Information Overload

Information Overload
1-17-05

Use this week's readings to reflect on how your life is affected by information (too much? too little? just enough?) . Develop three discussion questions for class.

I really enjoy the technology that we have easy access to like phones, televisions, and computers. On the other hand, I have very mixed feelings about the internet and the “Deep Web.” Just the other day I was trying to find a quick definition of Marxism for one of my seminar classes, and do you know what I found? Everything except a quick and readable definition that made sense. I got Wickipedia and crazy readings on the subject that nobody I know would even understand. What happened to the good old days?

Do you remember in elementary school when you had to do a one page book report? The whole class would go to the library and do “research” on their topic. We would look through encyclopedias, reference books, browse the shelves for something that had your topic in the title. Then, if we didn’t finish our report we had to go home and our parents would take us to the library. There was so much less expected of us, because there was not that much available information. Now the 3^rd graders are doing research projects on the internet and they don’t even have to leave their home to get 50 times as much information as they need or want.

Information overload not only affects adults, but children as well. There are no standards for putting information on the internet, so you never really know for sure how credible something is. With all of these people producing websites and dumping their thoughts into their computers, it makes it hard to find anything at all. There are only so many quotations, ands, ors, and parenthesis one can squeeze into one search box. Even with all of those useful tools one can come across nine or ten thousand results.

That is such a difficult question to force myself to answer… I guess I do believe there is way too much stuff out there for people to read, but actual information I’m not sure. If there was an easy, readable, understandable explanation for everything I don’t think we would be overloaded, but there’s not. So yes, I think my life is affected by information overload way more than I wish. It was much more simple back in the day when we used real, tangible resources that were credible and trustworthy.

Three Questions:

1. Being brought up in the beginnings of this technological revolution, do you think we are actually dependant on information overload?
2. How do you know for sure if a source is credible?
3. Would you rather have the information overload that is present now, or a lack of information that is easier to manage and retrieve?