Licking the Razor's Edge (2015)

The CONSEQUENCES of our INFORMATION ADDICTION
It is important for us all to realize that our information addiction – regardless of how it
manifests itself – is anything but harmless. Indeed, the often compulsively ignorant ways
we gather our data have consequences for our lives that are as far-reaching as they are
destructive.
HARM #01: INFORMATION ADDICTION DULLS our BRAINS …
Ironically, the more we strive to obsessively fill our brains with “facts” and “truths”, the
less efficiently our brains become at processing that information.
In 2010, there were about 1.2 zettabytes of information available on the Internet. (One
zettabyte, by the way, is equal to one billion terabytes – with one terabyte is equal to one
million megabytes.) … Also, in 2010 alone, there were over 255 million websites online,
there were over 107 trillion emails mailed, and there were over 25 billion tweets sent.
Of course, while computers can transfer this data at 2,000,000 bits per second, a human
brain can only register and manipulate 126.
What this all means is that there is way more information out there than anyone could
ever hope to effectively process. In fact, in order to function at all in such an “information
overload”, we have been forced to alter the ways we focus and learn …
We allow incoming mails and tweets and newsflashes to interrupt our conversations and
our activities. We then are forced to rapidly “skim” the incoming information to sort out
which interruptions are important to enough to require an efficient response. As a
consequence, our attention spans have been dramatically shortened and our ability to
concentrate has been dramatically lessened.
There is so much information out there that we subconsciously believe that we need to
stuff more and more information into our brains just to keep up. Ironically enough, the
more of this information we wolf down, the less we actually understand about the world.
You see, the basis of all real understanding is grounded in the realization that all things
are connected by what separates them. Information addiction, on the other hand, requires
that we take thousands and thousands of bits of information and sort them according to
how they are different. The more we “learn”, the more differences we identify … the
more differences we identify, the more complex our world becomes … and the more
complex our becomes, the less we deeply comprehend its underlying Meanings.
In essence, the more we learn, the less we know;
… the “smarter” we get, the dumber we function.
“The addictive nature of the Web can leave you with an attention span of about nine
seconds … the same attention span as a goldfish.” ~ the BBC
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