By Vaughan Bell
The Slate -February 15, 2010
A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the
first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a
landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people
with data and that this overabundance was both "confusing and harmful"
to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the
unprecedented risks of living in an "always on" digital environment.
It's worth noting that Gessner, for his part, never once used e-mail and
was completely ignorant about computers. That's not because he was a
technophobe but because he died in 1565. His warnings referred to the
seemingly unmanageable flood of information unleashed by the printing press.
Worries about information overload are as old as information itself,
with each generation reimagining the dangerous impacts of technology on
mind and brain. From a historical perspective, what strikes home is not
the evolution of these social concerns, but their similarity from one
century to the next, to the point where they arrive anew with little
having changed except the label.
No comments:
Post a Comment