Information
Overload
“One
of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually
in a state of information overload. There’s always more than you can cope with.”
Marshall McLuhan
We live
in “the information age.” On one hand, that’s a good thing—you can learn almost
anything anytime day or night. The internet accommodates schedules in a way that
traditional learning venues never have. We can communicate face-to-face
whenever we want. We can access news from places we didn’t know existed until now.
We can get scholarly opinions and evidence-based science and we can read almost
any book that’s ever been in print. On the other hand, we are constantly
overwhelmed by the shear volume of information, the number of opinions, and the
amount of mis- and dis-information that’s mixed in, and so nicely tossed
together that no one knows the difference between real and false. This
cacophonic alphabetical assault is just as stressing to our body/mind as
sitting in traffic on the expressway for two hours.
During
the early months of the pandemic, I listened to our local NPR station almost constantly. I heard the same news stories repeated multiple times over the course of every day. I’m grateful
for the information that comes from reliable news sources, of course, but the
constant flow of words and information duplicated over many hours is simply
exhausting. At the end of the day, we want to be winding down, stress free and
relaxed so that we can sleep well—and constant news is simply the opposite of
that.
Some of
us take media sabbaticals. We limit the number of screen and audio hours per
day and spend time in silence. I decided to do this when I became aware that I
was filling the gaps in technological discourse with simple sounds—I talked to
myself out loud, or I talked to my dog out loud. When I was not talking out
loud, simply having conversations with invisible people, I was singing. It was
almost as if my brain had become addicted to the constant stream of words and
sounds, and didn’t know how to be with silence anymore.
Information
overload causes a nasty soup of stress chemicals to be released in the brain.
Over time, it’s like pouring battery acid in there—it makes us do stupid things
by distracting us and filling up our heads with noise. As you may know, one of
the first and most effective means of digital warfare is to overload servers
until they crash. It’s the same with our brains. They need rest to be accurate
and effective.
Today
is a Sabbath. Take a media break. Give your poor brain a chance to recover from
constant overload. There will be plenty of opportunities to catch up tomorrow.
For today, let’s rest.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment