Quotes About Information Overload

#1. Information overload (on all levels) is exactly WHY you need an "ignore list". It has never been more important to be able to say "No

Mani S. Sivasubramanian

#2. Traditional ways to deal with information
reading, listening, writing, talking
are painfully slow in comparison to "viewing the big picture." Those who survive information overload will be those who search for information with broadband thinking but apply it with a single-minded focus.

Kathryn Alesandrini

#3. In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed.

Patrick Ness

#4. Information overload has crippled many a dream, and there's an easy fix: focus on what's most important right now.

Kimanzi Constable

#5. It's not information overload. It's filter failure.

Clay Shirky

#6. Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.

Marshall McLuhan

#7. The greatest challenge Internet users face is information overload.

James Garner

#8. The result of information overload is usually distraction, and it dilutes your focus and takes you off your game.

Zig Ziglar

#9. When information overload occurs, pattern recognition is how to determine truth.

Marshall McLuhan

#10. We also know that the brain can handle only a limited amount of information at a time; at its simplest, we can think of stress as information overload, so when there's too much happening, the brain starts to triage, prioritizing, simplifying, and even plain old ignoring some things.

Emily Nagoski

#11. We're not in a world of information overload, we're in a world of filter failure.

Michael Lazerow

#12. We have met the Devil of Information Overload and his impish underlings, the computer virus, the busy signal, the dead link, and the PowerPoint presentation.

James Gleick

#13. With YouTube - with the Internet in general - you have information overload. The people who don't necessarily get credit are the curators.

Chad Hurley

#14. Modern day information overload stops us sufficiently engaging with our thoughts.

Sam Owen

#15. One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with.

Marshall McLuhan

#16. The cure to information overload is more information.

David Weinberger

#17. Everyone spoke of an information overload, but what there was in fact was a non-information overload.

Richard Saul Wurman

#18. In this time of 'information overload', people do not need more information. They want a story they can relate to.

Maarten Schafer

#19. There's no such thing as information overload-only filter failure.

Clay Shirky

#20. Information overload will lead to 'future shock syndrome' as an individual will suffer severe physical and mental disturbances.

Alvin Toffler

#21. There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. If something is cluttered and/or confusing, fix your design.

Edward Tufte

#22. Most managers receive much more data (if not information) than they can possibly absorb even if they spend all of their time trying to do so. Hence they already suffer from an information overload.

Russell L. Ackoff

#23. "Point of view" is that quintessentially human solution to information overload, an intuitive process of reducing things to an essential relevant and manageable minimum.. In a world of hyper abundant content, point of view will become the scarcest of resources.

Paul Saffo

#24. Stand on Zanzibar is an information overload on topics that sensible people would never want to learn about.

John Brunner

#25. Yourself into an information-overload-fueled frenzy, convinced that you could arrange the whole wedding yourself, and eventually killed one of your loved ones in a glue-gun-related mishap

Molly Harper

#26. Without the ability to discern, we stand impotent in an age of information overload.

Anonymous

#27. Information overload is a symptom of our desire to not focus on what's important. It is a choice.

Brian Solis

#28. We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture - and, in the process, we don't allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.

Alain De Botton

#29. When your brain is always engaged, when your neurons are always firing, when you find yourself in a continual mode of reacting and responding, instead of steering and directing, the best and brightest solutions that you are capable of producing rarely see the light of day.

Jeff Davidson

#30. [T]he problem was too much information. The population was being inundated with conflicting versions of increasingly complex events. People were giving up on understanding anything. The glut of information was dulling awareness, not aiding it. Overload. It encouraged passivity, not involvement.

Jerry Mander

#31. A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention ...

Herbert A. Simon

#32. The fewer data needed, the better the information. And an overload of information, that is, anything much beyond what is truly needed, leads to information blackout. It does not enrich, but impoverishes.

Peter Drucker

#33. People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be.
If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.

Idries Shah

#34. There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#35. With such a vast and wonderful library spread out before us, we often skim books or read just the reviews. We might already have encountered the Greatest Idea, the insight that would have transformed us had we savored it, taken it to heart, and worked it into our lives.

Jonathan Haidt

#36. Distringit librorum multitudo
(the abundance of books is distraction)

Seneca.

#37. Overload 'em with information an' they'll kill yeh jus' to simplify things.

J.K. Rowling

#38. After all, as Edward Tufte once said, "Overload, clutter, and confusion are not attributes of information, they are failures of design.

Golden Krishna

#39. Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.

Idries Shah

#40. We have largely traded wisdom for information, depth for breadth. We want to microwave maturity.

John Ortberg Jr.

#41. Here's the general theory: To clarify, add detail. Imagine that. To clarify, add detail. And clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don't start throwing out information, instead fix the design.

Edward Tufte