information_overload

=**Information Overload**=

We get overloaded when there is too much information for us to effectively process or assimilate. "The term was coined in 1970 by Alvin Toffler in his book __//Future Shock//__. (Wikipedia, 2006.) The proliferation of information is a hallmark of the information age and network society that we live in. ICTs facilitate this development and transfer of information. The technologies that enable our information and communication infrastructures are designed to efficiently process the vast amount of information we create and channel through them. However, the capacities of these technologies far exceed our own physical and mental abilities to effectively process information. As a consequence of this disparity, information overload is increasing in prominence. It is a threat to our health and productivity, and also to our information society that, itself, exacerbates the problem.

=Symptoms and Potential Effects=

Information Fatigue Syndrome
//Information Fatigue Syndrome// was coined and first documented in 1996 by psychologist David Lewis who described the effect as //increased tension and ill-health// resulting from information overload. (Reuters, 1996, Shenk, 1997 quoted in Heylighen, 1999.)

Other symptoms and effects documented from Lewis's analysis and in subsequent independent works (Bezroukov 2006; Heylighen, 2002,) include:


 * paralysis of analytical capacity,
 * increased anxiety and stress,
 * greater self-doubt,
 * poor decision-making and potentially dangerous errors in judgment,
 * difficulties in memorizing and remembering,
 * reduced attention span,
 * a tendency to blame others, and
 * alienation.

=Potential Causes=


 * //Large amounts of currently available information, a high rate of new information being added, contradictions in available information, a low signal-to-noise ratio, and inefficient methods for comparing and processing different kinds of information can all contribute to this effect.// (Wikipedia, 2006.)

Volume of Information and Sources
Two commonly cited causes of information overload are the //vast amount of available information// and the //vast number of disparate sources of information//. (Wikipedia, 2006; Heylighen, 2002; Good, R., 2006) The following statistics help to place the roots of these claims into perspective.

A 2003 report sited that the Web contained about 170 Terabytes of information. (Lyman et al., 2003.) As of June 2002, the publicly accessible Web contained approximately 3 080 000 Web sites, with an average of 441 pages per site, and a total of 1.4 Billion Web pages. (O'Neill et al., 2003.) This was only the public Web; Significantly larger were the amounts of information created that year through instant messaging — 274 Terabytes — and through email — 400 000 Terabytes. (Lyman et al., 2003.)


 * //According to Star Ledger (February 10, 2002, p 3) Jupiter Media Matrix, a// //New York// //Research firm estimated that Americans received an average 410 spam messages in 2000, 571 in 2001 and can expect 1479 by 2006.//(Bezroukov, 2006.)

Information Smog and Low Signal-to-Noise Ratio
"[The] overabundance of low quality information, which Shenk (1997) has called 'data smog'," (Heylighen, 1999,) is the principle cause of a low signal-to-noise ratio. The metaphor is, ironically, an //unclear// one in this instance: the more smog present compared to the amount of clean air present in our atmosphere, the more clouded our vision through it becomes.


 * //In the context of the Information Age, the term is used to describe the proportion of useful information found to all information found. Apart from the increase in information in absolute terms, there is the additional problem of the decline in relevancy or pertinence of returned documents [from a query.] The ease and low-cost of online publishing…has led to a predictable glut of information which is often trivial or useless.// ... //But even without deliberate attempts to achieve irrelevancy, the amount of information on the web causes a query about any given matter to return many results that are either unrelated or only tangentially useful. This abudance of information quickly lowers the signal-to-noise ratio.// (Wikipedia, 2006)

=Potential Solutions=

Various logical technologies have been, and continue to be, developed since the early 1970s to improve the effectiveness of sorting, searching, and comparing operations on vast amounts of electronic data. Some of these are loosely categorized and listed here:

Cataloging Technologies

 * lists,
 * indeces,
 * threads,
 * search engines,
 * databases, and
 * hyper-links.

Filtering Technologies

 * hyper-links,
 * SQL,
 * search engines,
 * email filters,
 * cookies,
 * web-portals,
 * gated communities (metaphorical reference) and walled-gardens,
 * RSS (Good, R, 2006,)
 * expert agents (heuristic, fuzzy-logical, and statistical analyses)

Semantic Technologies

 * electronic-footprint tracking,
 * data mining,
 * T9,
 * AI agents (statistics and probability, neural networking),
 * hyper-links and meta-data containers,
 * blogs (Good, R, 2006,) and wikis,
 * Semantic Web (URI, RDF or Notation3, XML.) (Berners-Lee.)