Quotes About Information

Contrary to widespread faith in "communication" and "knowledge transfer," information has a social life, and unless new insights are embedded in the social system they evaporate.

I am not at all computer literate in real life. I haven't yet found a reason to be. Once I find a reason why I need to be on the Internet, then I will be.

What can I say? I prefer to die well informed.

Phone networks can capture life on our planet.

As an actor, I think every moment in your life is giving you a new set of tools. You're constantly absorbing new information that you can put back onto the screen.

I think this is the kind of thing where we're rapidly moving toward an age where most of the populace will be almost unable to imagine life without an Internet component interlocked with it.

People accept the facts which come to them through existing channels. They like to hear new things in accustomed ways. They have neither the time nor the inclination to search for facts that are not readily available to them.

The tension of constructing an explanation, from A to B to C to D, apparently so simple a task, irritates many people with ADD. While they can hold the information in mind, they do not have the patience to sequentially put it out. That is too tedious. They would like to dump the information in a heap on the floor all at once and have it be comprehended instantly. Otherwise, as Douglas says, it's just not worth the effort. It's too boring.

The tension of constructing an explanation, from A to B to C to D, apparently so simple a task, irritates many people with ADD. While they can hold the information in mind, they do not have the patience to sequentially put it out. That is too tedious. They would like to dump the information in a heap on the floor all at once and have it be comprehended instantly. Otherwise

challenge efficient market theorists to answer these questions: Why were people willing to pay $14,850 for 135 shares of PALM when they could have paid $7,000, and why were some investors buying PALM stock at a price that set a value of $53 billion for the company instead of acquiring it at a price of less than half as much by buying it via 3Com stock? It's not a question of information. The terms were simple, public, and known in advance.

Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.

We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

Design cannot rescue failed content.

What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be "boiled down" and "simplified"? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading. Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information .

Above all else show the data.

Graphical excellence is that which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space.

To clarify, *add* data.

Small, noncomparative, highly labeled data sets usually belong in tables.

the institutional bias of the private mass media "does not merely protect the corporate system. It robs the public of a chance to understand the real world.

Beautiful Evidence is about the theory and practice of analytical design.

If the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers.

Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information.

A Quote of the Day --- By Ehsan Sehgal --- 2-06-2021 --- 5.30 PM, The Hague, Netherlands Literacy in the sense of knowledge never can be second-hand, and books also carry knowledge and qualify that context precisely; thus, every book stays new to every new reader. - Ehsan Sehgal