What is really distressing is that while I am getting more and more information, I find it increasingly difficult to know what's going on. Jimmy Lee, who runs Chemical Bank's lending, told me the other day that he spends four hours a day on pure business reading. And it's not just in business literature. From medicine to pop culture, the Harvard library subscribes to 160,000 journals and periodicals. Major research libraries are adding two miles of shelf space a year.
Archivists say the amount of information available is doubling every four years.
The quality, care, time to weigh the facts and analyze seriously lessens under the onslaught. To capture an increasingly distracted public, much is sensationalized. The media is then both a contributor to and a victim of this explosion. They are simply crying for attention. And the public, dazed and overstimulated, only hears the loudest voices.