Information Overload - Origin

Origin

A quite early example of the term information overload can be found in an article by Jacob Jacoby, Donald Speller and Carol Kohn Berning, who conducted an experiment on 192 housewives which was said to confirm the hypothesis that more information about brands would lead to poorer decision making. But long before that, the idea was introduced by Diderot, although it wasn't by the term 'information overload': "As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes." –Denis Diderot, "Encyclopédie" (1755)

Read more about this topic:  Information Overload

Famous quotes containing the word origin:

    The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.
    Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)

    The origin of storms is not in clouds,
    our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
    spillways free authentic power:
    dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
    to break the armored and concluded mind.
    Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)

    There are certain books in the world which every searcher for truth must know: the Bible, the Critique of Pure Reason, the Origin of Species, and Karl Marx’s Capital.
    —W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)