I don't know about you, but I feel like I am being constantly bombarded by information and opinion and I’m consumed by the urgent need to keep up. Every time I click on my Twitter feed I find I have missed hundreds of tweets. My Facebook news feed runs many screens deep and when I turn on the television, the screen is filled not only with people shouting their ideas at me but with strips of breaking news rapidly sliding past my slow-reading eyes. If you’ve subscribed to a news aggregator or curating app like Flipboard, there are even more articles waiting for you to click on. And finally, there is the newspaper that arrives on the doorstep when the overnight news has cooled, reminding you that there is still a lot that one doesn’t know.
And if you’re in college, there are the fat books waiting to be read, the papers you’ve downloaded by the dozen and are yet to open, and your classmate’s notes you still have to copy. However, this curricular information seems insignificant when compared to the stories jostling for attention on your social media pages. James Glieck, in his book The Information: a History, a Theory, a Flood (Fourth Estate, 2011), describes the ways in which we are submerged in information, so much so we have forgotten that sometimes there’s a need to come up for air! We are worried that unless we keep up with every little byte, we will be left behind, maybe even fall into the crack of the digital divide!
Information overloadThis condition — the overwhelming sense that we need to keep up with the flood of information—has come to be called ‘information anxiety’, and is a significant feature of the modern, networked world. There are two ways in which this anxiety manifests itself. One, we want to be kept in the loop on current events and issues, things that everyone is talking about. We do this by using social networking sites to keep up with friends’ opinions and lives, or to follow journalists or other information providers.
Two, we create alerts on Google or other search engines so that we can be ‘pinged’ when something new has been posted relating to an area we are interested in. I know students who frantically download every new article related to their field of research, and before they know it, their folders are bulging with hundreds of scholarly publications that they would need years to read.
The first kind leads us to a situation where we are continuously engaged in something like an imaginary conversation. The give and take is immediate and takes little reflection. I have spoken before about the repercussions of this kind of instantaneous exchange. The second kind makes us feel that we cannot look away even for a second or we might miss something important in the world of research and knowledge production. The act of downloading articles gives us some comfort, making it seem like we at least have everything in our own personal storehouse (unless the hard drive crashes in protest).
Engage with itSo what is the problem with this? In the first instance, the continuous exposure to other people’s points of view and the unending stream of information leave us little or no time to reflect on what we hear and form our own opinions. In the second, it’s clear that we spend too much time acquiring a store of information and knowledge and have too little time to engage with it.
To build understanding and to nurture our own ways of thinking, we need to carve out silent spaces where we are alone with our own thoughts. Yes, there is value in discussion and conversation, and of course there is much to be gained from keeping track of the latest ideas. But unless we allow ourselves the room where we can look at those ideas by ourselves, undisturbed by the varied and often discordant opinions that usually surround us, we will not be challenged to think creatively and independently.
It’s probably a good idea to define a part of each day when you are not searching for information, but engaging with it. Rather than looking at what ten different experts are saying about something, look at the issue yourself and arrive at what you might want to say about it beyond a simple “agree” or “disagree.” Stop yourself after you download five articles from a database and spend the next few hours reading them and making notes.
We need to unplug and read…quietly. We need to pull our heads out of that flood of information and come up for air. We need to get rid of the sense that “keeping up” is about knowing what everyone else is saying about something. It’s really about formulating what you would like to say, and why.
And in the spirit of making some space for reflection, the Backpacker’s Guide will take a break for a few months and be back in the month of June.
The author teaches at the University of Hyderabad and edits Teacher Plus magazine. Email: usha.bpgll@gmail.com
