Arthur C. Clarke on Information Pollution 213
Castolari writes "Here is an interesting interview of Arthur C. Clarke and his views on regulating communications, as well as what he sees as the past, present, and future of information management."
Dillution, not Pollution (Score:4, Insightful)
"No, banning is not the answer. Because we frequently suffer from the scourge of information pollution, we find it hard to imagine its even deadlier opposite information starvation. I get very annoyed when I hear arguments usually from those who have been educated beyond their intelligence about the virtues of keeping happy, backwards people in ignorance."
I would suggest that he should use the term 'information dillution' rather than 'information pollution' in this case (it seems he's referring to the signal-to-noise issue, which is dillution-based- unless too much information itself is a form of polluting our information reservoirs? Regardless, I'd say let's save that term for real information pollution, i.e. FUD)
As for "I get very annoyed when I hear arguments usually from those who have been educated beyond their intelligence about the virtues of keeping happy, backwards people in ignorance,"
Clarke is clearly a thinker and a powerful rhetoritician. I don't disagree with his conclusion, but I wonder if his powerful rhetoric (i.e. such a broadly applicable, powerful, yet vague criticism) hinders his readers' ability for clear thinking in this example.
RD
Re:Already slashdottted... (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the best quotes EVER... (Score:5, Insightful)
"But it is vital to remember that information - in the sense of raw data - is not knowledge; that knowledge is not wisdom; and that wisdom is not foresight."
Arthur C. Clarke
My definition! (Score:2, Insightful)
whats your definition?
Remember, guns don't kill people (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:From the article: (Score:2, Insightful)
Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks!
Re:Smart guy! :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, now that the world is being taken over by the Golgafrinchams (the useless third who neither think nor do, but impose themselves as middlemen and regulators) we need more A.C.Clarkes more than ever.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He's got a point (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't read the article, but this jumped at me while reading your post.
How blatantly false.
If virtually everyone agrees it should be kept out, why it so common and easy to find? Does he, possibly, mean that virtually all people would agree it should be kept out if they were asked directly in public with lots of people listening, or that they would agree in private where no-one is looking.
Just a flat-out bad statement.
Unintended Consequences (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm so glad that we didn't put the cart before the horse. :-/
It's true, information is getting harder to manage (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Advertising is getting to be a problem. Adware and Spyware are running rampant, and making computers less useful by confusing users. Spam is crippling email worldwide. And it's not just limited to online effects, commercials are longer, shows are shorter. Movies have almost an hour of advertising sometimes: slides, then commercials, then trailers.
I don't know how it affects most other people, but to me advertising sticks in my brain and keeps gnawing away at the back, making me less likely to buy a product. The more annoying, condescending, or pointless an ad is, the stronger the hate towards the company for wasting my time. For example, I'll NEVER buy a GAP product. Why? Well if GAP had just been a regular clothes store, I might have gone in, wandered around, maybe bought a shirt. But their commercials are so irritating I despise them. I've gone as far as to cross the street to avoid one of their larger stores. Here's another: Capital One talks about their "no hassle" credit cards. I thought this was a good idea and I was thinking of applying for one. Then they ran massive popup spams all over the web, and I changed my mind, permanently. Then there's the modern print advertising in computer industry magazines. You know, the ones that look and read like a 2-4 page product review with a very tiny light gray on white "Advertisement" printed somewhere you're not likely to notice it? That kind of thing pisses me off enough to go and look up the competitors to that company so I can reccomend them instead next time I need that type of product. I really do stuff like this. Am I the only one who's this insane? You tell me. Then there's the outright decietful crap. About 2-3 times a month I get envelopes with my bank's logo on it. Inside is a check for $2.50, and in really light fine print somewhere it'll say "Depositing this indicates you agree to let us take $8/month for 'services' directly from your account." Elsewhere in fine print is a disclaimer saying "We're not really affiliated with your bank even though we're reprinting their logo on your mail." Now I don't fall for this, but I'm betting my grandmother would. And the "valuable services" are basicly more advertising, they send you piles of coupons and ads for stuff. Great, just what I wanted.
