Fast-Paced Information, Fast-Paced Evolution

"We swim in an ocean of data, accessible from nearly anywhere, generated by billions of devices." -Jamais Cascio

What a profound statement. This quote (posted in the July/August 2009 edition of the Atlantic) most certainly reflects our fast paced, information streaming, social media-based society. With everyone constantly connected to their laptops and smartphones, we are able to go on Youtube and see videos of protestors in Egypt, click over to NBC.com to read the latest on-site report by Brian Williams, put up a link to the article on Twitter, and post our thoughts on the matter on Facebook within a span of 15 minutes. 20 years ago that last sentence would have been pure gibberish. Today it's what we do while we drink our morning coffee.

Of course the web is changing how we think. The internet provides users with a never-ending stream of information which we consume at an ever faster pace. In that same article by Cascio, he states, "The trouble isn’t that we have too much information at our fingertips, but that our tools for managing it are still in their infancy." In the days where the morning paper and nightly world news shows were the main sources of world information, managing the data was simple. People read the paper, watched the news, and continued about their lives. Today, Katie Couric reports that Walmart will not be building a store near a Civil War battleground, and we immediately look up the history of Walmart on Wikipedia and if any famous people were involved in the Battle of the Wilderness.

Take a look at this article posted on Engadget and see if you're one of the 86% of people who access the internet while watching TV. Are you? I know I am.

Is this a bad thing? Is the fact that our attention spans are getting shorter because of the information overload an issue? If you watch a Microsoft Bing commercial, they'd like you to think it is. The problem is not that we're overloaded with information or that we can't focus. It is human nature to strive to know more and to learn. The real issue is, just as Cascio felt, that we don't yet have the means to organize the information because the medium through which we access it is so new. Ultimately, technology is evolving and it is up to us to evolve with it.