An avalanche of information

NEVER IN THE HISTORY of humankind have we ever had so much information available so quickly, and yet most of us are drowning in the sheer volume of so many conversations, personal diaries, pseudo-facts, figures, stories, events, ideas, and millions of images--information everywhere, but no clarity or meaning in sight. A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but 1,000,000,000 pictures from cell phones, digital cameras, and photo and art files filling cyberspace, available at the click of a button, offer so much pictorial information that it even is overwhelming to younger generations who have grown up on this sort of thing. Everything from recipes to advice blogs to medical recommendations and on-sale pharmaceuticals to sexual devices beyond imagination spew forth from hundreds of countries demanding attention. Search engines offer thousands of hits on every subject from gardening to sports to celebrity news. You can create your own newspaper or program featuring only the news that interests you; everything else simply does not exist.

The phenomenon was given national credibility when Time magazine announced that the person of the year was--You. "You" who are part of the information revolution that is sweeping the country 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. There is no silence, no freedom from the noise that envelops us all. Trivia and misinformation cohabitate with serious and accurate data--and no one can figure out what is true, false, or simply fabricated, or what to concentrate on or think about. We live in a new technological era of digital noise that threatens to overwhelm even the most boorish and uninvolved individual. Intellectuals either ignore it at their own risk of not understanding this brave new world, or try to make sense of it by adding their voices to the digital mess. The teenager sitting in her room offering a video diary of her 24/7 life does not really care who is listening because all she--and millions like her--care about is herself. All she babbles about is her own immature and undeveloped life and her audience usually consists of herself, possibly a few friends, and a parent. No one else cares--unless the Internet finds her and publicizes her website because of a piece of nudity or, perhaps, a suicide attempt. Better yet (at least for the faceless vultures lurking out there), a suicide attempt while nude.

No one is safe from this technological revolution. A cell phone can capture the most disgusting or bizarre image and, in seconds, send it around the world. A comic loses control with a rowdy audience and his racial rant makes headlines because someone in the audience captures all of it in a dim-lit video and sends it to a friend who sends it to a friend who sends it to anyone who can call it up on a computer. A pair of minor celebrities indulge in video sex and their private act becomes public in an instant. Nothing is sacred. Bathroom humor reigns supreme.

There still are a few brave souls who rely solely on traditional media to make sense of the world--newspapers, TV and radio broadcasts, print and broadcast newsmagazines. The great bulk of the citizenry, however, especially those under 30, have no time for that. They have to write their own blogs, read the recommended blogs of the day, rely on their Google-created personal news page--and what they end up getting is a cornucopia of fact and misinformation, rumor and accuracy, with no reliable way of sorting it all out. Anything goes; everything is fair game.

There are some surprising and wonderful things involved here--during a natural or man-made disaster, we get instant images and eye-witness accounts of what is going on. The problem is, these images and eyewitness accounts only are valid for a specific time and place. Look to the left or the right or behind the citizen reporter and those images and stories are unrecorded. We get a specific picture that is fascinating and important, but it merely is a small piece of the overall story, and usually is reported poorly until the professionals get to the scene.

In a world where there is no recognizable source of accuracy except You, there is no way to separate fact from fiction. They merge into something far more serious than infotainment--a world of fantasy that only has a vague resemblance to the world of reality. A source with reliable, accurate information yells into a digital wilderness vying with millions of sources that range from the trustworthy to the ridiculous. Valid ideas and issues are much too complicated for the You Information Age. Appearance and miscues role the day. A political candidate may offer reasonable statements on key issues 99% of the time, but make one mistake--misspeak a sentence, yell at a constituent, utter an off-color remark--and that miscue will be seen by millions in minutes and that will be all anyone will remember about that candidate. The same is true for a celebrity or anyone else in the public eye. There is no room for error and no patience for content. Everything moves too fast for clear thought and rational action. There only is time for ridicule and sarcasm.