use eating-related metaphors for information consumption: information diet, eye candy, news feed. Our body simply understands the parallel between consuming information and consuming food.
The fast food explosion of the 1990s changed our relationship to food: Cheap, mass-produced and widely available, we stuffed it down without a second thought. The way I see it, we’re currently in the fast-food age of information consumption. Information is almost ubiquitously available, and irresistibly tempting. We gorge, only to find ourselves hungry for more after just a few minutes – and our hand reaches for the phone again.
Perhaps we can learn from our eating culture once again, taking a cue from conscientious, selective approaches to food – vegetarian and vegan eating, for example – and questioning the provenance of what we consume: Where does this come from? What’s in it? What will it do to me?
In this project, conceptual devices for information consumption were developed, showing us how we could consume information in the future.
