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. 

Communication on the Web

Okay this may sound nerdy, but I figured I should write about something I'm interested in, so I'd love to hear what you guys think. I keep up with a lot of design websites (I'm a Graphic Design major), and I was reading an article about how to effectively communicate through a website (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/03/clear-and-effective-communication-in-web-design/). It's fascinating how much time we spend on the internet. I especially - being a design major - almost always have my laptop with me, and am unaccustomed to not having internet at fingers touch. Therefore, if we spend so much time browsing pages on the internet, the effective communication of web pages is incredibly important. If you were in classes all day with people who spoke a different language, or worse yet spoke very bad English, you would quickly become exhausted with trying to understand what's going on.

So in thinking about the internet, I would get sick of looking if everything I was looking at was terribly communicated. My question is, what makes a web page communicate well? Are images important, or is content important? Is it always a personal choice? YouTube is one of the most visited sites online right now - is it any coincidence that it is extremely clean and easy to understand?

It's hard for me to see pages online and not pick them apart from the eyes of a designer. So I'm curious what all of the science majors, business majors, etc. think. Does it even really matter?

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Do you think our various forms of technology are helping or hurting our human communication and interaction? For example, is it harmful that we'd rather watch a marathon of the show Friends than actually go out with our real life friends? Is it unhealthy that our emotion in a text or IM has been reduced to two symbols resembling a smile? : ) Or on the other hand, do you think things like tv, the internet and cell phones are simply broadening our horizon of communication?

I own a cell phone, computer, tv, and radio.  Though sometimes I feel like those things are vital tools, other days I feel as though I'm becoming more and more of a hermit, relying almost exclusively on these things for communication. What are your thoughts?