Kathleen Parker's column yesterday was about how we're exposed to too much information. In it, she notes that "the world produced 161 exabytes (an exabyte is 1 quintillion bytes) of digital data" in 2006. "[T]hat's 3 million times the information contained in all the books ever written. By next year, the number is expected to reach 988 exabytes [emphasis mine]."
This is, of course, truly astonishing. I tend to believe that humans are pretty adaptable - impressively capable of parsing the constant barrage of information - but information overload has been shown to...well...make us dumber. Parker continues:
[...] brain research shows that we do our best thinking when we're not engaged and focused, yet fewer of us have time for downtime. (If you have to schedule relaxation, is it still relaxing?)
Daydreaming, we used to call it. Ask any creative person where they got their best ideas and they'll say, "Dunno. Just came to me out of the blue." If you're looking for Eureka -- as in the Aha! moment -- you probably won't find it while following David Gregory's Tweets. Or checking Facebook to see who might be "friending" whom. Or whose status has been updated. George Orwell is . . . More likely, the ideas that save the world will present themselves in the shower or while we're sweeping the front stoop. What the world needs now isn't more, but less. The alternative to mindless activities for the mindful is turning out to be not a less-informed nation but a dumber one.
Unchecked "infomania" -- yes, there's even a term for this instapathology -- can lead to a lower IQ, according to a 2005 Hewlett-Packard study. The research, conducted by a University of London psychologist, found that people distracted by e-mail and phone calls lost 10 IQ points, more than twice the impact of smoking marijuana -- or comparable to losing a night's sleep.
I certainly don't want my IQ to drop 10 points. So, what are your thoughts on this? Are we exposed to too much information? Clearly there is an astonishing amount of it out there, but is that necessarily bad? Can we, if we choose, ignore the plethora of needless information while still being able to quickly summon that which is useful? What does this mean for future generations more dependent on this network of knowledge?
I'm not surprised by the findings of this research. In fact, I've been on a mission to limit my interenet and other media exposure over the last month or so. I realized that I was on the computer much too long each day - not just doing work (my business requires quite a bit of internet use) but also trying to keep up with a large number of blogs and other regularly visited sites.
ReplyDeleteWhile I appreciate the diverse interaction and information gleaned in this way, I also recognized the need to GET UP AND DO SOMETHING!
So, I have organized my favorites tab with blogs I read daily and those I hit weekly and then I had to eliminate a bunch just because I need the time.
The TV is only on only in the evening and only for those shows I really want to watch. I have discovered that there aren't that many. I've gotten rid of the movie channels; if I really want to see a movie I'll rent it.
Mostly, I'm trying for a more well rounded life because I feel like I've gotten into a rut.
The computer still has a place, just not center stage.
While I appreciate the diverse interaction and information gleaned in this way, I also recognized the need to GET UP AND DO SOMETHING!
ReplyDeleteI am terrible when it comes to this. I spend the vast majority of the time I'm awake on the computer - all day at work and then hours more when I come home.
Spring's coming though so I should be getting outside soon.
Brian - I definitely think we are all suffering from information fatigue - & I think it is sapping our ability to reason things out, think for ourselves, etc. As the article talks about - I myself struggle for "daydreaming" time, if you will, time to just let my mind be at rest. The next generation is not learning this skill at all. My students are on information overload - much of it trivial & getting in the way of useful info. And my colleagues as well. They are all addicted to texting (constant contact), twitter & facebook. ESP! facebook - I have friends who confess to being addicted to it. I am a lousy FB person myself - mostly because of the trap that I know it is - a constant distracting presence that imparts trivial info about peoples' lives.
ReplyDeleteLike Rocky I am trying to limit my on-line time these days. Email is required for work, then there is blogging, then there is facebook which, as I said, I try to limit my use of. And like Rocky it is because I sense a downside occurring in my own life because of it.
However - there are of course positives to email, blogging, facebook, etc etc etc. The trick, I guess, is how we manage it. The younger generation, however, unlike those of us who are older, don;t have the same frame of reference that we do - i.e. remembering a time when we were not all wired to the world. So I do wonder if the realize how it is affecting them & the quality of their communication skills, their reasoning skills AND! their sense of privacy.
