Information Overload= Overwhelming!

The amount of information that early scholars had access to many years ago was overwhelming. Now with the internet we seem to have an endless amount of information that we can access with a click of a mouse.  I would say that is pretty overwhelming. Steve Mollman from CNN states that it is normal to feel overwhelm by the sheer volume of information that can be accessible on the Internet. Sites are competing for the reader’s attention—Facebook, Twitter.

The internet acts as an easy retrieval tool. Instead of memorizing loads amount of information, we can refer to the internet for easy access to the information needed. In Ms. Jardine’s podcast she mentions that there are too many books and too little time. I feel that the internet is a great tool that allows us to access this information in a quicker fashion. In addition, people feel that they do not have enough time to sit down and read a book. Instead they can skim an article on the Internet, which goes back to Carr’s article and if Google is making us stupid.

One point that Jardine mentioned was that because we have access to an infinite amount of information how do we determine what information is important to memorize? There is just so much information that there is no possible way to remember it all! Therefore, we need to “prune” the information we gather, or take the information that is useful to us. But how do we know what information to “prune” out or which information should be extracted due to its importance?  

Mollman, in his article, states that if you feel like you are missing out on the content of the article it is most likely that you are. In Mollman’s opinion, there is just way too much information out there that there is no way to fix this problem. One approach that is being used to weed away some of this information overload is via predication. For example, the My6Sense app for the iPhone uses algorithms to learn about the user. It figures out your interests by analyzing your behavior through the articles you read, the links you click on, and whether you share the content with other people. Nevertheless, the more you use it, the more this app gets to know you. This app potentially could be offered on many online services.

Hemp, Paul. "Death by Information Overload - Harvard Business Review." Harvard Business Review Case Studies, Articles, Books. Sept. 2009. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://hbr.org/2009/09/death-by-information-overload/ar/1>.

Mollman, Steve. "How Can We Cope with Information Overload? - CNN." Featured Articles from CNN. 03 Feb. 2010. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-03/tech/content.overload_1_content-rss-algorithm?_s=PM:TECH>.