Information

[Armen]

I was in 9th or 10th grade and we had this sociology class which was introduced in Soviet schools in the last years of USSR. When my father found out what we study at school he started talking with me about some sociology stuff to give me some alternative. I remember this one coversation til now.

 

There are 5 periods of social creativity this world went through until now:

 

1. Production

2. Commerce

3. Finance

4. Administration

5. Information

 

The civilization that has all the five components can be called a developed one.

For example U.S. has all five of them. Armenia has only Production and Commerce with heavy dominance of Commerce although Production is catching up. Finance and Administration are virtually abscent. And we (Armenia) jumped to Information now. This part is irrelevant for my question, however, I wrote the opening to show where I am coming from.

 

In the end he said to me there will be a time when people will be pressed by information.

 

Now, when already in the U.S. I encountered this necessity to remeber all kinds of unnecessary routine information about all kinds of silly stuff. Like you subscribe for something, you forget to unsubscribe and "boom" 25$. Or you don't read the "terms and conditions" of something and it becomes a pain in the ass.

My friend received 3 cristal American Eagle statues. He ordered 1 as a gift and then he was trying to send those 2 back for 2 months because he didn't read the conditions.

Recently, when I was in DC, I subscribed for AOL free access for 45 days and then forgot to unsubscribe and got billed. Damn! I fealt like a total fool!

Edited October 5, 2004 by ArmeN

[Anileve]

So you are basically saying that we'll be crushed by an overflow of Information, being that we live in a developed country? Are you questioning ethics here, such as the famous argument "ignorance is a bliss"? Or am I not understanding you clearly?

[Armen]

So you are basically saying that we'll be crushed by an overflow of Information, being that we live in a developed country? Are you questioning ethics here, such as the famous argument "ignorance is a bliss"? Or am I not understanding you clearly?

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I just think that the information that people need to know about daily life in U.S. is too much to think about anything else.

[Sip]

There are businesses built around what you are complaining about I wouldn't call it "information overload" ... maybe it's more of a "complexity overload". They make it easy for you to walk into a situation that doesn't trap, but confuses you long enough that they can profit from it. I don't think it's a new concept either.

 

However, although I disagree with your examples as being "information overload", there is definitely a tremendous growth in the information that is becoming available and relied upon on a day to day basis. For one thing, I don't think you'll ever see a scientist like the famous greeks for example in the past that were philosophers, astronomers, chemists, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and poets all at the same time! A guy will be lucky if he is the world's expert on soemthing as specific as different types of KETCHUP these days!!!

 

Automation is one answer to the problem. We have ever expanding sources of data and information, but we also have much more powerful mechanisms to harness, manage, store, recall, manipulate, and communicate the information. The mechanisms are also improving and growing at a tremendous pace.

 

My personal area of research is in sensor networks. With these, you basically can put a lot of sensors in many different environments to learn things about them. As you can imagine, there is a LOT of data that these sensors will see. The challenge is to make meaning out of them and tell whoever is asking for it the relevant information as opposed to dumping tons and tons of useless data out. The way this can be achieved is if the sensor devices themselves are intelligent enough to collectively figure out what to measure, what to compute, and what and how to return the result of interest to the user.

Edited October 4, 2004 by Seapahn

[Armen]

But doesn't complexity come from the overload of information in this case. I mean I have to remember all those small things about every action anywhere. Like there are discount cards for almost everything. If you take all of them you'll have a separete bag full of them with you all the time.

 

This comes from the information because the firms need to advertise (even firms like Coca-Cola put ads, which I think is silly). Clearly my exmples where not the most correct ones.

 

I agree with your perspective of scientists and find it rather disturbing.

 

Also, the possibility of sensors in human environment (I mean the body) is wrong as well in my view.

[gamavor]

The multitude of Information and lack of it thereof lead to social entropy and disorientation. One of the many main problems of the post-industrialized society. Knowledge commonly is defined as structurized information, but information itself cannot be transformed into knowledge without human intervention. Eventually, there are two scenarios for the future; either demise of the information society (we witnessed already the blow of the tech bubble) or prevalence of the common sense over cowboy mentality.

[Sip]

... or the machines take over!

[Twilight Bark]

As with almost all things about human experience, this can be analyzed in terms of freedoms. At one extreme, you have the soviet model of very few, if any choices. You want detergent? Here, this is what the state thoughtfully provided for you. At the other extreme, you have the American model, where each of the dozen brands purposefully fragment into a dozen sub-brands each, with slightly different pitches, in order to get the attention of the shopper. At some point, "freedom from the burden of decision" outweighs the propensity to increase the "freedom to have choices". Presumably, the free market behavior should be able to balance the two freedoms. At some point, you will realize that it's not worth your time to chase after "free this", or "free that", and go with choice that balances the value of your time and sanity with the marginal value of goods you supposedly obtain by "extra choices" and "offers". In other words, Armen, it is time for you to start ignoring those cheesy sales pitches.