Give a hoot, don't info-pollute.

I Find Karma (adam@cs.caltech.edu)
Tue, 16 Jul 96 23:26:54 PDT


"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 on-line.
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, (from: Wired, July 1996)