Saturation
One of the problems with too much information is that it actually becomes counterproductive to decision making. It is called Paralysis by Analysis. You keep seeking more and more information so as to improve your chances of making the right decision and in the end time runs out and you make no decision or a rushed, poor decision after all.
Of course the internet and the 24-hour new cycle means that we are awash, positively drowning in information on literally anything and everything, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to know and I would suggest care, what information is factual and not opinion or propaganda.
The algorithm that drives Facebook is a case in point. It only took one click on a reel of a feed from a camera, mounted near a trail in the Alaskan wilderness, to suddenly start getting more and more reels of wolves, bears and moose walking past the camera going about their daily business. Admittedly, quite interesting at first. Oh look there is a Lynx, so that is what they named that ubiquitous male body care product after. How cute are baby bears? Howling wolves are scary. But soon I was bored.
Same happened with music reels. I don’t really want to know how to play Black Sabbath’s most famous riff, but for some reason at the time, I clicked on it and I was shown very professionally with tablature how to play Paranoid. Ditto with how to do different drum fills or play triplets like Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham. The drum instructor is amusing and certainly talented but why was I watching this? I don’t and never have had a drum kit. Casual interest is swamped by the algorithm until you are quickly repelled. There are even sub genres in this field where parents put up videos of their 10-year-old kids shredding the guitar neck, playing super difficult famous guitar solos or banging massive drum kits or where pretty young girls wear skimpy clothes whilst showing their mastery of the guitar. Sort of a soft porn version of here is how to play the intro to Hotel California.
So you steer clear of that and start looking at any content. Content about movies or boats or space or neo liberalism or chemistry or anything and bang the feed quickly takes you away from preteen age guitar geniuses to new money theory or those chemistry videos where two substances combine to create something three dimensional and truly freaky. Which is fine once or twice until it too becomes like the worst form of advertising.
This information, this entertainment, these diversions can chew up minutes, hours of the day, of your life and are mostly unrelated to the real world you live in. And they are all second hand. As a one off there is no real harm done but it is the difference between one donut or twenty a day. It is the accumulation that is the killer.
For me the result of all this information is an increasing difficulty to think logically and form an opinion of the stuff that I think matters, not what the algorithm thinks based on momentary interests or fancies. I am getting older; I find it better if I have less clutter both physically and in my thought processes. But the truth Is I am struggling to care about what happens in Gaza, or Ukraine or with climate change. I am starting to feel that the problems are too big, too far away, too intractable, and what I care or do will have an incredibly small impact, if any. And a lot of this is due to the feeling of being swamped.
I realise that this may not be such a bad thing. The world is going through immense change and it is not going to stop. The human brain has a finite capacity for the enjoyment or the acceptance of change and I think we are exceeding that capacity. To wallow in some feel-good animal videos or master the chords in the Foo Fighters Everlong are understandable retreats. But the real world just keeps coming at you and you have to decide - are you an active participant in any way or just sitting in the canoe and letting the river takes you where it does. I always wanted to be active but thanks to the information deluge now I am losing my interest and perhaps even my capacity to care. And I don’t like it. I just haven’t quite worked out what to do about it.
