 | |
| 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]
Ways in which to 'beat the smog': [5]
In 2004, Shenk's original term "data smog" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary [7]
The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing.
Various anti-spam techniques are used to prevent email spam.
Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming). The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoidable, and repetitive. Email spam has steadily grown since the early 1990s, and by 2014 was estimated to account for around 90% of total email traffic.
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.
Gmail is the email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide, making it the largest email service in the world. It also provides a webmail interface, accessible through a web browser, and is also accessible through the official mobile application. Google also supports the use of third-party email clients via the POP and IMAP protocols.
Internet security is a branch of computer security. It encompasses the Internet, browser security, web site security, and network security as it applies to other applications or operating systems as a whole. Its objective is to establish rules and measures to use against attacks over the Internet. The Internet is an inherently insecure channel for information exchange, with high risk of intrusion or fraud, such as phishing, online viruses, trojans, ransomware and worms.
Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising that uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising, and mobile advertising. Advertisements are increasingly being delivered via automated software systems operating across multiple websites, media services and platforms, known as programmatic advertising.
Personalization consists of tailoring a service or product to accommodate specific individuals. It is sometimes tied to groups or segments of individuals. Personalization involves collecting data on individuals, including web browsing history, web cookies, and location. Various organizations use personalization to improve customer satisfaction, digital sales conversion, marketing results, branding, and improved website metrics as well as for advertising. Personalization acts as a key element in social media and recommender systems. Personalization influences every sector of society — be it work, leisure, or citizenship.
Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones, and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. It has significantly transformed the way brands and businesses utilize technology for marketing since the 1990s and 2000s. As digital platforms became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life, and as people increasingly used digital devices instead of visiting physical shops, digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e-books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace. Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones, callbacks, and on-hold mobile ringtones. The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates digital marketing from online marketing.
Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. This includes a webmail interface featuring mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services. Outlook can also be accessed via email clients using the IMAP or POP protocols.
Targeted advertising is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting.
The Gmail interface makes Gmail unique amongst webmail systems for several reasons. Most evident to users are its search-oriented features and means of managing e-mail in a "conversation view" that is similar to an Internet forum.
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.
In the middle of 2009 the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against Sears Holdings Management Corporation (SHMC) for unfair or deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce. SHMC operates the sears.com and kmart.com retail websites for Sears Holdings Corporation. As part of a marketing effort, some users of sears.com and kmart.com were invited to download an application developed for SHMC that ran in the background on users' computers collecting information on nearly all internet activity. The tracking aspects of the program were only disclosed in legalese in the middle of the End User License Agreement. The FTC found this was insufficient disclosure given consumers expectations and the detailed information being collected. On September 9, 2009 the FTC approved a consent decree with SHMC requiring full disclosure of its activities and destruction of previously obtained information.
Gary Robinson is an American software engineer and mathematician and inventor notable for his mathematical algorithms to fight spam. In addition, he patented a method to use web browser cookies to track consumers across different web sites, allowing marketers to better match advertisements with consumers. The patent was bought by DoubleClick, and then DoubleClick was bought by Google. He is credited as being one of the first to use automated collaborative filtering technologies to turn word-of-mouth recommendations into useful data.
A filter bubble or ideological frame is a state of intellectual isolation that can result from personalized searches, recommendation systems, and algorithmic curation. The search results are based on information about the user, such as their location, past click-behavior, and search history. Consequently, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles, resulting in a limited and customized view of the world. The choices made by these algorithms are only sometimes transparent. Prime examples include Google Personalized Search results and Facebook's personalized news-stream.
SmartScreen is a cloud-based anti-phishing and anti-malware component included in several Microsoft products:
Google's changes to its privacy policy on March 16, 2012, enabled the company to share data across a wide variety of services. These embedded services include millions of third-party websites that use AdSense and Analytics. The policy was widely criticized for creating an environment that discourages Internet innovation by making Internet users more fearful and wary of what they do online.
A cold email is an unsolicited e-mail that is sent to a receiver without prior contact. It could also be defined as the email equivalent of cold calling. Cold emailing is a subset of email marketing and differs from transactional and warm emailing.
A virtual private network (VPN) service provides a proxy server to help users bypass Internet censorship such as geo-blocking and users who want to protect their communications against data profiling or MitM attacks on hostile networks.