It took a century to double food production from 1820 levels to those in 1920. It took just 30 years to double it again, between 1920 and 1950. It took 15 years from 1950 to 1965, and 10 between 1965 and 1975. Food production has continued to grow exponentially as science and the demand for food has caused our agricultural industry to industrialize.

This drive and industrialization is necessary, actually. By 2050, the UN estimates, we’ll need to double our food production again to maintain projected population growth.

As of this writing, 681 books have been released in the past 30 days, with another 112 coming soon. In the first six months of 2011, more than 2,000 books on weight-loss were released.
Amazon.com lists nearly 20,000 books available for purchase on diets.

Blaming a medium or its creators for changing our minds and habits is like blaming food for making us fat.

…is that information is not requiring you to consume it. It can’t: information is no more autonomous than fried chicken, and it has no ability to force you to do anything as long as you are aware of how it affects you.

It’s not information overload, it’s information overconsumption that’s the problem. Information overload means somehow managing the intake of vast quantities of information in new and more efficient ways. Information overconsumption means we need to find new ways to be selective about our intake.

The mistaken concept of information overload distracts us from paying attention to behavioral changes.

“For 200 years the newspaper front page dominated public thinking. In the last 20 years that picture has changed. Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: people are lazy. With television you just sit-watch-listen. The thinking is done for you.” —Anonymous memo, Nixon Presidential Archives Largely attributed to Roger Ailes, Nixon Campaign Staffer and now FOX News Chairman

It’s a new kind of ignorance epidemic: information obesity.