J P Rangaswami, a renowned innovator and information technology expert, humorously puts forth his theory about information being as good as food.
Rangaswami, starts off talking about his life and how he found similarities between information and food. Being from a food loving family consisting of journalists, he was immensely exposed to both information and food.
While exploring the connection between information and food, he says he found that an average human stomach is much smaller than an average human brain! Further, talking about the procedure of production of information, he says, information is first cultivated, gathered, prepared and then consumed just like food. It’s in the cultivation stage that information often brings about tension among people and hence, creates intellectual property conflicts. The preparation of information, however, has two schools of thought- first being, distilled and sliced up, and the other, mashed up and served together!
Rangaswami raises questions about consumption of information where the real misuse of available information takes place. When there is abundance in production, there will be hassles with filtering just what is required, resulting in a situation where facts and fiction are mashed up.
Information consumption is more of an issue, than production of information is. Much like consumption of food- consumption of information too needs a proper diet, exercise and management.
Rangaswami’s concluding rhetorical question, definitely provides food for thought in this interesting talk.