I wish companies would focus more on making a better product and highlighting its advantages and features instead of randomly spewing statisticly generated images of unrelated crap, assuming people will digest this and buy it.
Re:My definition! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, I remember (Score:3, Insightful)
What hokey ideas.
How about Get Rid of Copyrights (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple truth is that copyrights create a system of rewards for people who push hype over substance. It is no longer about what has the most social value or service value, but rather which gets the most heads to turn. You can also see this effect in things like text books. The information in some books has changed little in over 100 years, but you wouldn't know from the racket they run at the college book stores - there's a new revised version every semester.
I think all to often, people think this media mob like behavior is just what happens in a free society, but IMHO it is not. It happens only when you start to restrict what people can copy.
Re:From the article: (Score:3, Insightful)
One disagreement.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Voice-recognition and text-to-speech converters should be for the sole use of blind or partially-sighted people who absolutely cannot see text at all, ever.
I can see this developing into another govt.-sponsored program of 'enablement' when these people would best be served by teaching them to read.
Literacy is too important to be made optional.
Re:Already slashdottted... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personal pages are important and necessary, and they embody what the web is meant to be - a commons where anyone can communicate anything with anyone. A lousy web page demands no more bandwidth than it should, if its lousy, no one looks. They don't pollute good search engines, either, because good search engines index pages by how relevant is the information they contain (ok, I know thats an ideal, but the flaw is a flaw in the search engine, not the number of personal pages). I frequently find answers to technical questions in small blogs and personal web pages. I don't see bad poems or cat pictures, because I don't search for them.
Just to drive the point home, think about what it would take to 'fix' this 'problem'.
Let only geniuses put up web pages? Ok, who decides who is a genius, who vetts what is good content and what isn't? Corporations? Governemnts? Comittees? How do you enforce it, a web page license? Who issues it?
I think what you are looking for is not the Internet, but TV, where content is vetted and professionally produced, and delivered in easy to consume chunks.
The Internet is not a content delivery medium, it is a communications medium, and that means people communicating, whatever they damn well want to whoever will listen. And it has to be open to every idiot with a bad poem, too, because the alternative is for it to just becomes a one-way delivery system. You should revel and delight in the existance of personal web pages, they are a good and healthy sign of a properly functioning communications medium. Revel and delight in the fact that you can toss one up if you want, when you do have something to say - even if no one really cares what you have to say.
Futhermore, you don't have to look at anything on the web you don't want to, you don't even have to skip past it, or setup a filter to block it. Thats a glorious and amazing thing, think about it. Everyone on the world with access to a computer can toss anything they want into the pool of information, absolutely anything. And how much does this affect you finding or reading Slashdot? At the same time, if you want, you can read any one of those endless bits of information flying around, the bad poem, the cat picture, the firsthand account of the bombing in Bagdad. This would not be possible in any scheme where content was vetted, licensed or controlled.
Sigh. Sorry for the rant, just pisses me off when people think bad web pages are the web's big problem, when the alternative is corporate/government controlled content-delivery.
Anyway, I commend you on not putting a web page up if you have nothing to say. If only 1 person wants to read it, though, a web page is worth putting up, and if no one does, then putting it up isn't hurting the millions who aren't reading it.
Do we NEED any of it? No, you NEED nothing more than water, air, food and shelter. So destroy everythign that isn't food, water, air, shelter? Sheesh.
and a great example, censorship. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, that's good. I like most of the rest of what he has to say too, but let's exercise some foresight about this:
There are instances when, in the interests of the majority, some censorship may be used for a period of time. Indeed, there is material which virtually everyone would agree should be kept out. Sadistic pornography, incitement to violence against racial or ethnic minorities are just two examples.
