The total amount of information produced by mankind continues to grow exponentially.

When we were in grade school, it doubled about every decade or so. I think that curve has grown more steep. With the help of the Internet, it now doubles every five years or so.

Some will see this as a result of the growth in the Web. I think they have gotten their causality backwards. I think we built the Web to cope with this exponential growth.

You guys know that I always like to look back to the Industrial Revolution to understand what’s going on in the modern Information Revolution. The trains of the nineteenth century amplified our muscles in the same way that the computers of the twentieth century amplified our brains. But they both came about because of our need to amplify these traits and not the other way ’round. Remember the Erie Canal?

So, what’s a Renaissance Man like me gonna’ do if he keeps getting bombarded by an exponentially increasing torrent of information?

I’m going to skim over the top of it. I’ve got no choice but to be a mile wide and an inch deep. We drive cars, but we don’t know what’s under the hood and how it works. We use computers and the web, but we have no idea how all of that is held together.

We live in an era of headlines and soundbites because it’s all we have time for. And god help us when the people putting those headlines and soundbites out there care more about their value as propaganda than they do as enlightening information.

Drew

But what I’m finding in working with the Facebook/myspace generation is that they don’t trust single sources as much as they dislke long reports. They prefer to get information from multiple sources and create their own synthesis.

Now that is a nightmare for marketing folks: thousands of consumers that aren’t easily swayed my mass media, but that’s where it is. My son is voting in his first partisan election this year and he registered independent. Why? Because he found out that he would be able to vote for a primary candidate in multiple parties. He is reading (on blogs) and listening (on podcasts) to all the candidates he has access to ( the Rebumblicans don’t allow independents a voice in California) and making his decision (synthesizing the information) on his own.

Like Loring said, there is a literary elite still reading Harpers, WSJ, The Economist, but they won’t be leading the world in 10 or 20 years.

It may be scary, but that’s the way things are going.

http://acropolisreview.com/2008/01/rupert-murdoch-media-vs-journalism.html

I think, in the least, we should consider the possibility that Murdoch might know what he’s talking about. He’s been very successful in media because he provides communication that the masses actually want.

Media changes with the masses. Thousands of years ago, someone in Babylonia figured out how to keep records with a written language. That got tranlated into telling stories. And I’m sure there was some grandfather complaining that “if the oral tradition was good enough for my father it should be good enough for my grandchildren,” and ” You got 300 clay tablets and nothing decent to read.”

We have a generation that receives audio and visual information in 10 to 15 minutes bits between commercials. Another generation zips through that same media to skip commercials or flip through channels gathering various bits of information while surfing on laptops and text messaging friends. Are either of those generations the type to read The Leder in the WSJ?

Yes it’s important. Yes, it is substantial. But if no one reads it; if it’s only benefit is the possibility of winning a Pulitzer, is it then communication?

I love the journal and read that column every time I pick it up. But none of my friends do, and neither do my children. Other than you Brian, I can’t really think of anyone who does.

That’s the truth of the matter. And May Rupert is right.