Young Writers Society

It happens all the time. Something major happens and soon everyone knows about it. Every magazine, newspaper, website and news channel jump at opportunity to be the first to cover this story. It may be something so simple, but soon it is picked apart piece by piece as it is mass produced. Everyone wants all the information they can get. Unfortunately, much of this info people access isn’t accurate or even worth reading. This creates an information crisis we call Infobesity.
Infobesity, information overload, excessive info, it doesn’t matter what you call it. It all means the same thing too much information. This may not seem like a big issue, but Infobesity is a growing epidemic. Today, people can access information about anything from anywhere. Even so, this problem has been around for centuries.
In Sharon Begley’s article “I Can’t Think” she quotes Gottfried Leibniz, a German philosopher and mathematician, who complained of a “Horrible mass of books which keeps on growing.” Begley also quotes Alexander Pope in the 1729 when he stated “a deluge of authors cover the land.” Imagine either of them seeing a kindle or a nook, or how many e-books cover the Internet. Imagine what they would think if they knew that the kindle and the nook are making the old-fashioned book they know obsolete. They would consider us crazy people with more information then we know what to do with. Think about it. In today’s world you can read a book from an iPhone, while texting someone and listening to music..
Even as recent as 2001 we did not have the mass of information that we have now. After the September 11th attacks people had no YouTube to endlessly feed people images. They was no iPhone for the people in the midst of the attacks to record the tragedy. Most of the footage we have today is from camcorders which rarely used today. The problem has been growing forever, but the crisis was first named “Infobesity,” in 2003, by James Morris a computer science professor from Carnegie Mellon, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Some people thought we had a lot of technology then, for those people the problem has only gotten worse.
Everyday we are assaulted by thousands of pieces of information, but this justs dumps more fuel on the fire. With every new technology, new website, new anything there are millions of people who jump at the opportunity to use this new technology. The numbers keep rising. According to searchengineland.com there are 3 billion Google searches done each day, and that’s just one search engine. There are 2.5 million Facebook status updates in one hour, and 600 tweets every single second. We are taking full advantage of these search engines and social networking sites. The number of cell phone calls are also on the rise. As stated on deadzones.com there are approximately 6 billion cell phone calls made in the U.S. alone each day. That breaks down to a little over 4 million per hour. That number will keep rising because, more is never enough.
We always want more, but everyday we are attacked by more information then, we know what to do with. This onslaught of information beckons to us everyday, and most of us follow it. However, this info tsunami has been hurting our brains. Our brains are assaulted, constantly by a immense amount of information, in a short amount of time. The rate of this information is endless. It starts small, but grows and grows until there is more information then can ever be found, or used for that matter. When you are looking for something you have to go through masses of websites that seem to all say the same thing, just in different ways, that makes it harder for your brain to determine weather or not it is worth remembering.
It makes it very hard on the brain but, our brains do it all the time. We have been trained to scan through masses of information at once. This may seem like a good thing, but it is hurting our decision making process. When we need to make a decision, we feel the need to gather a lot of information about our options, for example when picking a collage. One can look at all the different things Universities have to offer, and comments people have made about it. A person can get so immersed in all the little details that they forget about the big picture, and end up regretting the choice they made. That may sound a little crazy, but we all are guilty of it.
We search for the newest and latest information all the time. We never stop to ask if it is true, we just repeat it. Information has become almost like a social currency. Having the latest information can help enhance your status. If you are the first to know about a new phone on the market, or a new movie, everyone will begin asking you questions about it and soon your story could become popular news. There is a race for information among the youth of today, to have the newest and best information. Companies like Apple and Microsoft are only making this problem worse.
Apple, Microsoft and companies like these are always making new products. This makes it faster to get new information. For example the introduction of 4G which is so much better then 3G, and that will be great and fine, until 5G comes along. Everyone will love 5G until years later when 10G puts it off the market. It will keep becoming faster and faster to get information, because people will keep eating into the game. People keep getting all this information almost as if it is food, as if they need it. All this access information is like fat in the brain. Soon the brain is so full of info it hurts, but by then we can’t stop. We become addicted, like others become addicted to food. At this point Infobesity becomes almost as bad as Obesity.
Technology is revolutionized everyday, and we love it. We are becoming addicted to fast information. Once we start we can never stop. More is never enough. Author Tim Challies compares us to a Golden Labrador Retriever. The dog eats and eats until it becomes sick then it continues to eat. This is how some of us are with information. Some people read and read and observe, and never pause to digest. . Fortunately for these people there are Infodiets.
There are many types of Infodiets, just like there are many types of food diets. There is the Junk Food Infodiet in which you can watch your local news, a world news, such as Entertainment tonight, newspapers, and all the magazines your heart desires. On the other hand there is the Starvation Infodiet, in which you read no newspapers or magazines, you can watch no television and depend on your friends to hear the news.
There are so many ways to describe Infobesity. From a massively overproduced story, to a simple search engine. People love information, and people always will. More is never enough, and until it is Infobesity will reign over us all, or at least most of us.