
Can we escape from information overload? - pseudolus
https://www.1843magazine.com/features/can-we-escape-from-information-overload
======
blueridge
From Technopoly (1992) by Neil Postman:

In the United States, we have 260,000 billboards; 11,250 newspapers; 11,556
periodicals; 27,000 video outlets for renting video tapes; more than 500
million radios; and more than 100 million computers. Ninety-eight percent of
American homes have a television set; more than half our homes have more than
one. There are 40,000 new book titles published every year (300,000
worldwide), and every day in America 41 million photographs are taken. And if
this is not enough, more than 60 billion pieces of junk mail (thanks to
computer technology) find their way into our mail-boxes every year.

From millions of sources all over the globe, through every possible channel
and medium — light waves, airwaves, ticker tapes, computer banks, telephone
wires, television cables, satellites, printing presses — information pours in.
Behind it, in every imaginable form of storage — on paper, on video and audio
tape, on discs, film, and silicon chips — is an ever greater volume of
information waiting to be retrieved. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we are
awash in information. And all the sorcerer has left us is a broom.

Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the
most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent
direction to the solution of even mundane problems. To say it still another
way: The milieu in which Technopoly flourishes is one in which the tie between
information and human purpose has been severed, i.e., information appears
indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume and at
high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose.

All of this has called into being a new world. I have referred to it elsewhere
as a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a
moment, then vanishes again. It is an improbable world. It is a world in which
the idea of human progress, as Bacon expressed it, has been replaced by the
idea of technological progress. The aim is not to reduce ignorance,
superstition, and suffering but to accommodate ourselves to the requirements
of new technologies. We tell ourselves, of course, that such accomodations
will lead to a better life, but that is only the rhetorical residue of a
vanishing technocracy.

We are a culture consuming itself with information, and many of us do not even
wonder how to control the process. We proceed under the assumption that
information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from
a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to
be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut,
information without meaning, information without control mechanisms.

~~~
agumonkey
> Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering
> the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent
> direction to the solution of even mundane problems.

We can now add one more entry to this. Contagion. Once again all national
surveillance mechanism, almighty as they are, didn't make a dent in avoiding a
pandemic. They know everything about anybody but either resources are spent on
useless errands or political structure is the main bottleneck in nation scale
information processing.

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Priem19
Given the title, there should be a TL;DR.

~~~
milkytron
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

------
heurist
Requires trusted institutions to rise above the noise. Imagine more like
bitcoin than NYT.

~~~
agumonkey
I use to think that the previous era had a better balance in that regard.
We're high frequency high bandwidth but that only raised the noise floor.

------
known
[https://archive.vn/fVUYv](https://archive.vn/fVUYv)

------
chewz
> Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is
> writing a book.

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/56217-times-are-bad-
childre...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/56217-times-are-bad-children-no-
longer-obey-their-parents-and)

~~~
lihaciudaniel
Oh love it Also Cicero

>The poor are working and working >The rich exploit the poor >Miltary protects
both

>Taxpayer pays for all three >Banker robs all four >Lawyer misleads all five

>Doctor bills all six >Goons scare all seven

And politician live happily on the money of all of the above.

~~~
chewz
Good one. World never really change I guess, its human nature.

~~~
sjf
True, but unfortunately this quote only dates back to 2012.
[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ciceros-view-of-
life/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ciceros-view-of-life/)

------
Debonnys
Original link, with no paywall: [https://www.1843magazine.com/features/can-we-
escape-from-inf...](https://www.1843magazine.com/features/can-we-escape-from-
information-overload)

~~~
dang
Changed from [https://www.economist.com/news/2020/05/06/can-we-escape-
from...](https://www.economist.com/news/2020/05/06/can-we-escape-from-
information-overload). Thanks!

------
bergstromm466
Tbh this is mostly because of the plunder of the commons. There are
monopolistic corporate enclosures all around, embedded in a globalized 'free
market' neo-liberal system which has given rise to the most unequitable system
to have ever existed:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnYhZCUYOxs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnYhZCUYOxs)

What inspires me is 'Commons based peer production' (Benkler) and Protocol
Cooperativism using the Holochain pattern (Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun)
- which enables 'free' (as in freedom) mutual-credit community currencies.

------
pixelrevision
Sure! Just add more paywalls!

------
fouric
I can't bypass the paywall, but I infer from the title and some of the
comments that at least part of the problem is the proliferation in the number
of books being written. From what I see, the solution is pretty simple - build
and use book summary sites.

Now, obviously you don't just want to read "Cliff's Notes" versions of
_everything_ \- that leads to shallow thinking. However, many of the
nonfiction books that I've read can have 80% of their value summarized in far
less than 20% of the number of words that they use, and a wise person would
judge whether or not a book deserved this treatment before applying it.

~~~
_Microft
I read the article and it has nothing to do with too many books being written
or basically any of the other comments here.

It is a very interesting story about a man spending increasingly more time in
darkness, the experiences he has there, his return into the real world and how
it influenced his work and how he is now helping others to have similiar
experiences.

PS: reloading the page in Firefox' reader mode showed it in full to me. Go to
reader mode and then reload if you only see part of the article.

------
lihaciudaniel
Imho this isn't a modern problems. Library of Alexandria got burned, Classic
books prevailed therefore those are the only "good" information. If you are
overwhelm just focus the selection e.g Bible , The Harvard Classics. Instead
of reading classics books without any selection you'll get overwhelmed. Just
see how much self help books are there compared to a few old books

~~~
mellow2020
> No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written
> latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an
> improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means
> progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat
> their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule
> everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in trying
> to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the thinkers. So
> that if a man wishes to improve himself in any subject he must guard against
> immediately seizing the newest books written upon it, in the assumption that
> science is always advancing and that the older books have been made use of
> in the compiling of the new. They have, it is true, been used; but how? The
> writer often does not thoroughly understand the old books; he will, at the
> same time, not use their exact words, so that the result is he spoils and
> bungles what has been said in a much better and clearer way by the old
> writers; since they wrote from their own lively knowledge of the subject. He
> often leaves out the best things they have written, their most striking
> elucidations of the matter, their happiest remarks, because he does not
> recognise their value or feel how pregnant they are. It is only what is
> stupid and shallow that appeals to him. An old and excellent book is
> frequently shelved for new and bad ones; which, written for the sake of
> money, wear a pretentious air and are much eulogised by the authors’
> friends. In science, a man who wishes to distinguish himself brings
> something new to market; this frequently consists in his denouncing some
> principle that has been previously held as correct, so that he may establish
> a wrong one of his own. Sometimes his attempt is successful for a short
> time, when a return is made to the old and correct doctrine. These
> innovators are serious about nothing else in the world than their own
> priceless person, and it is this that they wish to make its mark.

\- Arthur Schopenhauer

~~~
lihaciudaniel
oh... i didn't ask for this