Sorry for the long comment - but this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately as I see facebook screens lit up all over my campus!
Squid - Long comments are more than welcome.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this is true or if it's just my wishing it were true, but I have wondered if the advantage younger people have as a result of being connected to so much information is a well-developed ability to cut through the crap. We have been on information overload since we were young, and as a result we may be better equipped to ignore a lot of the useless information than older generations.
That's not to say young people can't fall prey to the information vice - we do all the time. Maybe most striking about young people is that we seem to very often choose to focus on useless information - much of Facebook, for example.
But I still tend to think humans are very adaptable creatures. It will be interesting to see how having so much information impacts us in the long run.
Actually - this subject came up in one of my classes recently. My students were generally surprised to learn from me the wikipedia is unreliable as is much info that they google. They were generally, naively surprised. I had to explain the difference between adjudicated, for example, academic journals versus blogs, wikis etc. Some of them really didn't understand & were generally puzzled to learn that they had to learn to be more savvy & cautious about what they find on the internet. They need skills that my generation never needed to have. And I'm NOT! that old!
ReplyDeleteThat's really interesting. That distinction between wikis and academic journals seems like a no-brainer to me, but I deal with scientific research all the time for my job so I'm probably not a good judge. (I do practically worship wikipedia, but it has its notable drawbacks.)
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm just trying to justify my generation's obsessions.
Beware of wikipedia! Way back at the beginning of the life of this ZONE blog I did a post about reports of certain entries being re-written by people who did not ideologically or morally etc etc etc agree with certain people, events etc written about in wikipedia. In other words - subversive revisionist history.
ReplyDeleteI myself recently found a write-up on wikipedia about an historical figure from my particular area of research - the bias with which the person was written about was appalling - yet couched in the most authoritative sounding of academic speak. Again - another example of the re-visioning or re-imaging of history from biased - unajudicated - points of view.
Ah yes, "Useless Info'mation, Supposed to Fire My Imagination!" Good responses all.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Squid that young people may be looking at things in a very different context – to those in their twenties, older people may well seem obsessed with privacy and uninterrupted concentration to a degree that is downright quaint. I don't want anything to do with social networking sites, "friending," twittering, or anything like it. To me, all that would constitute an invasion of privacy and/or an intolerable waste of time.
One frustrating thing I've run into is not so much a failure to realize the occasional shakiness of the Net as a source of authoritative info but rather an astounding lack of initiative on the part of some. Google offers a wealth of information – much of it excellent or at least very good – at your fingertips, and yet one runs into people who either can't or won't do the most basic research, even though it would only require showing enough wit to rustle up a decent search phrase and choosing a couple of likely-sounding pages to compare for soundness and compatibility.
As someone who's been through the doctorate mill, I would suggest that there has always been an issue in modern times with alleged "information overload" – Matthew Arnold, after all, lamented the world's increasingly "multitudinous" character: so many theories and voices! How to sort them all out? How to get back to that Wordsworthian meditative moment when, as Wordy saith, "we are laid asleep / In body, and become a living soul: / While with an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things" (Tintern Abbey, lines 45-49). I suggest to my most advanced students that they need to be at once ruthless and respectful of secondary sources (criticism, I mean) – they should consult some, but not get swallowed up in a mass of contradictory information and interpretation, of competing theoretical approaches and polemical agendas, etc.
I find that over the years my concentration has suffered somewhat – I work mainly with my laptop, and I'm always having a look at online news and whatnot. One needs a break now and then, so perhaps it's not so bad. In truth, the only time I've ever been able to concentrate for hours on end was when I was a child, so it may be that all this positing of absolute, unbroken intellectual effort involves some self-mythologizing, though it's a fair point that we've come by some shiny new ways to divert ourselves and thereby be our true scatterbrained selves.
