Information Overload

A summary of:
Schultze, Q. J. (2002). Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age. Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, MI, USA.
Chapter 1 - Discerning Our Information

The main point of chapter 1 is that we "are all succumbing to informationism: a non-discerning, vacuous faith in the collection and dissemination of information as a route to social progress and personal happiness" (26), which, incidentally, "derails any quest for moral wisdom by emphasizing the is over the ought, observation over intimacy, and measurement over meaning" (21). What this means is that:

(1) We report the happenings of things without being reflective of their implications, particularly in the long-term: "Cyberculture is so focused on the here and now that it implicity rejects the human need for a long-term vision, let alone a moral compass" (28). Meanwhile, I would argue that there is a bit of a war being waged on the authenticity of the "is" - in that popular media (I'm talking about you, Fox News!) leverages its title as a "news" organization to spread half-truths and lies masquerading as "fact"; the result of which is that as our faith in the "is" increases, our reasons for having this faith decreases. Who should we believe? I think this is why many people are taking the easiest route and reverting to the Bible as THE source (as Dawkins painfully reports).

(2) We have a depth problem, in that we know more about the world than ever, but have less knowledge of the world than ever (27); and social media may increase our number of friends but they do not guarantee any depth of relationship with these friends (31). This is probably as much a lack of time problem as anything. How could we possibly cultivate depth or quality when we have to know so many more things to participate in the modern world? But then at its foundation, this is a values issue: we value quantity over quality, which translates to a value of information over knowledge. "We forget that improved knowing is also a matter of being a wiser person in a better society" (33). "Informationism encourages informational promiscuity: impersonal relationships based on feigned intimacies and lacking moral integrity" (35) says Schultze. And the antithesis of this problem is intimacy, or possibly "empathetic intimacy" (33); and if we don't address this in our cyber experiences, we may find intimacy evaporating from our lives entirely (36). Again, is it any wonder that some are choosing to read little else but the Bible? - this is a seemingly logical reaction against the informationalism of the times. Fundamentalism is, I am suggesting, a reaction against meaningless informationlism.

(3) We have located meaning in the measureable (Wertheim would probably say to the contrary that in modern society, potentially up until the creation of cyberspace, measurement and meaning became interchangable, whereas cyberspace once again makes it possible to conceive of non-measurable substance). This makes observers of us all: "Our mediated involvement in cyberspace can render us mere observers of our own neighborhoods, schools, and communities of worship" (34). We should remember what Lukacs said, "that true knowledge is 'participant'... it 'consists of the relationship of the knower and the known'" (36).

What this boils down to is essentially what Carr calls our progression toward becoming "pancake people" - spread ever wider, but ever thinner. And I think that much of what Schultze critiques here can in fact be applied equally to the realm of academia. For example, one cannot get published without gathering data, no matter how insipid this data is and how much we know ahead of time what the data will reveal. Did the great thinkers gather data in the past? - or did their insight come from deep reflection? "Data-processing technologies are ennobling a new class of statistical kings while dethroning veterans of the older methods of experience, common sense, and even wisdom" (40). Further, I find it exceedingly irritating that one can hardly state an opinion without quoting someone who has been published before who has said the same before. This stymies our thinking in that it normalizes it.

One of the points about this pancaking is that it squeezes out context. There is simply no room. "According to this view [i.e. Weiser's view of ubiquitous computing], contexts and shared meanings are irrelevant. Purpose, desire, obligation, virtue, and imagination are meaningless noise. Even storytelling and conversation evaporate into bits of signaling" (41). But are there possibilities for reimagining the Internet as context-rich? - for designing space for storytelling within each bit of information? This means that we have to embrace the fuzziness of information - it is not as simple as 0s and 1s, but rather requires negotiation and reflection upon "context, background, history, common knowledge, social resources" (43).