The illusion of knowledge
Or how you can consume information in a more meangful way
Hi! Welcome to another edition of the Internet in a Telegram, a newsletter about mediums and messages by Nevoazul magazine. This is our way of sharing with you what we discover when we are online. Thank you for subscribing!
In this newsletter, we write about:
How information overload doesn’t mean an increase in knowledge
A newsletter App to help you with your information diet
An online course to go from collector to creator
…and much more!
Not all information, becomes knowledge
A curious mind doesn't hesitate to research, question and deepen their various interests, but with more than 300 hours of video published every minute on YouTube and more than 1 million articles published on Medium per day, how can one expand their brain, without overloading it?
"The limited amount of time we have in our lifetime is obvious," writes Anne-Laure Le Cunff, "but we rarely think about the amount of mental energy we need to spend to understand, learn, and remember a piece of information". One of the reasons we continue to keep up with this unsustainable content flow is because we associate the excess of information available with the knowledge we can acquire. Although there is some truth here, it can motivate a false sense of wisdom.
Clay Johnson uses the healthy eating metaphor to question how we deal with this abundance of content. "We know that we are products of what we eat. Why shouldn't we be products of the information we consume?"
This is where the concept of selective ignorance comes in. It may seem contradictory, relying on the opposite of wisdom to achieve it, but taking a critical attitude towards information is a protection strategy, a mechanism to safeguard yourself from digital noise.
Regardless of your Internet's size - whether it is limited to the usual sites or is expanding, you need to draw a map of your information consumption. Who are your curators, and where can you find them? In which sources can you trust? Can you keep yourself informed about your neighbourhood? And about what's happening on the other side of the world? Where can you find a creative community that challenges your imagination? Answering these questions will help you to feed your mind better.
Your brain may not feel so full of information, but it will get smarter.
Some tools about information consumption
Stoop| An app to quit the news feed and embrace the newsletter.
How to go on an Information Diet | A mindful approach to content consumption
The PARA method | A universal system for organizing digital information
From Collector to Creator | A course to turn ideas into original content
Notion Office Hours | Building a Knowledge Hub with Notion
A Quantified Self Setup | A tracking setup for media consumption
How is your information diet?
Do you have time to read all the newsletters you subscribed?
Do you feel that the information you consume is chosen by you?
Are you more into podcasts, articles, videos?
Join the discussion and share with us links, thoughts, podcasts, or articles relevant to this topic. Let's turn this newsletter’s section into a safe place for curious minds.
…and also, we would love to know who is behind this screen :)
Até já!
Inês 🌿