Editorial

Sitting in a school building, its hard to miss the fact that information is… EVERYWHERE. I’m sure you, like me, didn’t think twice about it, this is of course a place of learning. But really, take a look around you. There’s a few dozen posters on the wall, 20 or 30 books on the shelves….and right around the corner there a set of 20 computers linked to the internet, each holding an infinite amount of facts. American seem to have reached a new high. Our sources of information truly know no bounds.

Since this is the case, why is it that while the availability of information grows at an explosive rate, our abilities to comprehend, retain, and analyze information, seem to be steadily plummeting? The plethora of information available in the 21st century has led Americans to become hyper stimulated, resulting in a serious damage to our ability to process any information at all.

While we adore wikipedia, and can’t imagine life without google, what many of us fail to realize, is that there is a fundamental difference between information — the stuff made so abundant by technology and our fast paced world, and knowledge — the actual insight we get when we’ve had a chance to sort through things and figure them out. Psychologist Robert Butterworth says we need mental “content filters,” like the filters many people use on e-mail programs, in order to sift through all the information thrown at us every day.

“There comes a point,” Butterworth says, “where you have to decide which information to look at and which information to overlook.” The problem itself seems to be an oxymoron of the highest order, we are informing ourselves to death. The negative implications of the information overload we as society are experiencing, arises from the psychological field, society and the individual. Perhaps the best solution to all this is the simplest one: turn off the computer, unplug the t.v, close the book, and take a moment to think about what you’ve seen, heard and read.

Sitting in a school building, its hard to miss the fact that information is… EVERYWHERE. I’m sure you, like me, didn’t think twice about it, this is of course a place of learning. But really, take a look around you. There’s a few dozen posters on the wall, 20 or 30 books on the shelves….and right around the corner there a set of 20 computers linked to the internet, each holding an infinite amount of facts. American seem to have reached a new high. Our sources of information truly know no bounds. Since this is the case, why is it that while the availability of information grows at an explosive rate, our abilities to comprehend, retain, and analyze information, seem to be steadily plummeting? The plethora of information available in the 21st century has led Americans to become hyper stimulated, resulting in a serious damage to our ability to process any information at all. While we adore wikipedia, and can’t imagine life without google, what many of us fail to realize, is that there is a fundamental difference between information — the stuff made so abundant by technology and our fast paced world, and knowledge — the actual insight we get when we’ve had a chance to sort through things and figure them out. Psychologist Robert Butterworth says we need mental “content filters,” like the filters many people use on e-mail programs, in order to sift through all the information thrown at us every day. “There comes a point,” Butterworth says, “where you have to decide which information to look at and which information to overlook.” The problem itself seems to be an oxymoron of the highest order, we are informing ourselves to death. The negative implications of the information overload we as society are experiencing, arises from the psychological field, society and the individual. Perhaps the best solution to all this is the simplest one: turn off the computer, unplug the t.v, close the book, and take a moment to think about what you’ve seen, heard and read.