“In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.”

—  Yuval Noah Harari , book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 14, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much …" by Yuval Noah Harari?
Yuval Noah Harari photo
Yuval Noah Harari 42
Israeli historian 1976

Related quotes

Russell L. Ackoff photo

“[Mistake 2:] Managers need all the information they want. Most MIS designers "determine" what information is needed by asking managers what information they would like to have. This is based on the assumption that managers know what information they need and want.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

As cited in: Merrill J. Riley (1981) Management information systems. p. 114.
1960s, Management misinformation systems, 1967

“Information practice… consists of two activities that we may call diagnosis and prevention. Diagnosis is identifying what is the most probable information need of a user in a particular state of information want. Provision is deciding what action is most likely to meet that need. Information science seeks to understand the potential range of user situations giving rise to information want and needs; to develop methods of identifying the actual information needed; to understand and expand the range of possible ways of satisfying information need; and to develop methods of deciding what way is most likely to be effective in a particular case.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Meeting the challenge (2009), p. xxii-xxiii; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

“The information you have is not the information you want. The information you want is not the information you need. The information you need is not the information you can obtain. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay”

Peter L. Bernstein (1919–2009) American academic

Source: Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

Herbert A. Simon photo

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Simon, H. A. (1971) "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World" in: Martin Greenberger, Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest, Baltimore. MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. pp. 40–41.
1960s-1970s

“[Task uncertainty is] the difference between the amount of information required to perform the task and the amount of information already possessed by the organisation.”

Jay R. Galbraith (1939–2014) American business theorist

Source: Designing complex organizations, 1973, p. 5

Judith Krug photo

“We know for a fact that the library is the main access point to the Internet outside of the home and workplace. Particularly for young people, information about AIDS, sexuality, suicide could mean the difference between life and death. This law keeps us from giving people access to the information they need.”

Judith Krug (1940–2009) librarian and freedom of speech proponent

"ACLU, ALA File Law Suit Against Child Internet Protection Act - American Civil Liberties Union, American Library Association Declare Law Unconstitutional - Brief Article" Electronic Education Report (March 28, 2001)

Milton Friedman photo

“The price system transmits only the important information and only to the people who need to know.”

Milton Friedman book Free to Choose

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 1 "The Power of the Market", 15

“We have more information now than we can use, and less knowledge and understanding than we need. Indeed, we seem to collect information because we have the ability to do so, but we are so busy collecting it that we haven’t devised a means of using it. The true measure of any society is not what it knows but what it does with what it knows.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Warren G. Bennis (1990) Why leaders can't lead: the unconscious conspiracy continues. p. 143
1990s

Henning Mankell photo

“Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.”

Henning Mankell (1948–2015) Swedish crime writer, children's author, leftist activist and dramatist
John F. Kennedy photo

“I refer, first, to the need for a far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address to ANPA
Context: I want to talk about our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger. The events of recent weeks may have helped to illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimensions of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years. Whatever our hopes may be for the future — for reducing this threat or living with it — there is no escaping either the gravity or the totality of its challenge to our survival and to our security — a challenge that confronts us in unaccustomed ways in every sphere of human activity.
This deadly challenge imposes upon our society two requirements of direct concern both to the press and to the President — two requirements that may seem almost contradictory in tone, but which must be reconciled and fulfilled if we are to meet this national peril. I refer, first, to the need for a far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.

Related topics