Information overload

Although I'm generally a fan of new digital shenanigans I appreciate that it's not all fun and games for everyone. For example, I accept that it's possible to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available online.

At a conference on digital media I attended earlier this year, a delegate asked the panel despairingly "how do you deal with information overload?" The term 'infobesity' was used, adding a nice, quasi-medical twist.

The panel pointed out that this isn't a new problem. How many books are printed every year? How many films are released? How many TV shows are broadcast over how many channels every evening?

Germaine Greer is now posting over on the New Generation Arts blog and gives a similar answer to this question:

"Communication overload was around long before we had digital technology. We've had to pick our way through too much information for a generation."

So there's a sense that there is 'too much' information out there but it's nothing to get stressed about. That's good to know, but we still need a way to manage the unmanageable. How do we do that?

Without thinking about it consciously, we've each developed systems to navigate through high volumes of irrelevancy and dross. Our systems may use guides, reviews, recommendations, experimentation and dumb luck. These systems can apply to news, books, TV, film, music... and the internet.

For example, we trust in search engines to bring us the information we need. Friends tell us about websites or email links to things we might like. Bookmarking service like del.ici.ous can be used to save and share links to websites

Large communities gather on sites such as Digg and Reddit to sift through articles, promoting the best. Stumbleupon caters for the experimentation/dumb luck end of the internet browsing market.

Increasingly, trusted curators are doing the digging so others don't have to. Many blogs (such as the one I run, Created in Birmingham) do this job, as does Mahalo, a human-powered search engine.

It's true there's a lot out there but it's nothing to worry about, honestly.