DATE: Wednesday, May 14, 1997               TAG: 9705140787

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER LEE PHILIPS 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

INFORMATION REVOLUTION IS EXPLORED

IN THE opening pages of ``Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut,'' cyber-scribe David Shenk states his intentions with the confidence of the informed. They are to examine the downside of the information revolution, challenge some of the corporate hype behind it, and, in order ``to avoid being part of the problem,'' to do so concisely. He succeeds at the first, struggles on occasion at the second, and excels at the third, making his book both fare for arguments in the information industry and a curious read for the uninitiated.

Call me a geezer, but ``Data Smog'' has thirty-something written all over it. Shenk's style is wrought with hip jargon and subjectivity. Attention all you ``glutizens.'' There's ``dataveillance'' going on in the ``Info Lagoon.''

Still, allowing for a few forgivable digressions (Starbucks is not yet in the information business) and at least one occasion that borders on product endorsement (Shenk's a Mac-person), ``Data Smog'' presents a balanced analysis of society's challenges in dealing with the rapidly evolving information revolution. And to his credit, he offers solutions.

Our current information revolution is by no means the first in human history. There were dramatic effects on civilization with the development of writing. When oral society gave way to written society, there was something of a power shift in human terms, accompanied by requisite technological innovations. Civilization experienced similar progress with the advent of printing.

In these earlier information revolutions, naysayers clung to the old ways and foretellers of doom foretold doom. But the written word did not strike society dumb, nor did the printed word render handwriting useless. These innovations did, however, help to propagate and democratize information in its various forms.

Shenk's focus, of course, is on the electronic and digital information technologies of the computer age. As in previous information revolutions, radio, television, computer data-bases, electronic-mail and the Internet have not rendered all existing information technologies obsolete, but they have served to make more information available to more people much more rapidly.

There are down sides. They include a shift in the power base of information dissemination from institutions such as the church, the government and the media toward the advertiser, the public relations mouthpiece and the salesperson.

Shenk, a journalist by trade, perceptively analyzes the current trend and inherent danger of allowing the infobytes of commerce to bypass the balance and social responsibility of journalistic review.

Another downside is the information industry's unflagging ``upgrade mania,'' a strategy of planned obsolescence in computer hardware and software that continues to drive profits of the computer industry at the enormous expense of business and consumers. In the industry, upgrade mania is referred to as ``the Thunderbird Problem'': Something that started out as a bright idea with lots of appeal - the original 1950s Thunderbird or the Power Macintosh computer - ends up devolving into the mass-produced, mainstream automobile of the '80s or the software-sodden home computer system of the '90s.

Shenk also observes the distinctions between data and knowledge. Perhaps in this information revolution, to a greater degree than any other, society is called upon to wade through a greater amount of the former in pursuit of the latter. Can we humans keep pace with our information technology? These burdens, together with the tendency to focus on individual information needs (to ``nichify''), has deteriorated what Shenk calls society's ``common information and shared under-standing.''

If it seems at times that Shenk is just another infoholic who has drunk too deeply from the well of the World Wide Web, rest assured that he is on the right track. He has recognized the socially negative symptoms prevalent in the information revolution and has chosen to propose a few solutions, which include turning off the television (a classic remedy), resisting ``upgrade mania,'' data-fasting and an occasional rending of the new yuppie mantra: ``Simplify.'' MEMO: Free-lance writer Christopher Lee Philips, a graduate of Old

Dominion University, lives in Falls Church, Va. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

BOOK REVIEW

``Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut''

Author: David Shenk

Publisher: HarperCollins.

250 pp.

Price: $24

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