Explosion on Information Superhighway!

In the process of development of a story or a report or even a blog post for that matter, constant dips into research updates and information sources becomes inevitable. In one of the reports for a session of MIS (Management Information Systems), while gathering pointers from library books, rather hurriedly (due to lack of time or my complacence up to date of submission), I chanced upon an early edition of Alvin Toffler’s ‘Future Shock’. This book gave some pretty hard hitting concepts. Buried in two neat towers of books with magazines spread all around, while I was lapping up all the information in the book, there was a concept that was rather unusual and ironical to my situation – it was called ‘Information overload’! Toffler in his analysis put forth his theory that there can be a situation where there is too much information. Now, that seemed rather preposterous at that time, for information was the one thing that was hard to obtain. No matter how many books one referred, there was always that one author whose books were hard to find or out of stock. Almost like freshly baked bread rolls near the college. To support this concept, there were references that some books quoted from The New York Times dating back to 1970s. Information explosion seemed like a difficult pill to swallow at that time. Somehow, the ramifications of too much information did not seem greatly destructive to be termed explosive.

Internet invaded somewhere around that time and access to anything and almost everything became extremely easy. Book report? There were ready made ones that were available. Papers on Management concepts like Shamrock Organization? There were many options to choose from. It started to get queasy and listless when finishing project reports were simply ripped off and submitted as the fruit of some hard labour. Sure, one wouldn’t consider long hours spent browsing the Internet and skimming sites after sites to get the right match!

Besides work, applications and applets made emails, chats and communications available and how! Those who were indifferent to the concept of having pen friends, very easily slipped into the disguise of fake IDs and profiles to talk with other IDs – I’m not judging whether they were real, but you get the picture! Emails became frequent and in your face. People who sat next door sent a ‘Hi!’ or ‘Good day!’ as easily as they browsed for the latest news for a client meet! Vocal conversations became few and far between and the threshold of tolerance towards others when met face-to-face took a deep dive down. This was all information being fed, uploaded and downloaded constantly.

While spam emails and chat pop ups, many from known IDs, had started to get annoying, Social Networking swarmed into the picture along with Thomas Friedman’s ‘World is Flat’. Through Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, etc there was hardly any breathing space for planned delay of updates or privacy of communications. Everybody can now know what everyone else is talking, writing, saying, thinking at any given point of time. Everything was available at the click of a button. Information superhighway just turned into Information at my fingertips! It was novel, innovative, fascinating, and a highly addictive proposition to be part of this movement. At the same time, it is scary that one’s details- personal & professional and opinions on the economy, people, music, movies and a multitude of other things – consequential and inconsequential – is available on an info platter. Yes, there are Privacy controls but their effectiveness in moderation and restrictions are highly suspect. I know I cannot write just about anything that would otherwise find its way into my diary in long hand.

But what has the evolution of information accessibility got to do with Toffler’s hypothesis of Information Overload? In 350 BC or so, the world was introduced to the power of questioning by Socrates. Questions were what stirred the potpourri of thoughts and opinions in people so as to come up with answers. Had there been an Internet hub around Athens, the people would have simply logged on to Wikipedia or thousands of other alternatives to find all their answers. Introspection and inventions have perhaps become the luxury of a gifted few who have found a way to keep their thoughts and sanity together. Their inventions and innovations may have been supported by Macs and Blackberrys, but it is a fact that it happened despite all available, parasite-converting machines.

Being a marketing communications professional, it may not be a politically correct statement to make when I say that information explosion is a reality, one that requires immediate damage control. It is, however, sadly true that information at this scale made available with the fringes covering all other means of communications is capable of exploding the existence of the power to question and find the answers; besides being a constant cause of diversion potent enough to deflect the thinking process. It may be time to ask oneself once more, what TS Eliot had done years ago – “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

Image credits:

1. Billfrymire.com

2. Queens Univ

Divya Rao
June 21, 2010
Mumbai

Why fear when Cloud Seeding is here!

One of the distinct memories I cherish of my first experience in an airplane was flying into foamy, cotton balled, almost heavenly white clouds that hung close to my window seat that I had so excitedly captured. They had reminded me of some of the pictures in my Greek fairy tale books that showed beautifully painted angels dressed in white and gold floating on these pristine clouds. One can only imagine the excitement when I felt like one!

As time passed and flying became common place, there was a recurring sight of colored clouds. Not just grey or indigo towards evening, but almost yellow! Clouds seemed like they needed a wash in a strong detergent to get rid of the awful stains that were few and far between. With time, these only increased in frequency and were visible while on ground too. The concept of “Pollution” was discussed at length and the adverse effects of smoke plus the smog were drilled down in text book lessons. The “Green House Effect” discussions used to end with references to the invisible Ozone layer – at first many school students thought the syllabus included discussion on a new discotheque that had opened in the city! Kids grew with understanding the importance of the O3 as sessions progressed.

The transition from Green House Effect to renewable and non-renewable resources was quite smooth. Just as lighting up a magnesium ribbon! So, water, coal and petroleum were non-renewable. Wait, water was termed as a renewable source when I studied (either I have grown too old or the water table is now in a limbo due to sudden change in usage patterns!). I was quite annoyed when I discovered that I don’t live anywhere close to perennial rivers – which were the Ganga and Brahmaputra! But now I see that even these rivers too have not been able to escape the axe of depletion. Although rains were unpredictable then, the number of complaining heads (about shortage of rains) seems to have multiplied significantly over the past few years. When all this complaining became far too noisy to handle, those in power referred to a technology that was developed a year before the Indian Independence. Cloud seeding, the newspapers reported, would solve the problems of water shortage in Bangalore.

Although no detailed explanation was available, the rains came and how! It poured continuously in places that had never expected rains. Water shortage issues too reduced, if not completely erased. The experiment was repeated in various other parts of the country. In some places it rained to the point of flooding an unprepared city, while in others it was a positive infusion. There was news about how China used it before the Olympics to clear out a smoggy stratosphere. It started to seem like finally there is a method of solving the issue of Pollution. Pollution – one that haunts students who are made to write long essays around it and mankind at large that wants clear, fresh air to breathe (and not spend time & money in Oxygen bars!).

Now Cloud Seeding – the seemingly obvious answer to water / rainfall shortage and thereby the solution to problems of pollution – was first developed by a researcher named Schaefer based on an idea that struck him while he was climbing a mountain (obviously, he must have thought about the ice axe, harness, not to mention his life, after the discovery!). The cloud seeding done in recent times include a heady mix of dry ice, silver iodide, salt (who knew!) and expanded liquid propane gas. Research on the after effects of the methodology has proved that though the effectiveness is there in varying measures, the contents may cause “temporary incapacitation or possible residual injury to humans and mammals with intense or continued but not chronic exposure”. Though exposure to the material can be controlled (hopefully so!) there is another disturbing fact. Although not on the same scale of industrial emissions, the technology amounts to pollution! This toxicity prompted Cloud Seeding to be rejected by Australia, which wanted to protect one of its endangered species.

Whether there an anti-dote to fight the ill-effects of silver iodide exists, is yet to be known. But somehow it seems like a maze of concentric circles where one begins with Pollution as a problem and ends up with Pollution as an after effect.

Wonder when the white fluffy clouds that I once saw out of my airplane window will return to stay for good. May be I could use the abracadabra hexes in the book of Grecian fairy tales!

Image: puppetgov.com

Divya Rao
10th June, 2010
Mumbai