Fall 2010 Information Diet Exercise

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Information Diet Exercise Description

The Information Diet Exercise invites you to examine critically our choices and habits of acquiring information on a daily basis. The goal of the assignment is not only to increase awareness about our habits, but to ask what would count as improving our diet and to locate and select some publications and websites that will nourish those interests and needs.

As you start the exercise, you will need to establish some categories of information that makes sense to you given your personality and interests. The analogy to an actual diet is actually pretty helpful. There is probably a level of quality, diversity, and even "regularity" of information consumption that is needed for you to reasonably judge yourself a well informed person. As with food, there are lots of ways to satisfy one's informational needs. You can do this minimally, by following just a small group of sources that will keep you informed, or you can pursue a "maximizing strategy"; by which you try to identify a very rich set of sources, even though in practice your ability to check them may be limited. I recommend that you start with a small set of sources. It might be the bookmarks you already routinely cycle through when you're browsing. Then build additional sources around your specific concerns and interests.

The key to this assignment is to ask two sets of parallel questions, one about yourself and the other about the world of information sources. About yourself you should ask: 1) What are my strengths and weaknesses as a information seeker? 2) What topics do I have a natural appetite for? Which topics are like "broccoli" for me? 3) Knowing this how can I choose the right sources and methods for staying informed?. About the world of information sources, you should ask yourself:

Notes and shouts about Information Sources

Here we'll gather loose notes and personal evaluations of specific sources from our diets.