For me to write a piece with the title “Too Much Information” feels insane. After all, I have spent literally decades trying to make information available as widely as I can, and as abundantly as I can. But the internet has changed things and I am no longer sanguine about more being better. I have doubts. So take this as ruminations that lack conclusion, pending more experience.
The problem is broadly Info Glut versus Info Shortage. Are we unduly aggravating the former without effectively addressing the latter, which would be bad? Or are we solving the latter, introducing only minor excesses regarding the former, which would be good?
The context of the conundrum is that valuable info is becoming steadily harder to distinguish from junk. Plus, having too much that is of some modest value can crowd out that which is of essential value, or make it hard to find. Plus, web policies seem to be accelerating the glut and making it harder to find what is valuable, rather than alleviating the glut and facilitating finding what is valuable.
And I am not talking about the mainstream – where these trends are long past viral and now ubiquitous. No, I am talking about progressive offerings. And I am also not talking about the growing presence of advertising and its pernicious effects, or about surveillance, and so on. Here, the information available and its accessibility is all I am addressing.
Okay, one step at a time.
There is certainly Info Shortage. None of know everything that is worth knowing. We don’t even know all that is really important to know to be good citizens, much less to be good activists. Therefore we do need a steady flow of valuable information. We do need progressive and better, radical media. I take that much as an irrefutable baseline claim.
It may seem to follow from that that every well formulated presentation of accurate information about world events, their context, and their implications, will be worthwhile, and thus also that disseminating all of it will be also worthwhile. And, indeed, that has been my general attitude, for decades. But what if there is now so much information that it would take a serious media maven way more time than they have available not only to relate to it all – no one even comes close to doing that – and not only to make sound judgments about what to relate to amidst the information avalanche that is available – but to even distinguish valuable content from junk?
And what if the information avalanche endlessly rolling over us, with almost all the items bemoaning calamity and anticipating more horrible calamity or even apocalypse – not least because it is so much easier and less controversial to write about calamity and apocalypse than about possibilities – is so depressing that it starts to cause people to just want to escape, to just want to quit, to just want to avoid reality? Then, what good is our information effort?
My situation is a bit different than most people’s. Each night, late, and each morning, early, due to my work and associated responsibilities, I examine feeds from many many online sources. I have come to hate doing this. Perhaps there is no difficulty for people who see much less of the information avalanche than I wallow in. But I doubt it.
It used to be, decades back, that there was an information shortage in the mainstream, of course, but it was nonetheless not particularly hard to see the flow that did exist, and to assess what parts you wanted to relate to, mainstream or alternative, and to then do it, learning about whatever you were exploring pretty comprehensively. More, the items that were flowing on progressive venues typically had considerable merit, were detailed, gave context, and so on, or, if not, were easy to avoid.
Nowadays, however, I go online and there are often not even bylines accompanying pieces. One wonders, was the author a robot? Titles are often what is called click bait – provocative snippets which, however, do not really reveal what the article is actually about. The idea is to get people on a page, to see an ad, no matter that it turns out the article isn’t what the person was expecting. Sites also very often don’t bother indicating author names in RSS feeds. Very weird. A piece that is two paragraphs of fluff on a topic will often have a click bait engaging title and appear in a list of offerings indistinguishably, at least to my eyes, from a very serious, well researched, and clearly expressed piece of far greater substance.
Sites may put up a few, or roughly ten or twelve pieces a day, like ZNet, say – or even twenty or thirty pieces a day, in some cases. Among all that, on many sites, there is an excess of titles like Five Reasons for This, Seven Instances of That – where each reason or instance stands alone, often in its own a single paragraph, presented that way either due to mimicking a trend, or more consciously, on the assumption that people will not read extensively much less comprehend a sustained argument. And, yes, there is some steadily increasing truth in the assumption, not least because so much that flows – tweets, of course, but even articles – are now so short that people become acclimated to expecting short and thin content, and begin to see longer and more substantive content, just due to its length, as aberrant or even oppressive. Short, shorter, shortest becomes the driving norm, self replicating and self reinforcing. Thus, there is an avalanche of offerings, much of which is dross, some of which is excellent but hard to find – especially when one only has click bait titles to go by – and nearly all of which seems to reflect, to differing degrees, a bias toward extreme brevity at the expense of context and analysis, which is, of course, horrible for spreading dissident views.
Much of the problem comes from viral popular expectations – like people wanting publishers to give them short because they think long is the new bad. But another part of the problem is the financial squeeze due to the economy and also, and I think even more so, due to people thinking media should be free for them. Needing income, sites feel they need wealthier and larger user bases, which affects what they publish and how they display it. I think this has a lot to do with the steadily increasing number of apocalyptic stories, sex related stories, and, of course, short, shorter, shortest stories that we see even in progressive media.
I don’t want to finger point, not least because I don’t think this is a matter of any single provider’s, writer’s, or user’s ill will or poor motives. Also, to if you think there even is a problem, everyone should be able to judge for themselves. Just look at a bunch of sites.