Anyhow, just wanted to offer one simple-dino practical suggestion: some of what we identify as "distraction" with regard to our computing habits may have to do with fatigue rather than broken concentration. Did you know that you can get special eyeglasses for working at a laptop or desktop computer? They're calibrated to suit the distance between your eyes and the screen, and they have a special anti-glare coating. When I wear my "laptop glasses," I find that they reduce eye strain considerably and that as a consequence I don't become drowsy or wander off mentally after only twenty or thirty minutes, as I do when I try to do my computing without them. The other fatigue-inducing thing we do is to stare at the screen for long periods instead of looking away at something fairly distant once in a while. If you stare at the screen too long, it's just short of hypnotizing or stupor-inducing.
Squid - I knew people tried to game wikipedia, but I did not know of any historical accounts that were biased. Back in the early days of that site, I heard a study that showed it was at least as accurate as regular encyclopedias. Sadly, it sounds like times may have changed.
ReplyDeleteStill, wikis have their place - as long we recognize their weaknesses.
Google offers a wealth of information – much of it excellent or at least very good – at your fingertips, and yet one runs into people who either can't or won't do the most basic research, even though it would only require showing enough wit to rustle up a decent search phrase and choosing a couple of likely-sounding pages to compare for soundness and compatibility.
ReplyDeleteI think this point is really important - the issue is not just information overload, but how we use the information we're given. I have wondered before if having so much information at my fingertips makes me lazier. For one thing, if I can't find something after only a brief search, I just say "forget it" and move on.
As for special computer glasses, I have not heard of them, though I have a somewhat related tale. My uncle told a story of a guy he worked with who had laser eye surgery. After the surgery, he was struggling to see his old CRT computer monitor - he even had headaches as a result of the strain. So they switched him over to an LCD screen, and he was fine. If generations of people start having eye problems, we'll know that sort of thing wasn't enough. Glasses for all.
(Also on a related note, a recent study found that people who regularly play first-person shooter video games have better eyesight.)
Yes, we live in a world with information overload AND too many distractions.
ReplyDeleteI live in the city and don't use a car. When I need to get anywhere I have lots of public transportation choices. I ride the bus a lot. Short and long distances. What I've observed is that younger people, almost without exception (I feel sooooo terribly old) are plugged into their MP3s and iPods. I never see any of them reading, say a book, and forget about a newspaper--who read those anyway (*timidly raises hand*--I do.)
I love music. And I own two devices, and MP3 for rock, jazz, blues, etc. music, and my iPod for my opera and classical music.
But when music is the constant noise in your ear when your not working or interacting with other humans or yaking on the cellphone, that means people have no time to be silent, still, comfortable with one's own thoughts.
That just doesn't seem to be part of our culture any longer. At least not what I've observed.
How can anyone be creative with constant distraction, noise in your ear? How can you, say, write a poem, think of a subject to paint or find a perfect object to photograph.
Doesn't the brain need silence to work on that sort of creativity? Or at least the impulse that inspires it?
Of course, I may be completely off here. Maybe it's just a matter of being able to multi-task.
I like silence. Stillness.
Shaw - I don't think you're completely off at all. A lot of people pretend they can multitask, but they're lying - no one can really do that.
ReplyDeleteAnd I like silence too. Sometimes there's nothing as peaceful as thinking your own thoughts.
"Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness"
ReplyDelete-Beckett-
Nothing comes out of "tasking" but more of it and our pop culture is an unnecessary cocoon from which we emerge all alike, if we emerge at all; making the same pop gestures, uttering the same pop rejoinders and concatenations of pop cliche and pop cultural references and opinions; with the same infatuations and attitudes as the "real" people we see in podcasts.
Expression? That's what pop culture is for: be different, buy a Toyota, drink Coca Cola, listen to nouveau riche millionaires play gangster on your iPod and memorize their bits and bytes of words and memorize them so you can be and sound just like them! Express yourself! Get 6-pack abs and buns of steel, drink sports water, buy a FuckYouVee and whatever you do -- pump up the volume!
Bloggingdino: I always want to return to J.S. Mill on issues of taste because his analyses are so prescient about the middle class's misguided search for authenticity and originality in a consumer-culture that renders such qualities all but meaningless.
ReplyDeleteApropos of Captain Foog's comment, remind me to bookmark this quote as a Swash Zone classic.
It seems when pop culture insinuates itself into our lives, it does so only in the service of commercial sponsors, leaving us with nothing but a spiritual emptiness.