The Chronicle and Knuth on info overload
First, the links:
Knowing When to Log Off by Jeffrey Young
Chronicle of Hgher Ed 4.22.5
Again, there’s all this jibber-jabber about kids today and how much info is getting pumped into their heads. Maybe this is true, but internet surfing is not all that different than channel surfing and, as I’m sure a lot of folks love to point out, in both cases they aren’t digesting quality. Many people like to say that the quantity of info being fed to them has increased, but I can’t say I agree. Certainly there is a greater number of info sources putting out info, but a bunch of little pieces add up to the same quantity as the big chunks, and information recieved outside of media certainly qualifies as info. In fact, Knuth is an example of someone remembering that computers can be used simply as tools of expression instead of being led around by internet trends. Maybe his model is the solution to the problem…