Summary

DATA SMOG begins with the author's own personal awakening from years of computer worship to the unwelcome side-effects from information mania. After confronting his own information anxieties and deflating his mislaid faith in the virtue of technology, he begins to see the entire world in a new light. Where before he viewed computers in the way they wished to be viewed, he now sees a technology industry whose raison d'etre is inducing a manic you're-not-keeping up anxiety; a culture getting hooked on the manic velocity of data and losing interest in slower, more thoughtful deliberation; and a world fragmenting to a perverse degree, losing its common information and drifting toward a less responsible democracy.