Second part of the article on the excess of information and the way in which it can include in the process of a research in paintings.
by: M.Sc. Ph.D. Julián A. Restrepo R.*
In the first part we talked about the excessive information that sometimes hinders the construction of an investigation or the process of an analysis, which leads to leaving aside many tools that for reasons of time, workloads or other activities, could be fundametales to obtain better results.
Breaking down the above, we will continue to break down the meaning of the concept of Infoxication. The term Infoxication refers to the same thing as information overload: Our society has the pressure of a constant search for more information and of always being on, of receiving hundreds of information every day, to which it cannot devote enough time to process. It's not being able to delve into anything, and jump from one thing to the other. It is the working interruptus. It is the result of a world in which exhaustiveness ("everything about") prevails over relevance: "The urgent does not let the important do" [8]. The issue is that, in general, when we have a large volume of information, we have greater difficulties for analysis and decision making.
And although in principle it was a term used in the context of various forms of computer communication or information on the network1, such as email, chat, forums or other related, currently, in the midst of the rise of various communicative elements of the Internet, this concept has been transformed into a crude x-ray that shows how we have a volume of information that is done too much, for example, to make a decision or stay informed about a certain topic.
Likewise, we have large amounts of historical information to analyze, a high rate of new information that is constantly added, contradictions in the available information, a low signal/noise ratio making it difficult to identify information relevant to the decision, added to the fact that we do not have a method to systematically compare and process different types of information.
Therefore, Infoxication can be defined as the inability to analyze and understand a large volume of information (information rain), such as that provided by current electronic and communication media [9]. Some of the causes for an Infoxication state to occur are [10]:
- We collect more information than necessary to support our competence and knowledge when making decisions.
- We receive a lot of information that we have not requested or are not useful to us.
- We are looking for more information than necessary to try to verify that the one you have is correct.
- We need to demonstrate our justification for decisions.
- We collect information in case it could be useful in the future, we also do the same with images and texts.
- It goes to the safe and we try to get as much information as possible on a topic.
- We like to use information as a bargaining chip so as not to be left behind by those around us
What are the effects of the constant input of information?: Those who are more likely to be infoxicated, are those who pretend that following all the inputs they receive they will be more informed. In fact, it is not reading everything that is within reach that makes you more informed, but receiving quality information. Those who confuse quantity of information with quality are the most likely to come out infoxicated. Being connected to dozens of sources all day confuses more than informing. Anxiety about infoxica information [8].
But how can a person identify that they are "infoxicated"? The answer is simple, when you feel like you can't handle all the information you think you should handle. That is, when the information that surrounds him in his day to day anguishes him. You are infoxicated when you can't absorb more information, when all you do is forward the information you receive to others, to your friends, to your contacts on social networks.
But there is an even clearer symptom: you are infoxicated when you find it difficult to read a text slowly, word by word; when you read by skipping words, because you have become accustomed to reading like this diagonally. You are infoxicated when you read without understanding what you read [8].
The problem is that too much information limits our ability to understand, since to process a lot of information you have to know how to master it. Only someone who has delved into a subject, who has read a lot about the subject, can quickly process information: he knows what is true, what is probably true, and what is obviously false. To quickly process information you have to have a lot of prior knowledge about the subject.
This is one of the paradoxes of our era: we do not have time to delve into anything, to be an expert, which would give us the ability to quickly handle a lot of information; instead, we process more and more information before we become experts at something. We become "word-eaters" before we can taste them. We read too much and understand too little of what we read [8].
Final comments
Infoxication is the digital disease of society at the beginning of the XXI century [11]. Its worst consequence is that it prevents us from advancing towards the objectives that we have set ourselves, whether individual or collective as an organization, due to mere information saturation.
It is clear that infoxication is the excess of information: It is the overload or excess of information with which we find ourselves today, to the point of saturating the human capacity to process and analyze such an informative magnitude [12].
For its part, we must mention that the cure to Infoxication is Infonomy, which refers to the intelligent management of information: In the same way that Economics pursues the understanding of how goods can be better managed (economy = administration of goods), Infonomy aims to give individuals and organizations ideas and methods for the best use of information (Infonomy = information management) [13].
According to Alfons Cornellá, "The problem and its solution share the same origin: the network. The Internet saturates us with information but at the same time provides us with the tools to not die "infoxicated". The critical point is to communicate more efficiently" [8].
Some recommendations are based on learning to use search engines, performing advanced searches to eliminate irrelevant information and achieve results more relevant to our information needs; prioritize that critical content that will help us achieve our immediate objectives and relegate that which can be useful to us later; use tools that speed up our information query, by allowing us to centrally follow the contents of several web pages without having to enter each of them (Feedly, Flipboard, Google Currents ...), use twitter and Facebook lists to group certain profiles.
These are just some of the things easily suggested with tools and applications available on the network, which allow you to organize connection time, improving productivity and making the browsing experience more satisfying, and take us away from the anguish caused by "infoxication". Informed yes, but not saturated [12].
Finally I must thank my colleague Luis Fernando Tamayo who 15 years ago, perhaps ahead of his time, was already clear about the issue of Infoxication.
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1. Conventionally it has been associated with infoxication with information on the network, but I would say that it may be worse for the case of handling physical information, due to the wide limitations to find a certain topic, for example.
References
[8] http://alfonscornella.com/thought/infoxicacion/
[9] http://es.wiktionary.org/wiki/infoxicaci%C3%B3n
[10] https://infoxicadoblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/la-infoxicacion-la-1a-enfermedad-digital/
[11] http://papelesdeinteligencia.com/que-es-la-infoxicacion/
[12] https://infoxicadoblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/la-infoxicacion-la-1a-enfermedad-digital/
[13] http://www.documentalistaenredado.net/545/que-es-la-infonomia/
[14] Visit the PPG Protective & Marine Coatings company page: www.ppgpmc.com
M.Sc. Ph.D. Julián A. Restrepo R. PMC Technical Manager of PPG Industries Colombia. [email protected]