Everyone would not agree about that, Mr. Clark. Such reasoning and mechanisms can be used against anything. What exactly constitutes non-sadistic pornogrpahy? Why stop at incitement against minority populations? It's just as wrong for me to shoot a white boy in Kansas as it is for me to shoot a black girl in Mississippi isn't it? Porn by it's very nature invites us to violate those it portrays as objects. The mechanisms you might use to filter information for me will obviously be used more than eliminate more than violent porn. Electronic media can offer the censor far greater power then any previous media and great caution must be used in any kind of censorship of it. If the poster of violent porn can be tracked down and punished, so can the publisher of unpopular political opinions and media that has no anonymous publishing will never be free. This is far more harmful than burning libraries and smashing printing presses because it can happen transparently.
I may not agree with what you say, but I'll fight for your right to say it. The only way to disprove bad ideas is for them to be as freely available as others. It is up to each of us to chose what we will or will not listen too. The crime is not in the saying or the hearing, the crime is in the doing. Words, while they may sting, never broke a bone. The only kind of censorship that's ever justified is the traditional kind, simply saying "that is wrong."
Behaviors not words should be forbiden. It is wrong to asault someone, especially in a sadistic sexual way - that's called rape and it's a crime. A film that gloifies rape is stupid and wrongheaded, but it's not a crime.
As another poster pointed out [slashdot.org], the problems we face in media are not the fault of too much freedom, they are the result of too many restrictions. Gargage TV exists not because there are too many networks, but because there are too few that feel no need to compete. Cable TV, though pricy, has brough competition and improved programming and the reagular broadcaseters are falling behind in the ratings sytems. People are attracted to "nitch" programs such as TechTV, the History Channel, the Learning Channel and all that other good stuff that leaves daytime trash talk without an audience. The more repulsive the regular broadcasters cynically make their content, the faster they push away their audience. Further competition among cable and internet providers would only make things better. Censorship is the friend and tool of those who would not compete.
Re:Getting Slow Already... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Already slashdottted... (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, the world was significantly improved when the peasents and the serfs started involving themselves in knowledge... that was pretty much the start of the end of the aristocrats...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re:We shouldn't regulate communications (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying everyone should be brainwashed by propaganda from large corporations (that's what ads are). All I'm saying is that the whole model will come crashing down.
In fact, if advertising didn't influence people, the whole model will fail too.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re:Gore? Why the joke still matters... (Score:3, Insightful)
But while we're talking about lies and politicians, the current resident of the White House reigns unchallenged. He didn't lie about his days on the farm, or about getting blowjobs in the Oval Office. No, his lies have gotten us into a unecessary war and bankrupted the country.
His lies are killing hundreds of people (thousands if you consider Iraqui and Afghan civilians to be people, ha ha
His administration has been one long lie from the "election" on. Lies with very real consequences to our (US) national security as well as global stability.
Gore's (and even Clinton's) lies were utterly inconsequential by comparison. Bush goes straight for the Big Lie.
Re:Getting Slow Already... (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone borrows from everyone, there's seldom any inventions done that doesn't rely upon earlier work.
Re:and a great example, censorship. (Score:1, Insightful)
The reason why I choose not to have cable and just the internet, is to avoid the media. I prefer information. The "media" is what people do with/to the information.
The problem is, information is a tool. Like any tool it can be used to accomplish a task. You can use information to create peace or incite a war. It all depends on who is controlling the information.
The internet is a beautiful place because the information is not controlled. It's open, it's free, and that scares the life out of those in power.
But as a consequence, this means all information is uncontrolled. You take the bad with the good. However, this is the other wonderful thing about the internet: If you don't like the information, don't consume it. Go to a different page. Download a different program. There is no one forcing you to look at sadistic porn, nor is anyone forcing you to believe that your government is right.
Censorship is the result of societal laziness in some respects. Parents want the government to sanitize the net so their children aren't exposed to "bad information". Is it really the governments place to do so? Do you want to give the government that kind of power over information? Who among us is so morally sanctified that they know what information is good and what isn't?
While I'm sure a vast majority of us could agree on many things that we would happily relegate to the trashcan of history, that doesn't mean we should.
The Coward