We are living in an age of information. Staggering amounts of information are collected, stored, and widely disseminated. Yet, we may be less informed and less knowledgeable than ever. The paradox of increasing information, yet decreasing knowledge and insight has many possible reasons, some of which are subtle and difficult to identify, and even more difficult to remedy. The fundamental issue is quantity crowding out quality, leading to an abundance of poor quality information which may not be a good substitute for scarce but high quality information. Information is not unique in exhibiting this paradox. There are many other goods that exhibit this unusual characteristic of more being worse than less. Those who eat the most food are rarely the healthiest people, and they may actually be severely deficient in some nutrients. Those who have the most Facebook friends are often the loneliest people. Those who are the busiest are not the most productive. Those who read books and watch television the most are sometimes the least knowledgeable. Information overload is like a raging fire. There is so much heat, yet no useful heat can be extracted from it. Or it is like a raging flood. There is so much water, yet no useful water can come out of it. All of these examples point to the pervasiveness of this paradox, but it is most insidious with information, critical in an information economy, and most difficult to overcome in a modern society dominated by communication technologies. In an information economy, we appear to be shipwrecked, surrounded by an ocean of water, yet dying of thirst! Consider the environment. 900 new chemicals are released into the environment every year. Chemists study these new chemicals carefully, to determine their properties, useful applications, and adverse effects. They are naturally very proud of such new knowledge they contribute to the society, and all the good they do from industry to health care. Yet, once released into the environment, these chemicals interact with each other, and with all the thousands of chemicals already in the environment. The number of possible interactions are exponentially large, and impossible to study all. Yet, the major risks to the environment and human health lie in those interactions. Many modern diseases like asthma, allergies, autism, and some cancers are hypothesized to be caused by exposures to a variety of multiple chemical agents. The reason why these new diseases are so mystifying is precisely because of the difficulty of understanding combinations of factors that can quickly add up to billions of possibilities. As we discover new chemicals and expand our knowledge of chemistry, our environment becomes increasingly complex, inscrutable, and difficult to manage. We know more, but we understand less. That is the paradox! The most obvious reason for the paradox is the substitution problem where the emphasis on quantity shifts the emphasis and resources away from quality. It is costly to produce quality information, and it is difficult to do both quality and quantity. When quality does not pay in proportion to its high cost, quantity wins over. The second reason is the obsolescence problem. Information is not neutral with respect to the physical world, but it is an agent of change. Information is useful precisely because it is used to change the environment and subjugate nature and society to our purposes. But as information is used to change the environment to take advantage of new opportunities, our existing information about the environment becomes obsolete, leading to a loss of information. The third reason is the competition problem when information is used as a competitive weapon against others, to mislead and confuse others, leading to a loss of knowledge on their part. Information is power, because it can be used to control others and exploit them, by controlling their information sources, and consequently their behavior.
About the Author: L. V. Orman is a professor of Information Technology Management at Cornell University. He is also the author of Technology and Its Discontents: The Deadly Embrace of Technology and Society. You can interact with him on his Facebook pages for his readers at https: //www.facebook.com/informationoverloadparadox/ https: //www.facebook.com/TECHNOLOGY-AND-ITS-DISCONTENTS-39169012758952