February is here! Already? Wow, so fast! We are trying to keep up with the cisco classes, the crunch time finals, and all the drama of day to day life! God almighty, and now – the 28 team is learning about……
Information Overload ?
In many ways, the advent of information technology has increased the focus on information overload: information technology may be a primary reason for information overload due to its ability to produce more information more quickly and to disseminate this information to a wider audience than ever before (Evaristo, Adams, & Curley, 1995; Hiltz & Turoff, 1985). “Information overload” (also known as infobesity or infoxication) is a term popularized by Alvin Toffler in his bestselling 1970 book Future Shock. It refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information.[1] The term itself is mentioned in a 1964 book by Bertram Gross, The Managing of Organizations.[2] “Information overload occurs when the amount of input to a system exceeds its processing capacity. Decision makers have fairly limited cognitive processing capacity. Consequently, when information overload occurs, it is likely that a reduction in decision quality will occur.”[3]
In today’s society, day-to-day activities increasingly involve the technological world where Information technology exacerbates the number of interruptions that occur in the work environment. [4] There has been a study from 1997 that found 50% of management in Fortune 1000 companies were disrupted more than six times an hour by emails they were receiving. Being compared to this decade’s use of the internet, management are commonly more disrupted which leads to more interruptions on their decision making and result in more poor quality made decisions.