Book Review: The Age of the Infovore

Book Review: The Age of the Infovore

‘The Age of the Infovore’ is written by Tyler Cowen, an economics professor. The book is available in NLB.

This book is thought-provoking but frustrating to read. The book belongs to those categories of books that read like a boomerang. That is, the book does not conclude or drill down to a few points. Rather, it keeps on expanding your perspective. The book may be easier on the mind, if the author treats each chapter as separate pieces and not as pieces relating to autistic strengths.

Anyway, the interesting points:

a) Autism’s cognitive strengths include:

i) strong in ordering knowledge in preferred domains

ii) strong in observing small pieces of information in preferred domains

b) These strengths are relevant to our internet world, when we see that large amounts of information are being ordered and processed to meaningful bits. For example, our favourite bookmakrs, Google search, Facebook, Twitter etc.

c) When access is easy, we prefer the short, small version. When access is difficult, we prefer the extravagances and masterpieces. For instance, if we are going to travel long distances for something, that something have to be worth our travelling time and while. However, when access is easy, we want to try more new stuffs. To try more new stuff, the new stuffs have to be smaller, so that they can be accomplished with less time.

d) Education can be consumed online without face-to-face interaction. However, online education is not well-received. This is because we prefer to have face-to-face interaction (e.g. attend lectures, attend tutorials). Having face-to-face interaction and people around us may help us better focus and be more motivated to absorb the knowledge.

e) Sherlock Holmes seems to be an autistic.

f) There is neuro-diversity around. Hence different people may have different taste for art, music and different ways of perception.

g) A country with a culture that tends to obey rules and follow unspoken codes tends to be more successful economically.