ABSTRACT
Many observers argue that since 1945 information has become central to our cultural identity. They proclaim our era as the ‘information age,’1 periodizing it as the ‘mode of information,’2 in which our ‘information society,’3 surrounded by the technologies of our ‘information culture,’4 breeds new workers in an ‘information economy,’5 who daily experience the effects of the ‘information revolution,’6 all while living in an ‘information environment,’7 which induces ‘information anxiety,’8 and ‘information fatigue.’9 These words-age, society, culture, economy, revolution, environment, anxiety, and fatigue-all subsumed by the privileged term information, indicates, at the very least, the widespread perception that a fundamental cultural shift has occurred, powerfully affecting how we work, live, and experience our lives. But, the enthusiastic emphasis placed on the production of information has led to a crucial problem. A culture which so highly values information is susceptible to the problem of information overload. Since World War II, the fear of too much information has become one of our most significant yet historically neglected intellectual concerns.
