Info Overload

Lisa Jardine’s podcast solidifies my stance about Mr. Carr’s thoughts.  Google probably is making us stupid, but we are victims of Google through no fault but our own!  I almost feel like what Jardine was saying makes Carr’s argument okay.  Sure, Google is making us stupid, but we have to rely on it anyway, because there’s no possible way to remember every bit of information we ever receive. 

As I mentioned in my previous blog, it’s possible for me to have multiple tabs open and be working on many different things at the same time.  In an article from USA Today, AOL executive Brad Garlinghouse says, “Consumers don’t have the bandwidth to process so many fragmented convos online and often, at once.”  Yes, it is possible for me to have all of these things going simultaneously, but perhaps I don’t have the mental capacity for it all.  Garlinghouse suggests that the industry do something about it. 

So how can we avoid the stupidity that Google is creating while keeping up with technological advances?  Luckily, that’s a problem for the producers, not the consumers.  While they continue to alter their IM availability, we can just sit back and continue reading about it all on Google.  I don’t need to worry about an information overload while we still have Google around! 

Jardine talks about a fear of losing hard copies of information, but until the Internet explodes, I’m not going to worry.  Even if a great website goes down, there will always be another place to find what I need.  Unfortunately, this news is a double-edged sword.  Perhaps this is teaching us to be persistent until we find the information we need, or is it teaching us never to remember anything because we’ll probably be able to find it again later? 

Swartz, Jon. "Social Media Users Grapple with Information Overload." USATODAY.com. USA           Today, 2 Feb. 2011. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-02-     01-tech-overload_N.htm>.