I'm convinced a new kind of social responsibility is emerging - an imperative to be succinct. Just as we've had to curtail our gaseous emissions in an increasingly smoggy world, the information glut demands that we be more economical about what we say, write, and post online. With time an ever more valuable commodity, the long-winded are beginning to resemble people who open their car door at a stoplight to dump trash onto the street.
We now have the means to publish virtually anything we wish. If we don't respect our new information ecology, we will increasingly suffer from data anarchy and social dissolution. Technically, we'll have access to a phenomenal vat of information, but in practical terms, we'll become so specialized and distracted that we'll share less and less with our fellow citizens. Give a hoot, don't info-pollute.
- David Shenk (dshenk@aol.com) is writing a short book about the information glut for HarperCollins.
