How much is TMI?

Daniel Tammet essentially asks us the question in his article, "Can learning too much, too fast be harmful to human beings?" He uses examples of corporate efficiency, neuroscience and the technologically strange to make his case. And to some extent, I believe his point is valid- that we, as limited human beings, can be overexposed and overwhelmed by the vastness of our own Information Age.

However, I think the answer to the question he raises is most likely obvious to anyone that has spent any deal of time surfing Wikipedia as I sometimes find myself doing. I simply do not retain even a fraction of the information I am exposed to, but I remain a functional person. I am swayed further, though, by the research of a German scientist named Gerd Gigerenzer who has made a name for himself by proving just how simply our minds actually work, even in the presence of an overwhelming amount of information. His research as the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Human Development has shown that most human thought processes follow simple rules, called heuristics, even when challenged to solve complicated tasks.

Consider how baseball players catch a ball. It may seem that they would have to solve complex differential equations in their heads to predict the trajectory of the ball. In fact, players use a simple heuristic. ... The heuristic is to adjust the running speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant —that is, the angle between the eye and the ball. The player can ignore all the information necessary to compute the trajectory ... and just focus on one piece of information, the angle of gaze."

 

I believe that even though we are now exposed to the largest tsunami and resulting flood of information humanity has ever seen, we human beings will continue to follow very simple, but effective rules as our astrolabe. What simple rules do you navigate by? http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gigerenzer03/gigerenzer_index.html 

I also strongly recommend Gerd's book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious to those further interested. 

face-to-monitor-to-face communication

I think we can all agree there is obvious danger on the internet. Sexual predators, Nigerian-Princess scams, and pop-up ads lurk around every click of the mouse. Perhaps, more dangerously, is the internet addiction afflicting hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. As stated in the video and reiterated by Mackenzie, most tech-savvy schools conduct internet safety courses in order to protect children from those who would try and hurt them. What the video failed to depict was that it’s really the excess of internet usage that is the trouble. Teens that spend a vast majority of their waking hours online are far more likely to regard the internet as something innocuous.
The video, almost laughably, describes the internet phenomena as if it were some horrible pandemic of disease. Facebook and Myspace, when used appropriately, are excellent social networking tools, rather than some ailment found on "House". However, as explored in the video, discretion seems to be the element we as a demographic lack. I know several people personally that have been targeted by internet “creepers”, but their experience has been because of their own poor judgment rather than because they were sought out. It’s common sense that if someone asks you to take a picture of yourself topless and put it on the internet, you don’t do it. For as many examples of internet misuse that PBS was able to find, there are dozens more counter-examples that disprove their theories.
The internet is not a simple fad. It is used daily by millions worldwide, creating easy commerce and linking people around the globe. What bothers me most is that the internet (as well as cell phones and instant messenger) eliminates the necessity for face-to-face communication. Using this class blog as a standard method of communication makes me wonder if the science-fiction farces in the movies are really all that far off. If our reliance is based on a simple data-transfer system (punctuated by the occasional emoticon if we so choose), we lose the real meaning of relationships. Even the Pope has condemned overuse of these internet networking tools!
It’s sort of funny, really, how quickly we have embraced Facebook and Myspace. For example; in my high school, unless your relationship was “Facebook-Official”, it didn’t exist. If you weren’t friends with a person on the internet, you clearly didn’t socialize with him or her in real life. It seems ridiculous that an internet site would dictate so many social interactions. In a perfect world, everyone would get along in social situations. We wouldn’t be so distracted by our technology. Still, to be perfectly honest, I have Facebook open just behind this blog post. My cell phone is going off on the table right next to me. I’m sitting in the student center with about twenty other kids, all of whom are glued to their monitors. We're all in our separate little internet worlds, though I bet you anything half of them are Facebookchatting each other. I’ve got to take my idealism with a grain of salt, I suppose.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/23/pope-warns-against-obsess_n_160283.html
http://mashable.com/2006/08/25/facebook-profile/

plus, I thought this was funny;
http://www.bittertonic.com/daily-dose/395/i-can-be-your-facebook-stalker/

The Assimilation of the Offline Generation

Perhaps the question that the “Growing Up Online” documentary didn’t cover is how the availability and popularity of the Internet, and perhaps more so the social networking sites (OSN for short), are effecting the previous generation. Since the documentary came out in early 2008, I’ve noticed a proliferation of adults on Facebook.

Some I’m sure are there in order to keep track of their children, as called spying by those who are being “kept track of”. Some adults though are now becoming fully integrated into the world of online social networking. They are finding old friends and making new ones and even using the plethora of applications available to them on the site. The Borg like spread of OSN has gotten to point that an Australian court has allowed sending a message on Facebook to be considered a way of serving legally binding documents¹. Many companies are even going to Facebook and MySpace in order to research job applicants, and many of them are not liking what they find².  

Because of this generation’s interconnectedness with the Internet and technology as a whole, previous generations are being forced to learn things like what being “poked” means or how to type in texting jargon. Will the previous generations be able to keep up with this technology infused generation? How will that affect the “Online Generation”? Or will they simply, in the words of a fellow student’s Facebook status update, “realize that they will never understand Facebook”?

 

1)  see http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2008-12-16-australia-facebook_N.htm

2) see http://www.zdnetasia.com/techjobs/career-resources/0,3800009355,62050688,00.htm

    And http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2009/02/06/news/nh453376.txt