If I wrote a 2151 word essay on how there is too much information in the world, I would follow that up with a 30,000 word essay on how writers kill trees.
We live in a world where the word “information” is associated with identity theft. We live in a society where emails offer larger “lifestyles” in order to compensate for our low self-esteem. We live in insanity when Barnes and Nobles are considered our libraries and our libraries are considered porn shops. And when we ask ourselves “Is there an information overload?” I say to everyone, “No ladies and gentlemen, just an idiot overload.”
No matter how much information is out there, certain people hit a limit on how much they are willing to maintain, but that might not be a bad thing. Meet Jill Price. She at the age of 42 she cannot forget a single day since the age of 14. She has been diagnosed with hyperthymestic syndrome. Simply understood, it means you have an extensive memory of every day of your life. It may seem like this may be a good thing, but in reality she has trouble coping with the syndrome. Imagine reliving your husband’s death over and over again in your mind.
Humans are designed to forget. If we did not forget, we could never forgive entirely, or move on towards other endeavors. So no matter how much information there are in the universe, Wikipedia stands no chance in overwhelming the forgetful mind, and we as functional humans should be thankful.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=4813052&page=1
I agree with Ed that people are the problem, not the sources of information.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first heard the topic of the posts for this week, I did not understand how access to so much information could be a bad thing. I was surprised then to discover that how many negative effects could be caused from the plethora of information out there. From insomnia and poor concentration to even heart problems, it sounds like we have the newest epidemic in our midst.
Even though these consequences are serious, I still do not fully understand the reason for alarm at having new methods for research. Like everything else in the world, moderation is key. I do not think we can condemn the internet alone for causing ADD or for changing the way we think. We just have to balance the numerous internet searches with some actual thought on what we are learning. The internet is not evil. We just need to be responsible.
Another problem is that there are so many conflicting opinions on subjects on the internet that you often find so much conflicting information that you don't know up from down about a subject. The human brain is nearly limitless in the information that it can store, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other limits, like getting new information confused or not managing to transfer it into long-term storage. Sometimes I wish that we could just read something once and have it committed to memory, but to remember every detail of everything that had ever happened to me would be terrible. I mean, you can try to think about all of the good things, but that would be impossible to maintain all of the time.
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