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I don’t drink, never smoked, and never inhaled marijuana (except from drafts coming from neighboring dorm rooms). But I do use a drug. My opiate of choice is information.
I mainline printed text from magazines and books. I get high on interactive digital multimedia. I snort news programs and even occasional educational audio tapes.
I am an infoholic, and I’m powerless over my addiction. On the Enneagram personality test, I am a Five, someone who compulsively needs to know everything.
The first indicator of my disorder appeared in grade school. I skimmed (and read many of the articles) in my parent’s 15-volume Compton’s Encyclopedia. (Yes, I had a pathetic social life.)
Now, countless pages later, my professional title is "Senior Information Developer." Seemingly not content with the immense quantity of information already existing, I have to create even more of it. Not only am I an info addict, but I’m a info dealer as well.
The information drug defines our era. Even semiliterate people know that humanity no longer lives in the Industrial, Atomic, or even Space Age. This is the Information Age, the consummate age for an infoholic.
A single weekday edition of the "The New York Times" today supposedly contains more information than an average person in the seventeenth century would have encountered in a lifetime. With the phenomenal growth of the World Wide Web, a data druggie like me could spend all his free time for the rest of his life surfing web sites and never see the same page twice.
With the glut of info loose on the world, with the Internet the quasi-deity of the digerati, I should be euphoric, right? Well, about a year ago (it had something to do with the birth of my first child), I hit bottom. Now I feel I’m drowning in data that I do not have the time or stamina to process. Not only is the professionally and personally critical information I need so voluminous, it’s also often lost in a deluge of vague, verbose, inane, and erroneous words. Even for an infoholic, what promised to be the Information Garden of Eden has become the Information World Wide Flood.
I’m hardly alone in that feeling. With cell phones, pagers, voice mail, faxes, e-mail, web pages, and lowly low-tech printed pages, many professionals feel overwhelmed by information overload. Some scramble to keep ahead of all this technology by using even newer technology (such as Personal Digital Assistants or e-mail filters). Others are beginning to cut back and unplug (they just say "no" to info).
What can we do about this data deluge? Technical communicators must somehow tame the beast. Not only do we, like many professionals, deal with endless data input, but tech communicators are responsible for creating even more information. Through well-written text, intuitive illustration, and inviting design, we must communicate information as clearly, concisely, interestingly, and accurately as possible. Through our verbal and visual talents and tools, maybe we can save the world.
In the mean time, does anyone know any good 12-step treatment programs for infoholics?
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