Information Underload
Just about three years ago, I wrote Information Overload.
I’m trying to decide if I feel the complete opposite or exactly the same. I don’t bother trying to keep up on everything any more – I’ve learned to accept that I can’t – though I do still consume a lot. I find that I get restless and bored quickly if I don’t have something to watch, something to read, or something to do. Like Against Me! said in Don’t Lose Touch:
Constant entertainment for our restless minds.
Constant stimulation for epic appetites.
That’s pretty much what I’ve come to expect. There is almost no time that I don’t start to feel a little antsy if I have nothing to do for more than a couple minutes. I need a book, or a magazine, or RSS feeds on my iPhone, or at least a new podcast. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing: riding the train, waiting on hold, waiting for a file to download, sitting in a conference call about something I’m not involved in, even walking home – I feel like I need constant input. There’s so much out there, so much entertainment and information, that I feel like I’m just wasting cycles if I’m not accepting some kind of input. Sometimes I’ll even be watching a show I really like on TV, and I’ll fire up Google Reader because it’s just not quite entertaining enough.
You know, now that I actually put all that into words, I have to imagine it would qualify as Internet Anxiety Disorder. But how can you not want to take it all in?
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I think you’re right that we’re starting to learn how to accept that we won’t be able to consumer all of the information that is interesting that we have access to. That and tools are becoming smarter, making it easier for us to sort through everything out there and find the pieces that we really care about. Email is still a huge problem for me though, I get too much and current tools don’t help me filter it well enough.