Memory Overload
Something I wrote regarding the following excerpt from this Wired article:
Whether this is a boon or a disaster I can't say. Such subtle patterns in the history of human experience tend to escape that kind of judgment. But the result is a telling contradiction: Our culture has become engulfed in its past and can make no use of it at all.
Assuming we want to make some use of it, then what we need are better indexes. This is why I think google is the most amazing thing. Google is the Better Index. It does The Right Thing with regard to prioritizing information. The only reason it works so well is the sheer volume of data it has available to it, so in a way a solution has emerged/is emerging exactly as it is needed.
The other alternative I guess is to just throw the stuff away, or to not pay attention to it. In my life I find myself hoarding information, and then forgetting about it. I like the idea of being potentially able to recover the information if I really need to, while not being burdened by it. Eventually I'll have so much information I'll need a personal Google if I ever want to actually find any needles in this haystack — but I'm sure something appropriate will exist when I need it.