If Information is Food, What Does It Mean to Say, “You Are What
You Eat”?  I recently watched a TED talk by J.P. Rangaswami
entitled “Information is Food”. His premise (for those of you
who aren’t going to watch the video right now) is that
information is the input for the mind just as food is the input
for the body.  Our creation, cultivation, and consumption of
information follow similar patterns to that of its food model.
In essence, the information we take in to our bodies shapes our
minds just as the food we eat shapes our bodies. He ends with a
question: what would we do differently with our information
consumption if we treated information as food?  This particular
TED talk got me scribbling notes even before it was over. As
someone who thinks of himself as an information professional,
the idea of information being akin to food brought up some
disturbing questions and line of thoughts. If information is
food, what does that make a library? In accepting that
“information equals food” analogy premise for