful IT projects require meticulous planning, seamless integration, and ongoing maintenance to ensure optimal functionality and alignment with organizational objectives.
Under the Dome is a 2015 self-financed Chinese documentary by Chai Jing, a former China Central Television journalist, and Ming Fan, the documentary director, her long-term working partner at CCTV, concerning air pollution in China. It was viewed over 150 million times on Tencent within three days of its release and had been viewed a further 150 million times by the time it was taken offline four days later.
Social media analytics or social media monitoring is the process of gathering and analyzing data from social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter. A part of social media analytics is called social media monitoring or social listening. It is commonly used by marketers to track online conversations about products and companies. One author defined it as "the art and science of extracting valuable hidden insights from vast amounts of semi-structured and unstructured social media data to enable informed and insightful decision-making."
The 1966 New York City smog was a major air-pollution episode and environmental disaster, coinciding with that year's Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Smog covered the city and its surrounding area from November 23 to 26, filling the city's air with damaging levels of several toxic pollutants. It was the third major smog in New York City, following events of similar scale in 1953 and 1963.