Data Overload: The Hidden Killer
from the we're-all-going-to-die dept
Well, the latest internet/computer related illness we all have to worry about is New Economy Depression Syndrome which comes complete with the nice acronym NEDS. According to this article it can “cause anxiety, fatigue, difficulty in making decisions or concentrating, sleep disturbances, loneliness and isolation.” It’s not, as you might think from the name, felt by those who got slammed financially when the bubble burst, but by those who can’t keep up with all the information available to them. It’s the classic information overload problem. The concept of NEDS, though, was first created by the guy who wrote that classic of pop business books, The Killer App Is Love. Now he’s paid someone do some studies for him to prove that NEDS isn’t just a figment of his own imagination. The results seem to show some correlation, but doesn’t do much to prove causation.
Comments on “Data Overload: The Hidden Killer”
Nice Subtitle
It’s been a horrendous few days (upgrades, video conferencing gone wrong, failed power supply, etc), and that subtitle was the first chuckle I’ve had in a while. Thanks
MLO
Similar to
In John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider people are heavily medicated and tranquilized (Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil anyone?) due to massive anxiety. The root cause of it is the idea that someone else has access to more data, better data, more detailed data about them than they themselves do.
More people need to read Brunner, even if just the Big Three (Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider).