It turns out that introducing everyone to an subjectively infinite pool of information that is also growing at an incredible pace is overwhelming. It is causing a degradation in everyone's perception of what is true, or even real. Shared events can take on vastly different explanations for cause and effect as well as introducing endless new speculation and theories leading to a kind of detachment syndrome where everything else gets distorted as well.

This is not a new phenomenon but in the past the range of publications and their circulation was limited and had hurdles like the amount of papers you could print and circulate. Since moving to digital information distribution there are no limits anymore and any view can be found online and supporters for any claim.

From a different perspective it is like finding data supporting anything, especially if vetting of the data is not in the ability of the consumer. This means in general that everyone, myself included will seek sources of information deemed truthful to reduce the amount of conflicting information and to have some security in their own world view. This in itself is not a problem, trust in society is a fundamental need and cannot be replaced by technological means. But what is a problem is picking the sources to trust.

Events and Opinions

What I use to deal with the amount and speed of information is reducing the incoming news into two categories, events and opinions. Events are anything that can be witnessed by many people, and fortunately the amount of media devices is helpful here. There will be endless cameras and microphones available to give enough information to eventually find a common understanding of it. For example a natural disaster is recorded and reported on with its scale, affected people and responses. Other things like recorded public behavior, a passed law or any other change on established governance can be classified as events as well.

Understanding and analysis of the information can take time, going over the amount of information might take days, weeks, years depending on the issue. In a full sense we have to take a reverse historian mindset, collecting first hand accounts and trying to establish what can be known. This is too much for people not actively involved or in a position to affect change, where the information would be needed.

In addition, for big events on a global scale is not actionable for the vast majority of people, meaning a person can only acknowledge and draw some conclusions for their personal live, but not have any means to do something about it. Actively considering information to be actionable or not is a good way to reduce the stress and impact of any given event. Basically reducing anything too large to something that can fit into the horizon of your lives.

The second kind on information in my opinion is any subjective impression of what is going on. Usually a lot of speculation and some kind of obvious or hidden bias, spin or agenda. Anything that can be categorized into that is something that should in the best case not be consumed, especially not by any random source. A good example are any comments on any online platform and most discourse in open social media.

Sources and Trust

And this leads me to the actual issue in the information avalanche of today. Finding trusted sources on issues that are not actionable by yourself is very difficult. A long time ago, the scale of information was mostly actionable, like what happens in the village, or maybe at most the next town over. Now everyone needs to find people they can trust that are very much detached from the locality of their life.

I cannot currently describe a good safe process to find trusted people. But what I observe is that it is easier to revert to myth building, personal cult or champion creation when looking for these sources. How many go by that path and how many go by a more stressful constant re-evaluation approach I cannot say. But I am sure the first path will never cease and will always be part of society.

What I can say is that most open social media in general, or any source that has a clear incentive to create as much engagement as possible is not a good source, because it already has a fundamental bias to create as much controversy with as much content true or false as possible. In my opinion smaller communities work better especially at creating the resources for analysis of events and support network.

Actionable Organization

What is actionable also depends on the entity receiving the information. For example an NGO, party, government or movement will classify information to be actionable on different scales and areas. A government can for example help in a natural disaster event much more than an individual.

If you as a person want to have the same impact, you either have to join an organization like that and get into a high enough position, or become very rich to buy impact.

Some Advice

I am of course also under a constant assault of endless information like everyone else. And I would like to part with some advice. If whatever happens is not actionable by you, engaging with all the opinions and speculation will not help you. Getting a full understanding from people who are the same distance away is not possible. Yes, this can be hard to do and yes sometimes you want to find out what is going on, but have no means to do so.

But if there is nothing to be done, only acceptance of that fact will let you continue to live without losing your mind over it. Of course being affected by terrible events is normal, but jumping into a negative information binge spiral is not helping anyone.