Shenk has assembled the package of techno-skepticism more effectively than most of his predecessors. Shenk is just deeply enough immersed in the datasphere to criticize it intelligently, and yet his time online has not eroded his ability to tell a good story or present a case persuasively. Persuasively, but not, alas, brilliantly. But his brevity is that of the pamphlet, not the poem. He hasn't crossed the gulf from sound bite to aphorism.
Information overload is, after all, a general phrase demanding further elaboration.
The speed at which information comes at us matters, and affects our perception of volume. Learning to ask systematic questions about information is the most important step in managing its overload. Unfortunately, we rarely hear systematic questions about online information. We don't yet have the necessary distance from the medium. One of the most unusual and rewarding books ever written about television shapes its title as a kind of paradoxical meditation on that word.