ABSTRACT
Too overwhelmed to take the time to critically assess information, to meet the needs of this vast infoglut Andrejevic argues that people have allowed substitutes such as "prediction markets" to arise. The sole remit of prediction markets is to let market forces provide definitive statements on various phenomena, including political events and actions. Simmel's era and his diagnosis can be shown to be rooted in the same network society forces that have continued to cause much of what Andrejevic today observes. There is already a concept circulating in contemporary culture that describes escaping from or coping with the distractions of too much information by means of a kind of selection or curation intended to produce a meaningful, harmonious, personalizable experience, namely, the concept of immersion. Postmodern theorists such as Jean-Francois Lyotard claimed that modernity had begun to be viewed in the general population with scepticism.
