Information as Food

Recently I listened to a TED talk about the way we think about Information. The presenter talked about how we consume information and the parallels with how we consume food. He asked "what would you do differently if you saw information as food?"

He proposed that in most cases we have the ability to decide how we want to seek out our food (fast, prepackaged, selectively chosen, or self prepared), and we have the ability to decide our preferences and what we feel we need, and we can prioritise  what we want when. Same goes for information.

He talked about finding the right balance and mix - avoiding disease and deleting toxins from our diet. He suggested we have the ability to do this too for information. I liked his proposition that there is no such thing as information overload - but rather filter failures.

So what would you do differently if you thought about information as food? Me, I'm interested in targeting the information I want to receive, and improving my personal filters to seek out the information that is going to nourish me, not poison me.