Information Culture Wars
How Infophilia Challenges Pop Culture in the Digital Age
Infophilia, a positive psychology of information | December 28, 2024 - Vol. 2, Issue 56
Welcome to Infophilia, a weekly newsletter about the human love of information. This is one of the places where I’m pioneering a positive psychology of information, avant-garde research. Season's greetings to all who celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. I wish you all the joys of the season, a refreshing winter holiday, and a happy, healthy New Year!
Cite this as:
Coleman, Anita S. (2024, December 28). Information Culture Wars: How Infophilia Challenges Pop Culture in the Digital Age. Infophilia, a positive psychology of information, 2 (56).
In the 1950s, the world’s banana supply nearly vanished when a fungus decimated the globally dominant Gros Michel variety. Today’s digital landscape risks a similar fate—a monoculture of shallow engagement threatens our information ecosystem. Yet, like our resilient banana plant producing offsets before flowers and fruit in SoCal, infophilic information styles continue to demonstrate surprising divergences. A recent poll of information styles revealed distinct ways Infophilia readers engage with knowledge, offering hope for our collective intellectual future. Today, I explore the dynamic relationship between adaptive infophilia—the human love of information—and pop culture. As attention spans decline, our reading habits are shifting, creating a tension between intellectual engagement and the pull of mass entertainment. Ad-free platforms like Substack are redefining how people consume information, fostering deeper connections despite the fragmentation of media, the dominance of algorithms, and the widespread entitlement to free content.