Im Boston Globe gibt Ann Blair, Autorin des gerade erschienenen Buches „Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age“ und Professor an der Harvard University, einen kurzen Abriuß über die frühe Geschichte des Information Overload.
… A new technology does not act alone, after all, but in concert with our ambitions for it. Overload has long been fueled by our own enthusiasm — the enthusiasm for accumulating and sharing knowledge and information, and also for experimenting with new forms of organizing and presenting it.
Early modern compilers were driven by this enthusiasm, even beyond their hopes for acquiring reputation or financial gain. Today, we see the same impulse in the proliferation of cooperative information sharing on the Internet, such as the many designers and programmers sharing new ways to visualize and efficiently use huge quantities of data. In democratizing our ability to contribute to a universal encyclopedia of experience and information, the Internet has shown just how widespread that long-running ambition remains today.
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