Week 14: Too Much Information

I felt like I could relate to all of the readings this week. I often feel like there is too much information out there, that I can’t keep up, and that it’s causing me to be unproductive.

           

Going in order of what is on the syllabus...

I’ve heard that females are better than men at multitasking, but I still don’t think I’ve very good at it. This test made me think I might have an overall concentration problem – toward the end of the test I gave up to just get to the end.

Some of the information in the “7 Things” article I had heard before, but the simple advice of saying “I don’t” is intriguing – I wonder why that is more effective.

The “Faking Cultural Literacy” article made me laugh out loud. I do many of the things the article describe: gleam headlines or social media posts to get enough information to be able to converse or “pretend” to know about whatever topic, but not actually going to the primary source (oh how I’ve strayed from my journalist roots). It is sad to me, though, that “our cultural canon is becoming determined by whatever gets the most clicks.”

The data on how too much information affects us is scary – IQ scores of those distracted by e-mail and phones calls dropping an average of 10 points, which is twice the decline of those smoking marijuana; information overload costing the economy $900 billion a year; turning to email 50 – 100 times a day; 24 minutes to get back on task after opening an email; email worsening the quality of life of 31 percent of workers. I’ve tried to answer emails only at certain times during the day, but I often find coworkers then coming and asking if I received their email. Maybe I should try again.

The “No Time” article added interesting context to where we are today in society. When the author cites Pieper as stating that overwork is the true moral lapse, it reminded me of a recent conversation with a friend. I was lamenting not taking care of myself very well because of time demands and unnecessary pressure I put on myself, she brought up how in the Old Testament in the Bible God commanded a day of rest and the society at that time lived that out. God did not need the rest, but we as humans do, she suggested that it is sinful to work yourself to exhaustion.  I hope I am alive for the future time when we “look back on today’s crisis of information overload as a transitional phase…which preceded the development of social and institutional practices capable of imposing greater order.”

It is interesting that the people in the focus groups in the “Taming the Information Tide” article focused on the useless details of people’s life being shared on Twitter, to me that platform is Facebook, although I don’t follow as many friends on Twitter so that could explain why I do not have that same experience.

The “Social Media in Contemporary News Consumption” was a nice academic article on the subject. The article got my attention right away with the comparison of the amount of information consumers are exposed to. That a single Sunday edition of The New York Times contains more information than typical 19^th-century citizens faced in their entire lifetime explains a lot! While I’m sure we have adapted to modern living, our original intent wasn’t to have so many relationships and so much information to keep up with.

Other interesting things pointed out in that article include that even though we are surrounded by 24-7 news feeds, individuals are uninformed about current events, and that news organizations should push diverse topics to readers, versus similar topics. Most news sites I frequent tend to push similar stories.