Do you feel tired by the end of the day even if you have not done any physical work? Do you feel rather irritable these days apparently no reason at all? Do you forget where you left your car keys, or sometimes an urgent mail you had to send - perhaps even that today was your wedding anniversary and you had to take her out on a date? It can often be embarrassing when you forget important things, surely. Don't even be surprised to acknowledge the fact of having forgotten that this your daughter's birthday! In the old days people would have labelled you as being absent minded, but then how do people label you when you forge Do you feel tired by the end of the day even if you have not done any physical work? Do you feel rather irritable these days apparently no reason at all? Do you forget where you left your car keys, or sometimes an urgent mail you had to send - perhaps even that today was your wedding anniversary and you had to take her out on a date? It can often be embarrassing when you forget important things, surely. Don't even be surprised to acknowledge the fact of having forgotten that this your daughter's birthday! In the old days people would have labelled you as being absent minded, but then how do people label you when you forget important things - careless, perhaps?z If the answers to all of these questions amounts to a 'yes,' in that case, you might be suffering from the stress resulting from information overload!
Strangely but surely, human relationships are breaking down because of your forgetfulness and this adds up to a sense of frustration and even a sense of guilt because, somehow or the other you believe that you were responsible for the breakup because you forgot an important date! Today, more than ever, a lot of us are multi-tasking like never before, and often we remove things that we believe to be less-essential from our lists of priorities. Experts believe that multi-tasking erodes the quality of work that we do. The human brain apparently is not quipped to multi-task but then the information that we are bombarded with leaves us with no other option than to multi-task.
The human brain is being subjected to a bombardment of information that it cannot handle in an effective manner. One may claim, that the human brain itself is moe powerful than a supercomputer, but then even supercomputers have their limits! There was a time when the hard disk in your computer had a capacity that ran in the range of megabytes, today your hard disk can handle terabytes of information. The question is how much information can the human brain handle? I don't know, but then all I can suggest is that the human brain too can handle terry bytes of information, so then why are we feeling so stressed out today, even if our brains can store large amount of information?
The question of how much information we can store doesn't seem to be the issue, if we agree that the brain can store so much information. What is a matter of concern lies in our short term memory which prioritises information that needs to be processed. That brings us to the the equivalent of short term memory, the RAM in the computer. The RAM or the Random Access Memory has grown exponentially and today we believe that a four gigabyte ram should work fine for common applications. The fact however is that the human brain might be lacking in this area. The human short term memory is not able to handle information at the primary stage. We are not able to filter information at the initial stage with the result that we are overwhelmed by the amount of data that we need to process in its initial stage. With computers it is possible to upgrade the RAM further but with the human brain, this seems to be an uphill task! The fact is that we are, today, not able to handle the terabytes of information that we are bombarded with, (thanks to being a most connected generation) because our short term memory.
The main problem is that because we are not able to handle all that information at the initial stage, we feel fatigued, and overwhelmed. The human brain is being made to handle information like never before, and it is getting overwhelmed. Information overload is forcing the human brain to re-wire itself, into a super information processing machine that it was never meant to be! Evolution and adaptation are being put to the test like never before, and I wonder how Darwin would have incorporated this into his concept of adaptability because the challenges that we are facing as a human race go beyond the slow process of adaptation that he envisaged.
The human brain is being forced to re-wire itself in a way that could never have happened if nature had its way. We are forced to work like the machines that we were never meant to be. If we are a more confused generation then it is because we are being forced to to handle information that simply is simply beyond our capacity. We are a highly stressed generation today because our very humanness is being challenged. It is therefore not surprising you feel exhausted, drained out and irritable by the end of the day, don't feel bad because you have been forced to handle a quantum of information that you were never meant to handle. Today, everyone can access the Internet, and that includes even those who who are not hardcore internet surfers. The smartphone has made it possible for even novices to access the Internet and sure it has affected them like never before.
We are a rather forgetful, anxious, and restless generation because we have been overwhelmed by the quantum of information that we have been forced to process in spite of not having the capability of processing information in its initial stage. Unfortunately we cannot upgrade the RAM in the brain and therefore we are becoming a generation of anxious and irritable people who are losing out to a higher intelligence. What we need to do is to learn how to filter the amount of information that we can handle and need for everyday use. What matters s to understand the fact that we are human beings and that we work differently from information processing machines ! t important things - careless, perhaps?
Strangely but surely, human relationships are breaking down because of your forgetfulness and this adds up to a sense of frustration and even a sense of guilt because, somehow or the other you believe that you were responsible for the breakup because you forgot an important date! Today, more than ever, a lot of us are multi-tasking like never before, and often we remove things that we believe to be less-essential from our lists of priorities. Experts believe that multi-tasking erodes the quality of work that we do. The human brain apparently is not quipped to multi-task but then the information that we are bombarded with leaves us with no other option than to multi-task.
The human brain is being subjected to a bombardment of information that it cannot handle in an effective manner. One may claim, that the human brain itself is moe powerful than a supercomputer, but then even supercomputers have their limits! There was a time when the hard disk in your computer had a capacity that ran in the range of megabytes, today your hard disk can handle terabytes of information. The question is how much information can the human brain handle? I don't know, but then all I can suggest is that the human brain too can handle terry bytes of information, so then why are we feeling so stressed out today, even if our brains can store large amount of information?
The question of how much information we can store doesn't seem to be the issue, if we agree that the brain can store so much information. What is a matter of concern lies in our short term memory which prioritises information that needs to be processed. That brings us to the the equivalent of short term memory, the RAM in the computer. The RAM or the Random Access Memory has grown exponentially and today we believe that a four gigabyte ram should work fine for common applications. The fact however is that the human brain might be lacking in this area. The human short term memory is not able to handle information at the primary stage. We are not able to filter information at the initial stage with the result that we are overwhelmed by the amount of data that we need to process in its initial stage. With computers it is possible to upgrade the RAM further but with the human brain, this seems to be an uphill task! The fact is that we are, today, not able to handle the terabytes of information that we are bombarded with, (thanks to being a most connected generation) because our short term memory.
The main problem is that because we are not able to handle all that information at the initial stage, we feel fatigued, and overwhelmed. The human brain is being made to handle information like never before, and it is getting overwhelmed. Information overload is forcing the human brain to re-wire itself, into a super information processing machine that it was never meant to be! Evolution and adaptation are being put to the test like never before, and I wonder how Darwin would have incorporated this into his concept of adaptability because the challenges that we are facing as a human race go beyond the slow process of adaptation that he envisaged.
The human brain is being forced to re-wire itself in a way that could never have happened if nature had its way. We are forced to work like the machines that we were never meant to be. If we are a more confused generation then it is because we are being forced to to handle information that simply is simply beyond our capacity. We are a highly stressed generation today because our very humanness is being challenged. It is therefore not surprising you feel exhausted, drained out and irritable by the end of the day, don't feel bad because you have been forced to handle a quantum of information that you were never meant to handle. Today, everyone can access the Internet, and that includes even those who who are not hardcore internet surfers. The smartphone has made it possible for even novices to access the Internet and sure it has affected them like never before.
We are a rather forgetful, anxious, and restless generation because we have been overwhelmed by the quantum of information that we have been forced to process in spite of not having the capability of processing information in its initial stage. Unfortunately we cannot upgrade the RAM in the brain and therefore we are becoming a generation of anxious and irritable people who are losing out to a higher intelligence. What we need to do is to learn how to filter the amount of information that we can handle and need for everyday use. What matters s to understand the fact that we are human beings and that we work differently from information processing machines !
No comments:
Post a Comment