U.S. Campus Life

Information Indigestion

By Masako Yamada

Lately, I've been reading numerous articles on the apparent sophistication of modern children and how they seem to know a lot more than their parents did at the same age.

Although this doesn't mean that they're necessarily more intelligent than children of previous generations, it does seem true that children nowadays have easier access to knowledge than those in the past. In this so-called information age, there are so many books to read, TV shows to watch, CDs to listen to and web pages to browse.

This all seems great, but I doubt many children can absorb all of this information in a balanced manner. Although they may be able to mimic what they see and hear, it's questionable whether they can put any of the information together to synthesize new ideas of their own. It's even difficult for adults to determine what is high quality or low quality when information is filtered through the media. I suppose that it's not too surprising that there exist children (and even adults) who lose control when overexposed to this barrage of information. They may express this in many ways, for instance by going berserk or by shutting down completely.

I think I've gotten a bit of "information indigestion" lately. I'm reluctant to subject myself to new information, to new stimuli. Rather than being a serious mental problem, it's something like a cold, but I see the effects in many ways in my daily life.

For instance, I recently stood in front of a magazine rack before embarking on a long plane trip from Japan to the United States and realized that I didn't want to read anything on the rack. Nothing looked interesting, including several magazines that I've previously enjoyed reading. Out of despair, I ended up buying one fashion magazine, but I couldn't pay attention to the magazine long enough to read even a few pages.

On the plane, I plugged in the headphones provided by the airline, but I didn't find any of the 10 audio channels interesting. I took the headphones off.

I find that I don't browse the Internet nearly as much as I used to, either. I used to love hopping from page to page, exploring mysterious links and finding myself in completely new territory. I have even browsed personal home pages of people I didn't know, hoping to catch a glimpse into somebody's mind. I was interested in what new things I could discover.

After browsing thousands of web pages, however, I've come to realize that a lot of the web pages out there are incomplete, trite or plain boring . Nowadays, I find myself using the web for specific purposes that I know the web can handle well: to read a weekly finance column ; to order a textbook that I want; to do a literature search for my research; to find a perfect English-to-Japanese translation of a particular word.

This recent sag in my information appetite reminds me of a conversation I had with the owner of a local Spanish restaurant. He told me that the young customers invariably order tapas, while older customers tend to order plate dinners . Tapas are delicious little plates of food designed so that a table of four can share about 10 or even 15 different dishes. Plate dinners are dishes in which everything comes on one plate (meat, rice, veggies ) and are not meant to be shared with others. Initially , I thought the reason the older customers tend to order plate dinners is because that's what they've eaten all their lives . They were simply not adventuresome enough to try a new method of eating. However, I've come up with an alternative interpretation. These older customers must have had many opportunities to eat different kinds of foods in their lifetimes. They've had lots of opportunities to make decisions from among many options. Perhaps they've done so much picking and choosing and fretting about minor details that they'd rather enjoy one thing they know they like. They are already full of information and stimulating experiences. Maybe nowadays, people get fuller faster . Does this make me old? I don't know. If information indigestion is an indicator, then I'm getting older, for sure. The thing is, I don't know whether this is good or bad.

Shukan ST: Sept. 22, 2000

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