A new article by Anthony Lincoln, a second-year master's student in the School of Information, analyzes the problem of "information overload".
According to Lincoln, "it would seem that information overload ... continues to track the growth curve of information itself, distracting attention, hampering decision-making, and lowering productivity in and out of the workplace."
Lincoln's article, published today in the online journal First Monday, challenges many previous attempts to understand information overload; previous analyses mistakenly characterize information overload as "a problem that can be understood (or even solved) by purely rational means," he argues.
Instead, Lincoln suggests that theorists should consider "the interplay of actual social dynamics — power, reputation, norms, and others," to come up with what he calls a holistic social theory of information overload.
The article is available online at FirstMonday.org.
