I agree that since the printing press, there has always been an overload of information. I believe that as technological advances evolve, it is the access to a compounding aggregation of information that is the growing issue and the ease of access to it - the instant accessibility of it in a form (digital) that is always at hand. If you combine this with the erosion of education that encourages critical thought (Peter Hitchens rightly said that “when I was young, we were taught how to think. Now, children are taught what to think”), coupled with technology that encourages a lackadaisical and apathetic ambivalence to the value of critical thought, we have a perfect storm of the intellect. Education was turned into a metric-driven target-based endeavour in which students AND teachers gamed the system to achieve targets by lowering standards. That is, the product of such policies produce a society where intellect has been replaced with instantly gratifying sound bites, shorts, chats etc. Rather than fight the onslaught of technology-led erosion of critical thought, society is embracing the ease of information, and any information is consumed rather than useful information. I say that this “perfect storm” is tantamount to the decline of civilisation, which is one in which social evolution has fallen far behind technological evolution.
Really appreciate this reframing—info overload as a recurring challenge rather than a uniquely modern crisis. Makes me think less about escaping it and more about how to train for it. Excited to see how your book builds this out!
Well dang, if your book explores different approaches to meaning, and maybe demonstrates how to browse (constructively) or do it curiously or deeply, I'm in for it already.
How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler - that was a game changer for me. It was the first time I came across the idea that some books aren’t worth your time and he gave strategies for how to figure that out quickly.
it's actually really nice to read something from this angle, and I appreciate that a lot. it’s grounding to remember that “overload” isn’t novel, even if the vectors are. but I think what’s changing now isn’t just volume, it’s structure of how it's presented, and how inextricable it is - in that it's almost impossible to escape. look at people suddenly becoming obsessed with wellness, control, de-stimulation, it's not the over-thinking hermit of the past, it's a narrowing of options for cognitive output that can't be, nor should be, funnelled into productivity or academia, so it results to sensorial, embodied control/focus.
Past scholars were overwhelmed by excess, yes, but they still operated within environments that assumed continuity, linearity, and stable containers of knowledge.
Now I think it's more disorientation - the information overload isn't just at unprecedented volume, but it's occurring when you wake up in the morning and your phone has 42 notifications. It's also, mostly nothing. There's nothing of depth to parse, and so the brain in its way, to keep you alive, discards. Discard is more the default, but even the brain has limits.
Pattern has replaced presence. Fracture is the baseline, not the threat. Our tools don’t just deliver content, they shape cognition, and I think it needs to be not just compared and consequently considered, it's interesting sure, and helpful framing, but the reality is we simply do not think the same way anymore, and continue to hyper-speed into new modes of cognition to cope.
And note-taking can’t solve that. In fact, it doesn't. Look at the commercialisation of ADHD "tools" (including categorised notebooks), profiting off it's overdiagnosis (yes I said it) with tools that actually don't address the fact that if these things worked, we wouldn't need so many re-writes or options for it.
We don’t need better curation—we need structural fluency. New mental architectures. Otherwise we’re just chewing books while the ground beneath our chairs disappears.
"But perennial problems need perennial solutions, meaning each generation is responsible for developing those techniques that will allow us to continue to live the life of the mind, to pay attention to those things that deserve our attention, to maintain a thought in the face of distraction."
Thank you for the interesting piece and the final sentence. I am looking very much forward to your book, but will enjoy your posts in the meantime.
Well written. A term I use to describe this issue is Infobesity and the larger issue is that it starts to stack biases which don't result in an accurate representation of reality. I like how you tied in how it's not a new problem and that solutions exist. I'd love your thoughts on infobesity! https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/avoiding-infobesity
"There are tens of thousands of jeremiads written by thousands of Jeremiahs, and you can read them all on your smartphone." - nice. The flood picture also made me chuckle.
I appreciate the optimistic tone of this - seeing and acknowledging the problem, then figuring out how to live with it. From what I can tell there is now a wider acknowledgment of the problem, and skepticism of tech companies' motivations, so I think this is a good time to be developing solutions. I look forward to your book, and your further developing of these ideas in your writing and videos until then.
This reminds me of the quote I use on my social media account banner. "We must be indifferent about those things which make no difference." Marcus Aurelius
I'm currently reading Blair's book "Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age" -- it is wonderful and I highly recommend it. I'm reading it from a slightly different angle from the historical construction of libraries and how our current information management systems were established by Renaissance scholars which is useful when teaching students how to conduct scholarly research.
“The man of knowledge in our time is bowed down under a burden he never imagined he would ever have: the overproduction of truth that cannot be consumed.”
Reading this post made me think of a quote I recently came across in Saint Jeromes Letter 107,
“Others you should read, not to follow them, but to judge them. But read Cyprian, read Athanasius, read Hilary, read the good teachers of the faith, and let your heart learn from them as a disciple.”
I am still working through my own thoughts on how to pick works that I can follow as a "disciple" and those that should be read with a critical eye. But anyway, those are my problems. Thank you for a good read!
I agree that since the printing press, there has always been an overload of information. I believe that as technological advances evolve, it is the access to a compounding aggregation of information that is the growing issue and the ease of access to it - the instant accessibility of it in a form (digital) that is always at hand. If you combine this with the erosion of education that encourages critical thought (Peter Hitchens rightly said that “when I was young, we were taught how to think. Now, children are taught what to think”), coupled with technology that encourages a lackadaisical and apathetic ambivalence to the value of critical thought, we have a perfect storm of the intellect. Education was turned into a metric-driven target-based endeavour in which students AND teachers gamed the system to achieve targets by lowering standards. That is, the product of such policies produce a society where intellect has been replaced with instantly gratifying sound bites, shorts, chats etc. Rather than fight the onslaught of technology-led erosion of critical thought, society is embracing the ease of information, and any information is consumed rather than useful information. I say that this “perfect storm” is tantamount to the decline of civilisation, which is one in which social evolution has fallen far behind technological evolution.
Really appreciate this reframing—info overload as a recurring challenge rather than a uniquely modern crisis. Makes me think less about escaping it and more about how to train for it. Excited to see how your book builds this out!
Well dang, if your book explores different approaches to meaning, and maybe demonstrates how to browse (constructively) or do it curiously or deeply, I'm in for it already.
Very good post. Can I translate part of this article into Spanish with links to you and a description of your newsletter?
How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler - that was a game changer for me. It was the first time I came across the idea that some books aren’t worth your time and he gave strategies for how to figure that out quickly.
it's actually really nice to read something from this angle, and I appreciate that a lot. it’s grounding to remember that “overload” isn’t novel, even if the vectors are. but I think what’s changing now isn’t just volume, it’s structure of how it's presented, and how inextricable it is - in that it's almost impossible to escape. look at people suddenly becoming obsessed with wellness, control, de-stimulation, it's not the over-thinking hermit of the past, it's a narrowing of options for cognitive output that can't be, nor should be, funnelled into productivity or academia, so it results to sensorial, embodied control/focus.
Past scholars were overwhelmed by excess, yes, but they still operated within environments that assumed continuity, linearity, and stable containers of knowledge.
Now I think it's more disorientation - the information overload isn't just at unprecedented volume, but it's occurring when you wake up in the morning and your phone has 42 notifications. It's also, mostly nothing. There's nothing of depth to parse, and so the brain in its way, to keep you alive, discards. Discard is more the default, but even the brain has limits.
Pattern has replaced presence. Fracture is the baseline, not the threat. Our tools don’t just deliver content, they shape cognition, and I think it needs to be not just compared and consequently considered, it's interesting sure, and helpful framing, but the reality is we simply do not think the same way anymore, and continue to hyper-speed into new modes of cognition to cope.
And note-taking can’t solve that. In fact, it doesn't. Look at the commercialisation of ADHD "tools" (including categorised notebooks), profiting off it's overdiagnosis (yes I said it) with tools that actually don't address the fact that if these things worked, we wouldn't need so many re-writes or options for it.
We don’t need better curation—we need structural fluency. New mental architectures. Otherwise we’re just chewing books while the ground beneath our chairs disappears.
"But perennial problems need perennial solutions, meaning each generation is responsible for developing those techniques that will allow us to continue to live the life of the mind, to pay attention to those things that deserve our attention, to maintain a thought in the face of distraction."
Thank you for the interesting piece and the final sentence. I am looking very much forward to your book, but will enjoy your posts in the meantime.
If we pay attention to everything we pay attention to nothing.
Well written. A term I use to describe this issue is Infobesity and the larger issue is that it starts to stack biases which don't result in an accurate representation of reality. I like how you tied in how it's not a new problem and that solutions exist. I'd love your thoughts on infobesity! https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/avoiding-infobesity
I’ll definitely come back to read this later when I have some time!
How do you really know if a book is worth the time if you haven’t read it?
By the smell of it.
Or by skimming it.
Or by reading the first or, if not spoiler-prone, the last pagevof it.
Or by pure, delicious prejudice against the author (Ayn Rand, anybody?) of it.
Or because there is a line in which the author takes the piss off Ayn Rand (selected a book on this basis last week).
Or because it has not been written by Lawrence. Or Ayn Rand, of course.
Or by the fact that I heard there are valorous Russian soldiers and scheming aristocrats and a lot of snow in it.
Or by being famous as a modernist sprawling monster.
Or by the general idea that it may be worth reading it.
Inexhaustive list.
Please feel free to add circumstances.
I think this is the best answer to a question I’ve ever asked online! It’s so brilliant 😀
"There are tens of thousands of jeremiads written by thousands of Jeremiahs, and you can read them all on your smartphone." - nice. The flood picture also made me chuckle.
I appreciate the optimistic tone of this - seeing and acknowledging the problem, then figuring out how to live with it. From what I can tell there is now a wider acknowledgment of the problem, and skepticism of tech companies' motivations, so I think this is a good time to be developing solutions. I look forward to your book, and your further developing of these ideas in your writing and videos until then.
This reminds me of the quote I use on my social media account banner. "We must be indifferent about those things which make no difference." Marcus Aurelius
I'm currently reading Blair's book "Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age" -- it is wonderful and I highly recommend it. I'm reading it from a slightly different angle from the historical construction of libraries and how our current information management systems were established by Renaissance scholars which is useful when teaching students how to conduct scholarly research.
I'm about to crack open that book as part of my research for my book.
“The man of knowledge in our time is bowed down under a burden he never imagined he would ever have: the overproduction of truth that cannot be consumed.”
Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
Reading this post made me think of a quote I recently came across in Saint Jeromes Letter 107,
“Others you should read, not to follow them, but to judge them. But read Cyprian, read Athanasius, read Hilary, read the good teachers of the faith, and let your heart learn from them as a disciple.”
I am still working through my own thoughts on how to pick works that I can follow as a "disciple" and those that should be read with a critical eye. But anyway, those are my problems. Thank you for a good read!