An avalanche of information.

• Author: Saltzman, Joe
• Position: WORDS IMAGES

NEVER IN THE HISTORY of humankind have we ever had so much information available so quickly, and yet most of us are drowning in the sheer volume of so many conversations, personal diaries, pseudo-facts, figures, stories, events, ideas, and millions of images--information everywhere, but no clarity or meaning in sight. A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but 1,000,000,000 pictures from cell phones, digital cameras, and photo and art files filling cyberspace, available at the click of a button, offer so much pictorial information that it even is overwhelming to younger generations who have grown up on this sort of thing. Everything from recipes to advice blogs to medical recommendations and on-sale pharmaceuticals to sexual devices beyond imagination spew forth from hundreds of countries demanding attention. Search engines offer thousands of hits on every subject from gardening to sports to celebrity news. You can create your own newspaper or program featuring only the news that interests you; everything else simply does not exist.

The phenomenon was given national credibility when Time magazine announced that the person of the year was--You. "You" who are part of the information revolution that is sweeping the country 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. There is no silence, no freedom from the noise that envelops us all. Trivia and misinformation cohabitate with serious and accurate data--and no one can figure out what is true, false, or simply fabricated, or what to concentrate on or think about. We live in a new technological era of digital noise that threatens to overwhelm even the most boorish and uninvolved individual. Intellectuals either ignore it at their own risk of not understanding this brave new world, or try to make sense of it by adding their voices to the digital mess. The teenager sitting in her room offering a video diary of her 24/7 life does not really care who is listening because all she--and millions like her--care about is herself. All she babbles about is her own immature and undeveloped life and her audience usually consists of herself, possibly a few friends, and a parent. No one else cares--unless the Internet finds her and publicizes her website because of a piece of nudity or, perhaps, a suicide attempt. Better yet (at least for the faceless vultures lurking out there), a suicide attempt while nude.

No one is safe from this technological revolution. A cell phone can capture the most disgusting or bizarre image and...