Information Explosion and our life

Nowadays, people often find themselves immersed by the sea of information almost everyday and at every second.  When they open their eyes in the early morning, they will find about hundreds of notifications from different Apps in their smartphones. This does not even include hundreds of updates from their social network platforms such as wechat moments, instalgrams, facebook, etc.

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We have to admit that everyone is both an information “generator ” and an information “media”. Every millisecond our neurons generate electronic signals in our brains and our conscious mind transforms it into opinions, feelings, or emotions. Some of them are of originality while some of them are very similar to what we heard or known before. But we all consider them as information. And then you happen to meet an acquaintance in the street and you start to share your opinions, feelings or emotions to that person. Then the information is passed by from you to the other person. Sooner or later, this piece of informatiion will spread over that acquaintance's network. 

Information travels at a light speed with the help of social network and the technology of smart phones. It is quite interesting that the information used to be locked inside a tribe, a village or a small town. Information seems to have 'physical' boundaries in the old times but now it is set free by the modern technology. Believe it or not, information flies above us, though us and within us. There are not abundant studies on the impact of receiving flourishing information on our human brains. However, I do remember an article said too much fragmented information does harm our brain and people may find themselves to have a worse memory.

Beyond that, we all talk about the “anxiety” in this internet ages. This sense of anxiety primarily comes from the worry that we do not know enough about the rapid change of our environment. In ancient times, our ancestors survive mainly by information about their surroundings. Now we often find ourselves in an embarrassing situation: the more we know about what's happening around us,  the more we fear we do not know what's happening around us. It seems like an infinite loop.

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In a word, I have some kind of concern on the affect of information explosion in our life, both physically and psychologically. And I hope someday in the future we can find a way to master the quantity and the quality of the information we generate and receive.