Lab-Rat-Ness of College

My response is to the first article. I feel like I am often being experimented on. The author says “When faced with a plethora of information, many people try to multitask, but scientific research suggests that this does not help. René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, measured how much efficiency is lost when two tasks are carried out at the same time. The first task involved pressing the correct button in response to one of eight sounds, while the second asked subjects to say the correct vowel after seeing one of eight images. When given the tasks one at a time, the participants’ performance for each task was not significantly different. However, when asked to perform the two tasks simultaneously, the subjects significantly slowed in their performance of the second one.” My instant thought went to—“How does this apply to me?” Well, let me tell ya… Three English response essays on top of a communication blog response on top of a Calculus 2 Exam on top of a Biology Test on top of a communication article response on top of a mid-term paper due on top of a Bible mapping project on top of a meeting with the vice president on top of an SGA meeting with the president on top of thirty thank you letters to write on top of getting the information for those letters on top of a meeting with student accounts on top of sending my sister off to VA on top of arguing with financial aid on top of scheduling a car repair on top of doing my Calculus homework on top of work on top of Lab on top of Math lab on top of on top of on top of you name it. So it is scientifically proven that doing two things at a time makes you less efficient than doing one thing at a time—then I must be scientifically distracted so as to be worthless. Sometimes, like now, I am amazed at just how much each one of us really does in a day—every single moment is indescribably complex. I think that I am just a lab rat in the experiment of college that is trying to prove the hypothesis that I can do more and more and more things and still remain good at each of them. To be honest I think that that idea correlates fairly close to this experiment found in the first article—but I do believe that the variables differ greatly, and that it would be hard to find a set control and system of measuring my performance—thus we may have to leave my experience out of the science journals for now.

The world's a bunch of talentless hacks... Apparently...

Is the world really lacking in talent? Is that what we want to chock it all up to? We're all just getting too lazy or too unimaginative? I believe we're accelerating too fast for our own good. With all the information out there now, it's tough just to stay up to date on current events. Maybe it's not the lack of talent that's plaguing the world, rather the lack of such specialized and highly skilled talent. As our world progresses into the future we consequently have more to learn and more skills to attain. We're just expected to keep up with the exponential increase in information.

So how does this affect our communication? When it takes fifteen minutes to recoup from a text message, it's no wonder teachers hate cell phones in class. We can't multitask very well and that affects our grades when 90% of us text every few minutes in class. Imagine if we could eliminate all distractions in class and effectively take notes and pay attention - tests would be an easy review rather than the most loathed experience of all education. Our lack of talent problem would most likely be solved. If we could do the same for work, we'd save billions, literally.

"One estimate for the financial cost to the American economy of such lost productivity puts the figure at as much as $650 billion per year. "
~Daniel Tammet

So why is it that we let these distractions keep going without check? Maybe it's because we'd lose the human side of life if we bound ourselves to such a strict bureaucratic approach. Maybe it's because we just don't want to believe the facts. Until the problem is solved, assuming it gets solved, we'll just keep on lacking for talent and losing billions of dollars.

4 get it

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

 

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. 

FYI: Y have too much I

Here we are, the information age!! Has the amount of information today produced too much mental-pollution just as the industrial age produced too much pollution-spewing machinery? Has the amount of information today really "detract[ed]" from our quality of life, as David Shenk would suggest? I would certainly agree with the observation that the information overload has increased multitasking significantly. Is this healthy? I would offer that, though I've heard that some research suggests our generation is getting better at multitasking, the proliferation of multitasking has been a detriment to society- texting while driving, anyone? Texting while in class, anyone? Ever had to ask your mom to repeat something because you were... texting? Ha ha, okay, I'm not condemning texting, and I really like the ability to text and do something else at the same time. However, I think it is unwise to ignore the fatal consequences of trying to split your concentration between typing "lol" and something like driving. Heck, I've texted while driving before and I realize communication with friends is important but this is human life that's hanging in the balance. If you want any more of an idea of what multitasking can do to someone, watch Seven Pounds, 'nuff said. Again, I'm not condemning multitasking. I'm just warning that the expansion of multitasking is probably doing more harm than good.

Daniel Tammet, also brings up the point that "distraction costs people and companies time and efficiency. I completely agree- by not setting boundaries on personal communication (or just the amount of information one consumes) people are losing time and money. I know that whenever I try to facebook and do homework at the same time, I usually end up doing only one thing: not homework. In fact, Tammet cites research that suggests people need fifteen minutes to refocus after an email or instant message in order to settle into productive work. Imagine the hours of productivity wasted during a single instant message or texting conversation! Tammet, that's a long time!!

