cni-directories: Re: Information overload
Re: Information overload
A.J. Wright (MEDS002@UABDPO.BITNET)
Fri, 24 Jan 1992 12:18:12 CST
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1992 12:18:12 CST
From: "A.J. Wright" <MEDS002@UABDPO.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Information overload
In-Reply-To: Message of Wed,
22 Jan 1992 17:41:48 PST from <rtennant@LIBRARY.BERKELEY.EDU>
Whenever I read that phrase "information overload" and the inevitable moaning
and groaning that always goes with it, I can't help but reach for the laughter
button. I realize that we're all at ground zero here, just overwhelmed with
"stuff", but a little perspective is in order. Let me share with you some
quotes that I have gathered over the years and added to a lecture I often
give entitled "Information Options for the Anesthesiologist" (or whatever):
"...When each man and woman has a journal to be the exclusive organ of their
individual opinions on medicine, the millenium will be near at hand." Mid-
19th-cent. American physician
"It has become increasingly difficult to keep abreast of and to assimilate the
investigative reports which accumulate day after day. Albrecht von Grafe...was
ill at ease because he felt unable to control even the area of his own disci-
pline; one suffocates, he once told me, throught exposure to the massive body
of rapidly growing information." German surgeon Bernhard von Langenbeck, 1872
The real kicker, though, is one from Barnaby Rich, ca. 1613: "One of the
diseases of this age is the multiplicity of books; they doth so overcharge the
world that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is every
day hatched and brought fourth (sic) into the world." And this from a man wri-
ting less than two centuries after printed books began to appear in Europe!
Rich didn't even take his own advice; he wrote 5 romances, 5 military works,
7 reports on Ireland, 6 commentaries on manners and morals and 3 misc. pamph-
lets.
People in every generation consider themselves to be suffocated by information,
but manage to muddle through somehow.
A.J. Wright
Department of Anesthesiology Library
University of Alabama at Birmingham
MEDS002@UABDPO.DPO.UAB.EDU
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