What is Information Overload?

   Today, thanks to the internet, we all have access to a staggering amount of information.  In his book "Information Anxiety," Richard Saul Wurman says that "there has been more information produced in the last 30 years than in the previous 5000,"  and now because of search engines like google and, bing, all of this information is a mouse click away. All you need is google to experience information overload.

  
   What is information overload? 
   
   Information Overload is a phrase coined by Alvin Toffler, and it refers to the difficulty of Interpreting and locating information because of the excessive amounts of information available.  For example my account on Google Reader (a site that locates news articles) usually has as many as a few thousand unread items.  If I took the time even to skim through all the article's headlines I would spend at least an hour, and wouldn't have learned anything for my time.  If you google the words "information overload" you'll get more than 3 million hits, most of which are probably completely useless to you.  My point is, is that there is so much information out there that it is becoming impossible to sort through, even the things that you subscribe to,and find desirable, useful information.  
  
    This increasingly large amount of information available online poses another problem as well.  Can I trust the information I find on the internet? 


    The popularity of open source information websites like Wikipedia, and the quality of information they provide is a serious contemporary concern, not just relegated to the student or professional communities. I once used Wikipedia to find out if Tony Blair was eligible to run for another term only to find out that his full name was "Tony whoopty doo Blair."  Wikipedia of course fixed the problem very quickly, but that is a good example of how wrong information can be easily found passing itself as truthful on the internet.  With increasing popularity of blogs more and more potentially corrupted information is becoming readily available. 


    As the amount of information continues to grow we will find ourselves more frequently asking the question... can i trust this?