Information Overload

The world around us is increasingly wired, and as a result, we
consume more information at a faster pace than ever before. It’s kind
of interesting to think that I could read something about a news story
today online, from media outlets all over the world, and from
individuals via blogs. Fifty years ago, that amount of information
simply would not have been readily available. It would have been almost
impossible.

Email, instant messaging, blogs, websites – they all add to
something called “information overload.” I think you’ll start hearing
the expression more and more in the next couple years, or at least
until the tools that help us deal with it improve. Basically, we take
in more information than we can deal with at one time. One of the major
negative side effects of information overload, at least to some people,
is that human interaction is lost:

“The amount of information that goes into a young person’s head today
is incredible,” says David H. Landers, director of the student resource
center at Saint Michael’s College, in Colchester, Vt. His main concern
is that students have replaced face-to-face contact with instant
messaging and e-mail. “They’re not going to have the same quality of
interpersonal relations that will help them in a work environment,” he
argues.

I see two major flaws with this argument. First and foremost, if
everyone else is using email and instant messaging and other
technologies, then the interpersonal skills required for a work
environment have changed, haven’t they? I think it’s only a problem if
the level of technology use and knowledge is not somewhat similar
between all team members. So it follows that in five to ten years, it
won’t be a problem at all, as the older generation who snubs technology
retires.

The second flaw is that I don’t think information overload
necessarily degrades communication. I can keep in touch with more
people more often thanks to instant messaging and other technologies.
And moving forward, these technologies will be improved with audio and
video, in effect reintroducing the human element.

Information overload is an interesting topic, but I wouldn’t call it
a problem. A challenge yes, but one that will be overcome. In the big
picture, we’ve gone and created a bunch of tools for easily creating
content. Now we have to go and create tools to manage and consume it.
This is reflected on the small scale quite well with things like blogs,
podcasts, or even email. There are a number of ways to create a blog,
but only two ways to consume it (the web and an aggregator), and very
rudimentary ways to organize it (folders or keyword search). Podcasts are very similar.
And even email, the oldest of them all, doesn’t deal with information
overload very well. The idea of an inbox just doesn’t make sense when
you get 100 emails a day, and yet we still deal with that metaphor.

More importantly, too much information is a better problem to have than not enough, don’t you think?

Read: Knowing When to Log Off