But as you do so, let me remind you of something from another media domain once also deemed to be an unstoppable vehicle for truth and commitment. My friend Danny Schechter once wrote a book, The More You Watch, The Less You Know(Seven Stories publisher, NYC). It was about TV and its impact and was compellingly documented, providing an insider’s view, and yet, we all knew as soon as we saw the title that, well, of course, how could it be otherwise given who overwhelmingly owns TV stations, production companies, news bureaus, etc. etc. Schechter proved the cover assertion, and revealed many associated dynamics. He still watches TV, I am sure, and it doesn’t make him dumber, I am also sure. But the over-arching trend that TV leaves typical viewers increasingly ignorant is no less real, despite exceptions.
So here is a question that I think this essay raises. Is internet media and activity making us more accurately aware, more productively and seriously involved, and more sincerely connected with others? Or is it making us less accurately aware, less productively and seriously involved, and less sincerely connected with others – not to mention often unduly frazzled, depressed, and derivatively cynical? Whatever the condition is today, I fear we are rapidly trending toward bad.
One more anecdote. A friend of mine who teaches college level told me that he and faculty he knows are at wits end regarding how to teach their students. Apparently lectures are becoming useless. Students sit with a mobile phone or a tablet in their laps, doing things that demand minimal focus and brief attention, like Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, quick browsing, flitting from one to the other, with the attention span of mayflies, rather than thoughtfully attending to serious lectures, or even to texts, for that matter. I only wish this was because the students were learning more, and becoming more engaged and creative, by looking in their laps and ignoring their faculty – but I doubt it.
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3 Comments
Ed,
I don’t quite see why your comment is appended to this article – admittedly it is about media, and information, as is the article, but it really doesn’t address points raised in the article. It seems like you may want to post a blog with your own views…
And for others reading here, I see this a lot in the comments section – not just on ZNet, but all over. Maybe I am just old fashioned, but it does seem to me that comments should be where people address points raised in pieces – whereas blogs or articles are be a good place for people to offer their own points. Similarly, in comments people often put promotion for things they like. I don’t get that, either. Why not use forums or blogs for that?
Your comment baffles me and makes me wonder exactly what are the points raised in this article? We are flooded with too much information? Is this making us more or less effective as activists or protagonists Is internet activity to blame for this glut of information? From my perspective those are the points I was trying to address. As I tried to say it’s not about the quantity or even the quality of “information” nor about information technology – in response to the points I thought you were making. The very nature of what constitutes “information” and how that affects communication as a social relationship is what I tried to discuss. Maybe I just read too much into your article and the “points” you were trying to make? Pardon me. What really baffles me is why you want to stifle discussion of those points – whatever they may be? What difference does it make if I write a blog or make a comment?
A big part of the problem is the way “information” is structured and presented. Some sources, i.e. the U.S. and Ukrainian juntas still follow the Joseph Goebbels method: make the lie big, repeat it often enough and people will believe it. Today however, most corporate mainstream media and many internet “news” and information sites are much more sophisticated. For them, information, aka propaganda, is a blend of fact, half-truth and lies. “Information” is skillfully packaged not to provide objective facts in relevant context, let alone “truth,” but to manipulate your thinking – usually lack thereof – to serve specific agendas, usually that of the patriarchal elite. Trying to sort this out is difficult if not impossible for most people.
The root of the problem is that most people receive the vast majority of their information second hand – through the media and internet, and to a much lesser degree books and newspapers. Getting your information as interpreted by another person is quite different from information that we get through direct experience or by talking to another person face to face. Technology has not just transformed the way we receive information but the nature of information itself. It has created an information world where personal agendas and propaganda reign supreme.
This is compounded by the way the people are hierarchically socialized. Patriarchal socialization mechanisms such as religion and mainstream education focus on getting people to unquestioningly obey and believe authority – whether that be God, your father, your teachers, “elected” politicians or the TV, internet and other media. Thinking independently and critically is actively discouraged if not prohibited – as is questioning authority. What passes for education is little more than conditioning people to unquestioning acceptance of hierarchical authority.
Although I have often wondered what the world would be like if all communications technology after the printing press was banned, for better or worse we are stuck with receiving most of our information second hand. That is why there is really little substitute for thinking critically and independently about all information you receive from all sources. To do this, it is important to judge all second-hand information against our own direct experiences.
Another important tool for sorting out fact from half-truth and lies is developing trust in your sources – something that has always been fundamental in getting information from direct face to face communications. Modern world communication, based as it is on propaganda, has replaced trust with unquestioning acceptance of authority. Sadly, in the modern world, everything you say, hear and read can and will be used against you.
Sharing information is a fundamental part of communication. Like other social relationships, trust in your source is key to separating truth from half-truth and lies. But, these days, trust, like heroes, is hard to find. Trust however, is something that is not the unquestioned prerogative of authority but a process of integrating second-hand information with your direct experience. Like they say, you can’t believe everything you read –and see – on the internet. And don’t believe anything you see or hear on TV!