Written By Sherwood Kohn
“I’m clipping my toenails.”
“I’m at the grocery store.”
“I’m eating supper.”
These dispatches from the universe of mundanity are the stuff of Twitter, or Tweets, texted by people who obviously believe that their most humdrum activities are of interest to someone.
We are apparently in the midst of the most incredible data overload in the history of the world. Everyone with a smart phone (and there are more than 45.5 million of them in use) can now tell every one of his or her acquaintances (or even strangers) the most intimate and trivial bits of their experience.
Add to that the flood of junk that pours out of blogs, Facebook and YouTube, and you have a vast ocean full of info-algae; most of which has the same intellectual value as the microorganisms that float on stagnant ponds.
It is not the first time we have had an information explosion, although the content of the current one may be the most banal. Back when Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1439 (undoubtedly the most radical advance in human communication since writing was invented), few people were literate and even fewer had access to the new technology. Perhaps fortunately, that kept a lot of garbage out of the public domain.
The next big surge came in the 18th century, when the literate class (including our Founding Fathers) benefitted from Gutenberg’s technology to write and disseminate all manner of printed notices, pamphlets, newspapers, books and journals. Still, the average citizen had neither the access nor the wherewithal to take advantage of the age’s leading information-spreader.
Now, Everyman has a cell phone with a keyboard. Things are so intense that people are crashing their cars while texting. The man on the street is inundating his fellows with his most fleeting minutiae, the language is being diminished to such abbreviations as “LOL,” “BTW,” and “U” for “you,” and our young spend an inordinate amount of time playing dumb games on their hand-held devices.
And on top of all that, newspapers are disappearing and the print media show every evidence of going digital. Professional editors and writers by the droves are being laid off of their print publications. The potential for garbage data is being exponentially increased.
Who is going to filter out all of the gunk? My hope is that when the novelty wears off, the professionals will make a comeback, simply because they are the only people who are equipped, by education and training and skill, to cope with the torrent. The rest, the trivia gushers, the crackpots and the illiterate mob, will get tired of the sport and will simply shut up, retreat into the woodwork or fade away.
At least, that is what has happened in the past. Stay cool and write haiku.
