From Information Scarcity to Information Overload

In what seems to be a paradoxical way, I happened upon a very thoughtful piece written by Marriah Raphael Starr, a Facebook friend (who I also know in real life) reflecting on the magnitude of change that has taken place since the 1990's. He wrote a very thoughtful essay on Facebook, the kind of essay that I would have found in a newspaper or magazine article in 1990.

Marriah notes that in 1990, "We lived in environments characterized by low system noise, high vitality, intrinsic values, and symbols that accurately reflected reality." And in 2016, all of these aspects have reversed entirely.

Let me explain what he means:

LOW SYSTEM NOISE

Marriah describes the media environment of 1990 as "low saturation." He notes: Only 5 major television channels were available without a cable subscription: NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and PBS. And cable tv was very rare. Records and tape cassettes were stlll the media for people to listen to music. Phone conversations took place over landlines. Cell phones were rare and limited to phone conversations for the few that had them. We did not have 24-7 programming on tv. Word of mouth and the postal service were the predominant ways of receiving messages. Photos were taken on cameras using film and only a print photo album allowed people to share their pictures. E-mail did not yet exist on a mass market level. Nightly news broadcasts and the morning newspaper were the only ways to get state wide, national and international news.

Marriah called this "information scarcity, because information was hard to produce and hard to get." If someone didn't have access to the information contained in libraries, book stores, movie theaters and private homes, Marriah suggests that a "side effect of information scarcity was boredom." And being creative was the only alternative to being bored.

HIGH VIRALITY, INTRINSIC VALUES AND SYMBOLS REFLECT REALITY

Marriah defines high vitality as the likelihood that a good book, song or movie would go viral, because people were bored and any cultural product that received lots of attention, either quickly or over time would reach what Malcolm Gladwell calls "the tipping point." A key piece here, is what Marriah calls "intrinsic values." A good song, good book or good movie was actually good. Some intrinsic property "within the cultural product" attracted people to it. Too, Marriah adds, "when people read a news story in a newspaper in 1990, they could guarantee that the words written in the story reflected what actually happened. When a politician made a speech in 1990, voters knew that the speech reflected real events." Marriah summed this up by saying, "The map is the territory."

He then goes on to explain how all of these qualities have reversed in 2016:

* With the internet, smart phones and online social networks, we live with high system noise, instead of low system noise

* With all these media of information and system noise, "we have gone from information scarcity to information surplus in only one generation"

* Boredom has been replaced by a constant barrage of information from all of our technological information channels (e-mails, smartphones, cable television, infinite videos, infinite websites...)

* Marriah postulates that with such a high information management problem, persuasion is the last thing on people's minds. He believes that it is all people can do to keep up with all of the information that is "pushed at us."

* Marriah says products no longer have intrinsic values, but are designed for specific groups of people. Songs, books, movies and other products may not be inherently good, but with a large enough fan base, there is a market for them.

* As we have seen with the recent election, campaign speeches and news stories no longer have to reflect reality. And many people will still support a candidate regardless of the facts.

Marriah concludes that we have lost control over "the vitality of information, the intrinsic properties of information" and "the connection between information and reality." The best way to survive today, he suggests, "is to maintain low system noise and produce information that reflects our shared reality."

While all our social media are fun and informative in many ways, there is no substitute for the gathering of groups and communities of like-minded and caring people to talk real time, face to face. And from these conversations, organize to speak and take action.

Gridlock, Complexity and Overwhelm

Doesn't it seem that gridlock on the highways is getting worse? Rush hour seems to have bled into most any hour of the day. And whether it is road construction causing slow downs or seemingly more cars of the road, gridlock seems to extend to more places as well as more times of the day. And more "gridlock" experiences seem to be popping up in more parts of life: trying to call an automated phone number for a business transaction, waiting in a longer phone queue with a credit card company, bank or utility, trying to navigate the claims department of an insurance company....Add in climate change, ISIS and constant news reports of the Ebola virus and our fear of it taking over New York City or Boston or most anywhere leading to a catastrophic situation for all, and it seems like the world is rapidly spirally downward. Feeling overwhelmed and stuck in something beyond our control is happening more often to more people every day. As sociobiologist Rebecca Costa studied civilizations that collapsed ( including Mayans Khmer, Romans, Ming and Byzantine societies), she noticed, as my colleague Jed Diamond summarizes in his ManAlive newsletter, "the first symptom of impending collapse was that they all experienced gridlock when the magnitude of the problems they needed to solve exceeded their abilities. In other words, they hit some cognitive threshold where they could no longer understand or manage their biggest, most dangerous problems." As the cultures became overwhelmed they passed their problems on from one generation to the next. In her research, Costa began to ask why. And what she concluded was a simple but powerful force: complexity. In our current, as in past times that reached the brink of collapse, more information was being generated than the people alive were able to process and comprehend. Jed Diamond cites Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, as saying that every 48 hours we produce as much new data as we generated from the dawn of humankind to 2003. As a result, at any point in time, we need to make decisions with only a fraction of the available information we might ultimately need to make the best decision. When there is so much data out there that it is just plain too time consuming and overwhelming to find it and analyze it all, we work with what we can handle, which might mean missing some critical pieces. Diamond writes, "when things become too complex, we have way too many options to consider. The number of wrong choices exceeds the number of "right" choices, and we enter a "high failure environment." Think of yourself when you are stressed. What kinds of decisions to you make under that kind of pressure? Compare your decision making under high stress to your decision making when you can take the time and space to thoughtfully consider a decision. Too much information to consider creates a kind of mental gridlock, and one bad choice leads to another in a domino effect. What do we do to take care of ourselves in a climate of gridlock? How can we keep ourselves from getting overwhelmed and overstressed? 1. Realizing that gridlock is not just a matter of being on the highway at rush hour, but a culture condition, is a good first step. Consciousness allows the possibility for behavioral change. 2. Slowing down and turning to meditative and introspective techniques can help us ground ourselves in the moment and discern more intuitively what is true. 3. Turning off the tv, radio or getting off the computer can help us move away from the information and sensory overload of our media-oriented society. 4. Reaching out to connect with friends and loved ones face to face grounds us in our interconnection and the shared experience many of us have of life today. 5. Pet your dog, take a walk in the woods, sit by a pond or even on a bench in the park. Reminding ourselves we are part of a natural world, and not just an information world can help us ground ourselves and reduce overwhelm. As we slow down, reconnect and simplify, we can step out of the gridlock, even for moments or hours. And sometimes that change of perspective makes all the difference!