Every so often I\u2019ll hear some\u00adone men\u00adtion in pass\u00ading that we are over\u00adloaded with infor\u00adma\u00adtion com\u00adpared to our ances\u00adtors. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s true if you mea\u00adsure \u201cinfor\u00adma\u00adtion\u201d in a very spe\u00adcif\u00adic way, but I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s as true as peo\u00adple think it is.<\/p>\n
Augus\u00adtine, the 4th cen\u00adtu\u00adry bish\u00adop, left behind over 5,000,000 words in writ\u00ading.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s 5 mil\u00adlion words.<\/p>\n
Many nov\u00adels have 50,000 (the range varies depend\u00ading on the genre).<\/p>\n
He left behind the equiv\u00ada\u00adlent of 100 nov\u00adels. And he\u2019s just one author.<\/p>\n
For the edu\u00adcat\u00aded elite, the ancient world was rife with infor\u00adma\u00adtion. And, by and large, the stuff they read was more impor\u00adtant than the \u201cinfor\u00adma\u00adtion\u201d we\u2019re so proud of. Most of what we devote our brain\u00adpow\u00ader to pro\u00adcess\u00ading is from news\u00adpa\u00adpers, mag\u00ada\u00adzines, and tele\u00advi\u00adsion\u2026 the knowl\u00adedge equiv\u00ada\u00adlent of emp\u00adty calo\u00adries.<\/p>\n
For all the \u201cinfor\u00adma\u00adtion\u201d we each have at our beck and call, not many of us could muster up 5 mil\u00adlion words.<\/p>\n
And since our point in say\u00ading that we\u2019re so over\u00adloaded com\u00adpared to the ancients is that we\u2019ve got so much more stuff to process than they did, maybe we should\u00adn\u2019t be so smug. After all \u2014 we don\u2019t real\u00adly process the \u201cinfor\u00adma\u00adtion\u201d that bom\u00adbards us. We rush through it and prompt\u00adly for\u00adget as much as pos\u00adsi\u00adble to get ready for the next del\u00aduge.<\/p>\n
The ancients were read\u00ading and reread\u00ading and rereread\u00ading sub\u00adstan\u00adtive works and actu\u00adal\u00adly under\u00adstand\u00ading them. And so Augus\u00adtine was able to write 5,000,000 words that peo\u00adple still mull over today.<\/p>\n
We have no idea what infor\u00adma\u00adtion over\u00adload feels like. If we can\u00adceled our news\u00adpa\u00adper sub\u00adscrip\u00adtions, threw away all our mag\u00ada\u00adzines, and replaced all that read\u00ading time with reread\u00ading a hand\u00adful of sol\u00adid books until we under\u00adstood them thor\u00adough\u00adly, then we\u2019d have some inkling of what true infor\u00adma\u00adtion over\u00adload is.<\/p>\n
And since we\u2019ve got so many years of insights beyond Augus\u00adtine to avail our\u00adselves of, and the mod\u00adern peer-reviewed sys\u00adtem of jour\u00adnals to draw from, we\u2019d be very jus\u00adti\u00adfied in say\u00ading that we wres\u00adtle with infor\u00adma\u00adtion in a way that the ancients nev\u00ader did.<\/p>\n
But not now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every so often I\u2019ll hear some\u00adone men\u00adtion in pass\u00ading that we are over\u00adloaded with infor\u00adma\u00adtion com\u00adpared to our ances\u00adtors. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s true if you mea\u00adsure \u201cinfor\u00adma\u00adtion\u201d in a very spe\u00adcif\u00adic way, but I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s as true as peo\u00adple think it is. Augus\u00adtine, the 4th cen\u00adtu\u00adry bish\u00adop, left behind over 5,000,000 words in \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cInfor\u00adma\u00adtion Over\u00adload?\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants-opinions-and-general-contrariness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-dj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}