Ignorance Bliss When You’Re Drowning In Information

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Everyone I've talked to recently seems to have developed their own highly personalized strategies for dealing with the world news that now surrounds us.

It wasn't always like this. At the start of my nearly 45-year career in tech, everyone had the same four sources of news: TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. A lucky few might have accounts with early online services like Compuserve or Prodigy to learn what other geeks thought.

Then USENET spread from a few universities to a few well-connected tech companies - most of whom used it to talk tech and science or share facts ... until the .alt groups proved that people can and will argue about anything online.

When the Web erupted, turning everyone into a (micro-)blogger, the number of news channels went to infinity - and beyond.

All that happened despite humans seeming not to be well-equipped for news flows larger than a stream of village gossip. We certainly can't filter at a scale that matches the torrent of information available in the global village.

Many of us are completely overwhelmed, every day, by an onslaught of information that may or may not be truthful, may or may not be personally meaningful, but more often than not feels unwanted and unneeded.

After years of this, we're so sensitive that approaches from anyone we don't already know or trust feel like an intrusion.

Some folks respond by dropping out completely, unplugging themselves permanently, an act of asceticism far too extreme for most of us.

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