Infoglut

“In 2009, more data will be generated by individuals than in the entire history of mankind through 2008.” ~Andreas Weigend, former Chief Scientist at Amazon

Over the past five years the Internet has been abuzz with the power of social media. Facebook is now population 200 million and growing. And 20 hours of new video are being uploaded to YouTube per minute!

How do we turn all these mountains of information into value? Or is it simply becoming an alternate form of diversion?

About two decades ago I read that our the Federal Register, a daily publication of rules, proposed rules and notifications of the Federal Government, was more than a thousand pages per day. In attempting to verify this I see that the 2008 edition was only 80,000 pages, a little closer to 1500 a week than 1000 a day. Add to this all the state and local regulations, notifications, etc. and you have a lot of grist for our nation's 1.15 million lawyers to sift in order to stay current.

Then we get to Wall Street and see the endless spewing of stock valuations, dollar valuations, commodity prices, all day long in an endless stream.

Throw in a gazzillion pesky bloggers on their tiny soap boxes and there is enough information being thrust at us to make us dizzy. eNewsletters, business webinars, weather data... and we still haven't touched the mainstream media with all their full time staffs pouring articles, stories, television footage into the stew.

At the end of the day, so what? Is all this accessible information enriching us somehow? At what point does the entire infrastructure of our age collapse under the weight of it all?

Just sorting a few bits of data my brain inhaled this week. Have a good day.