Information Overload: Telecommunication - Article Example

INFORMATION OVERLOAD Technology provides lots of convenience to modern lives. Telephones make it easier to communicate, kitchen appliances let us cook faster, and cars get us where we need to be. But technology also has a dark side: it can sometimes get in the way of an authentic life; it can also reduce the intimacy and fellowship between people. The information byproducts of technology can swamp our lives. There are many examples in our everyday lives: some relating to environmental pollution (for example, the cloud), popular culture (the endless references), the gaseous pollution and human relations generally speaking. In some ways technology creates an artificial barrier between life and non-life. A lot of people are ambivalent about technology. In my personal life I use it a lot. I have an Ipod and when I go out for a walk I always listen to my tunes. Instead of listening to birdsong I have earbuds and listen to manufactured music. I also use the Internet to read newspapers from around the world. I use a stove to cook my food. I have a fire alarm in my house to protect. Technology is everywhere. But I think it has increased a lot over the last few years. Now I mainly chat to friends via facebook rather than in person and watch a lot of TV and movies on my computer and on the television. These things have crept over me to consume more and more of my time. Consumerism, it can be argued is making people lead empty, unauthentic lives. It is sucking the energy and joie de vivre from them. This consumerist culture is further subject to media propaganda and announcements on daily basis: the news is always on the radio and TV—it is omnipresent. Communication is relentless: remote devices, stereophonic systems, cell phones, satellite television, super-conductors, supersonic sound systems etcetera become handy tools for influencing popular culture and people, but all to what end? To some, this might be a kind of paradise, but there are many who would find it quite horrifying, especially those who are already suspicious of the influence technology has on their lives. Personally I am a bit ambivalent and can see both sides of the problem. I experience information overload sometimes, but believe that the right balance of information can be very productive and good. We see the way technological goods overshadow present-day American society and how what sometimes seems to be a wholesome dependence on computers, automobiles, junk food, easily available pornography, in fact makes our lives more automatic and our only purpose one of seeking entertainment. It shows more the enslavement of the human mind at the hands of modern technology than benefits of technology to America. There is always the hum of some machine in the background drowning out key parts of the conversation. There is the constant noise of the radio and the news informing on every detail of the outside world. I know this is definitely true of my life. In order to cope I often just shut everything off and listen to the silence for a few minutes. Technology can hinder, but it can also heal. It can provide the technology for heart surgery, but it can also damage the heart through endless junk food. And generally speaking this is the main ambiguity or ambivalence we live with. The whole point is to learn what kid of technology is good for you and which kinds are bad for you. You also have to learn how to adapt to technology and make is useful in your life. The truth is some too much information tends to drain people of the meaning in their lives. We can see this in part in the increased amounts of depression in our society. And yet it can also allow us comfort, convenience, and ease it provides to people. A vacation is always only an airplane away; any disease can be cured with a drug. It is this linkage of technology and information, human behavior and perversions that is so important to the success of our contemporary lives. It is a sad testament to the power we have ceded to our machines that we have so little power over what we do and think anymore, even if we are swaddled in safety and comfort. Technology terrorizes people rather ‘inadvertently’, as it were, through toxic leaks and other unexpected, uncontrollable events. It gives the illusion of control, but nothing more. It is becoming ever ubiquitous as well despite all its concomitant injurious effects leading to the near constant “imagining of death” in the minds of many people. People can be in different places, talking simultaneously, and feeling different things. There is the illusion of closeness, but no real closeness. Who can we trust: man or machine? The answer is that both have their flaws. We should be suspicious and watchful of everything—including ourselves and our various impulses and feelings. Postmodernism has a tendency to point out various existing discrepancies in the various narratives around us and points relating to technology and human existence. It is largely drawn from existential limits to human patience. Too much information can be a bad thing. In “The Scene of the Screen,” the critic Vivian Sobchack writes about how the massive cultural infusion of movies, video games, and computers have altered the way we see ourselves in the world and even the way we interact with one another. Wherever we go in public, there is a constant barrage of moving pictures that are trying to communicate something to us, often in a repetitious manner. Our “presence” in the world is shaped and constricted by these images. Sobchack inherits an argument made by Heidegger that technology is not merely used but also uses. While something like the wheel, for example, made life much more convenient it also altered our patterns of behaviour. It helped create roads and shape the ways people went from one town to the next, and how they thought of themselves. Likewise, Sobchack argues, modern technology—often represented or played out on a screen—has created enormous possibilities for entertainment and convenience, but also altered our way of existence and how we see ourselves in this world. One of main Sobchack’s main points is that this technology may be making us more superficial. Just as photographs took the subject out of time and fixed his or her immediate image in one place to be observed forever, so might the endless imaging and recording of our world do the same to us. She seems be very critical of this idea or at least to believe that it is happening without us really realizing it. One of things we lose in the information overload is the truth. Anyone can suggest their theory and swamp out the truth. It is always interesting to examine the reasons why people embrace such theories. Most of these people lack political power in the first place, which can help explain why they seek it through mass communication and an effort to convince others to follow their own ideas. They feel empowered by “taking on” the government and establishment. Delusions of grandeur soon follow. Another important element to consider is the hobby aspect of the moon hoax. This is a kind of mystery that people can spend hours devoting themselves to in an effort to unravel it all. Every new detail they find out about can be added to the hypothesis they are building. This people are playing at science using the same basic framework of real scientists to deduct facts and conclusions, but their standards are much lower and they are much more easily swayed by extraneous information. They feel themselves becoming a part of history as they delve into the minutiae of the momentous occasion. They feel themselves becoming important. A feeling perhaps they have never felt before in any of their other endeavours. This contributed to a kind of theory overload which is similar to an information one. As one writer would later say of conspiracy theorists, all the confounding facts of the momentous occasion are “examined like runes and held up to the light like talismans, small shards of some awful psychic puzzle” (Cocks). This is a very useful statement as it shows us the propensity of some people to come up with myths and fantasies when they have difficulty believing what the government tells them. They latch on to extremely complex theories. For the moon landing conspiracy thousands of people would have to be involved, but no one has ever come forward with hard evidence. The complexity of the hoax would require much more work than actually sending someone to the moon. And the implications of such a conspiracy—the government is massively lying to its citizens and with impunity—beggars belief. The truth is that in cases like this we should turn to Occam’s Razor: “The simplest explanation is usually the right one. Detectives use it to deduce whos the likeliest suspect in a murder case -- you know, the butler did it. Doctors ­use it to determine the illness behind a set of symptoms. This line of reasoning is called Occams razor. Its used in a wide variety of ways throughout the world as a means to slice through a problem or situation and eliminate unnecessary elements.” Technology is a difficult thing and information overload is one of its big products. The main thing we must do is be vigilant about its impact on our lives. We have to keep our eyes open and never rely on anything too much. Works consulted Cocks, Jay. (Dec 22, 1980). “The Last Day in the Life.” Time Magazine.. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924600-2,00.html Liu, Alan (2004). The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information, University of Chicago Press Popper, Frank (2007) From Technological to Virtual Art, Leonardo Books, MIT Press Stewart, Thomas, (2001). Wealth of Knowledge. Doubleday, New York, NY Read More