Now that we’ve come to understand the limits of our memory, we have to ask ourselves, “What information do I learn to keep, and what information can I let go?” Before the invention of the printing press, information in Europe was a critical commodity that was used to separate the elites from the masses. Books were written in Latin by monastic scribes that could only be read by a small minority of the population. Before the printing press, much of the population in Europe was illiterate, and the elite class would use this to their advantage. During this time, the saying “knowledge is power” had a completely different and frightening reality than today.
The invention of the printing press, allowed books to be printed in mass. This created the opportunity for more people to learn to read. This was the first step in the democratizing of information and the ability to stop the reliance on oral communication as the primary tool in education. It was also the first step in information overload.
The Information Superhighway
The second stage in the age of information is known as the information superhighway, a term coined by former vice-president Al Gore. The invention of the Internet became this generations’ mass democratization of information on a worldwide scale. While we still lived in the information age, up until the design of the Internet, information was still a valuable commodity. With the help of the Internet, the masses have learned how to distribute information, religious views, and political views, while providing the vehicle for people of lower means to become educated.
Today, those who want to educate themselves don’t have to look very far. Wikipedia, Google, Khan Academy, and most college courses can now be found on the Internet. Many of the changes over the last several decades have come and gone with little notice. However, the impacts will soon start to reveal themselves as the amount of information available at the click of a button continues to increase exponentially.
The Age of Conceptualization
We are now entering the third wave in the age of information. This wave is a side effect of the information age, and it is referred to as the “Age of Conceptualization.” The Internet and our ability to find information almost anywhere at any time of the day, has turned information into a cheap commodity. Providing information for information sake has become an expectation and not just a privilege. This has resulted in people needing to not only provide information but synthesize it as well to provide value.
Another unfortunate side effect of the information age is the coining of the term “a whole new mind.” It is required of us to survive, as well as thrive in the sea of information that surrounds us every hour of every day. We need to figure out how to seamlessly navigate this sea of information while filtering and synthesizing the information that is important to us.
There are many who will argue that the age of information isn’t a threat to our current way of life. They will point to the fact that our primordial brains could always filter the information it receives.
They will argue that our ancestors, 20,000 years ago needed to filter out individual sounds to discern an antelope from a lion. However, our world of sensory overload is nothing like the world 20,000 years ago.
Our world of sensory overload has been purposely designed to grab our attention. From the pop-ups on our computer screens to the ding on our mobile phones. All of these sounds and images have an agenda. They are all vying for our attention and our money.
Think about the mobile phones that were available just ten years ago. They had nothing more than a tiny monochromatic screen that would allow you to text a few words or read a couple of emails. Today, smartphones are loaded with information. You have a countless number of apps that can do everything from process email, scan documents, play games, access your entire picture library, control your home thermostat, or perform banking transactions, and the list goes on. All of these functions that didn’t exist just ten years ago are readily available, pushing information at you every minute of the day.
Today, we are confronted with an unprecedented amount of information, and we all generate more information than ever before in human history. Dennis Overbye, a former Boeing and New York Times writer, noted:
“this stream of information contains more and more information about our lives – where we shop and what we buy, indeed, where we are right now – the economy, the genomes of countless organisms we can’t even name yet, galaxies full of stars we haven’t counted, traffic jams in Singapore, and the weather on Mars. This information tumbles faster and faster through bigger and bigger computers down to everybody’s fingertips, which are holding devices with more processing power than the Apollo mission control.”
Just trying to keep our own media and electronic files organized can become overwhelming. Everyone has the equivalent of over half a million books stored on their computers, not to mention everything we have stored on our cell phones. Since the Internet was invented, we have created a world with 300 Exabyte of human-made information.
Our brains do have the ability to process all the information that we are bombarded with, but it comes at a cost. We can end up having trouble separating the trivial from the important, and we become tired from processing all this information. Our neurons are living cells with metabolisms. To survive, they need oxygen and glucose. When they’ve been working hard, we experience fatigue. Every text message or tweet you get from a friend, every status update you read on Facebook is competing for resources in your brain along with important things like where you left your passport, how to invest your money, or how to reconcile with a family member you just argued with.
Our conscious mind has the processing capacity of 120 bits per second. This is the amount of information we can pay conscious attention to at any given time. To understand one person speaking to us, we need to process 60 bits of information per second. This means that with our processing limit of 120 bits per second, you can barely understand two people talking to you at the same time.
With such restrictions on our attention, it’s no wonder so many people feel overwhelmed by managing the most fundamental aspects of their lives. Our focus is the essential mental resource that we have. It determines which element of the environment we need to deal with. For the most part, there are various automatic subconscious processes that make the correct choice about what information will get passed through to our conscious awareness.
Unfortunately, we are taking in more information than our brains can handle. The global economy means that we are exposed to vast amounts of information. We now hear about revolutions and economic problems in countries halfway around the world right as they are happening. Our brains are soaking all this information in as it was designed to do, but it is competing with the things that we need to know to live our lives.
Emerging evidence suggests that learning and embracing new ideas is helping us to live longer lives and might even help to reduce our risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. So, it’s not that we need to limit the amount of information that we take in, but rather we need to have a system for organizing it.