The point is made, however, that "information overload may not be quantity of info but our inability to know what to do with it." I think this is an excellent point- when people get accustomed to having information handed to them on a silver Google platter, they want everything handed to them on said platter- including their world view. I think there's a good deal of young people who can't sort through information because they're wandering around in their own TMI-funk, unsure of what they believe because they've encountered so much to believe.

Arnold Brown also provides strong evidence that there is just too much information to keep up with in our society. He says that "[b]usiness increasingly complain that communication is impeded by too much email." I have certainly found this to be true in my personal life. It's nearly impossible to keep track of old friends via facebook, email, phone, im, twitter, text and forge new relationships on top of going to school! Eventually, some of my relationships have dwindled, simply because I cannot keep up with them in the face of everything else I'm doing.

I think ultimately Americans are going to have to accept knowing a lot about a little instead of a little about a lot if we are to combine our expertise into something useful. There is just too much information to try and know everything about everything, and forcing people to ingest colossal amounts of info just to compete is hurting America.

While it's somewhat disjoint from my last point, I feel like this is a handy little quote from Brown to end things with... "Efficiencey-- doing things right-- should not be the goal. Instead, it should be effectiveness-- doing the right things."

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I think that having copious amounts of information (at least on the internet) is quite a good thing. For instance, if I am working on a research paper I want lots of data from which I can draw my conclusions. What about if you end up with too much information to effectively sort through or if much of your information turns out unreliable? The solution is simple: the advanced search. The advanced search is a wonderful tool that anyone can use to widdle down countless stacks of articles into a more manageable, more reliable ones.

Now one might say that the advanced search is limited in its use and cannot hope to protect us from being overloaded by the ever increasing amount of information on the internet, but I would disagree. I think that the idea of the advanced search has implications on all facets of our information intake in that WE, we as individuals can act as search engines seeking out that information which we might or might not ingest. Look at it this way, there is only a certain amount of information you can feed your brain without making yourself sick (sited in the article as “information fatigue syndrome”). For that reason we must and will (for the sake of self preservation) discriminate (where we can) what information we look at, listen to, etc. And as for information that is thrown at us against our will, I think that if we were reaching a point where that was becoming a real problem, we would could find ways to disconnect from and stem that ever flowing tide of information. I mean all it would take would be to give up things like twitter or (gasp!!!) Facebook and most of our worries about information overload would be gone.

And besides all of this, I think we are forgetting one key (and obvious) gift that MOST of us have been given. God has granted us the ability to forget. Sure we are inundated with tons of information daily, but how much of it do we actually remember? I for one can't even remember what I had for lunch two days ago, let alone most of the other stuff from that day. For this reason I think that as normal human beings, our propensity for forgetting things is a natural defense from information overload.

Now let me go back to the beginning of the last paragraph where I stressed the word MOST. What I meant by stressing this word is to bring attention to the fact that the writer of the common readings is not like MOST of us in that he is in fact a savant and subject to much higher levels of comprehension and retention of knowledge. Based on the fact that he is less able to simply disregard or forget information that is thrown at him on a given day, I believe that any views Daniel Tammet might hold on the subject of information overload are inherently biased. I mean how could Daniel Tammet's views on the information intake come close to being relevant when the very way he views data is so completely alien to normal people.

For these reasons, I do not believe information overload is as big of a problem as we have given it credit for.

Our ADD Culture

There really is way too much information and there really are way too many distractions in our culture, as the first article we read pointed out. You may find that when working on a project for school you are actually spending most of that time filing through information or surfing the web on things like digg or facebook (well that applies to me at least). I have one friend who is so ADD, I swear to you he gets distracted from his own distractions when trying to meet a deadline very late the night before. This may be true for a lot of people but what do you expect when we have this magic place called the internet for most of our refernces where any information, valid or absurd, can be pulled up by hitting the "enter" key. This is why some of us, at times, actually begin to hate the internet.

Now as a wise friend pointed out, it's important to differentiate between information and truth, but that seems impossinle to do when we can get hundreds of thousands of results for any given topic on our favorite search engine. Luckily we have things like the "Power Search" as they showed us at the Library presentations (Freshman, you should know what I'm talking about), where we can use a filter to get legit resources from peer reviewed academic journals by experts in their fields. We still can get aburd amounts of results but at least it helps us in the process of narrowing down our potential reading material.

I believe I can remember a lot of details just from reading or watching something one time but there is always a limit to the information we can hold. And as one of the articles talked about, too much infromation can be a bad thing. I liked when it brought up the book Blink because I agree with the argument of instinct. Oddly enough, I base a lot of my life on instinct, so it makes sense to me that acting on instinct is often better then searching you mind for information that may be unreliable. This is why you were probably told to always go with your first instinct whenever taking a standardized test. If you over think something and try to go through all the information in your head you may manage to throw yourself off the righ track.

So though knowing things is good, the proverbial "Man who knew too much" doesn't seem all that absurd.