Information and the Quality of Life
Information and the Quality of Life
David Levy
These are my notes from the final LITA Forum session. I apologize that it has taken so long to get them up. It has been the typical game of catch-up since I returned to work and I just hadn’t found the time. One thing that I really found interesting about this presentation was how the speaker distinquished between ratio and intellectus. I’ve never heard this distinction made before and find it fascinating. I also thought it was interesting that the speaker geared his talk to being more reflective in nature and allowing his audience to contemplate what he was saying. I find that this is something often missing for lectures or presentations that I go to. Particularly at conferences when you spend all day absorbing a tremendous amount of information. In my opinion to really make use of that information well, you need time to reflect on it. We often don’t get this. This was a very thought provoking session that made me sit up and take notice. Both from a perspective of my own life, but also the role that libraries can play in the future as a place where people can come and contemplate and reflect.
Four interrelated phenomenons
- information overload – we cannot afford to attend to information simply because it is there
- fragmentation –
- busyness of life – “Time to do everything except think” Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, 2002
- speed up – Faster by James Gleick
- an abundance of information sources, devices and technologies
- an abundance of attentional choices
- full lives, full schedules
- rapid action and responses
Its a matter of balance, individual differences matter, when, for whom, under what circumstances.
unintended consequences
- mental and physical health
- productivity
- effectiveness/quality of work
- job satisfaction
- decision-making
- social cohesion & capital
- democratic governance
- ethics
Vannevar Bush – “As we may think” – noticed this problem of information overload 60 years ago. He suggested a solution, which we have implemented on many levels. However, the solution did not solve the problem, perhaps it made it worse.
What went wrong?
Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture 1947 – a total world of work
Need time for leisure, leisure meaning a time to be reflective and contemplative, leisure = scholarship.
The web are the best tools for ratio – search, researching, abstracting, refining, and concluding.
What happened to intellectus? – We have lost time with the contemplative aspect of our lives.
Need for balance information ecology
Libraries as space for quiet, silence, and contemplation. The outdoors, day of rest, and home.
- “The Coming Age of Calm Technology” Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown
- “Coming to Our Senses” Jon Kabat-Zinn – UMass Medical Center
- Center for Information and Quality of Life