I continue to track Mark Hurst's thoughts about bit literacy with interest. I came across this originally reading Richard Saul Wurman's Information Anxiety 2, which should definitely be on your reading list if you haven't read it already.
Good Experience: Bit literacy: an overview. Obviously, bits have become more important to the average technology user since then. In fact, I find that the essay – although it predates those developments – is even more relevant in 2004. Thus I plan to write more about bit literacy this year. [Tomalak's Realm]
Here's the key graf:
To have a chance to survive the infinite bits in the future, we'll need a lot of bit literacy: in our behavior (letting go of bits), in our beliefs (searching for the meaning behind the bits), and in our technology — with simpler tools granting us control over the bits, and working with bits in their simplest formats. And as we shift to becoming not just consumers but *creators* of bits, the discipline of bit literacy will show us how to *create* bits differently: mindfully, meaningfully, and with an acceptance of their essential emptiness.
In a world where information is carried in physical containers (e.g., books, reports, papers), the containers set limits for us. With bits, we need to exercise explicit managerial control.