Overwhelmed with the Access Technology Provides

Technology, especially the internet, provides us with a unique ability to access a wealth of information, and additionally allows us to access that information at any time and through many different ways. It also allows information and material to be constantly updated and content to be continually added. This ability to access information and the nature of content being updated all the time is certainly beneficial and useful, and for many reasons an amazing aspect of our technology. But it is also the reason I so often feel overwhelmed by the Internet and information available to me.  

            I like to follow a lot of different fashion blogs, my friends and I are constantly sharing music by posting links of songs on each others’ Facebook walls, and there are always new emails, photographs, articles and so forth, continually and constantly added that is impossible for me to keep up everything that I would like to. There are always songs that I haven’t heard, posts I haven’t viewed, photos I haven’t looked through, and emails I haven’t read. To the point where, I am not enjoying what initially was something I got involved with for the sole point of enjoying.

            There are now new tools to streamline the updates and sort the information have popped up. I have noticed Google Reader, and now use it to easily keep up with blogs and websites I look at. I also have noticed that in Gmail there is a new priority mailbox to get the important emails to the front of the users attention. There are more sites and tools that allow you to stay connected even further and keep on top of the information that constantly is being added and updated. There are so many ways to be connected to people, events, and information that now there are tools being developed to stay connected to your connections. While these new tools help with my feelings of being overwhelmed, they do not necessarily resolve my feelings.

            In the documentary “We Live in Public” Josh Harris seems to go a little crazy at the end of his experiments living his life in public. He seems too exposed and too integrated into living publicly that his mental health is at stake. The parallels that Josh Harris’ experiments have with our current society make me wonder if the way Josh returned to a more simplistic living at the end of the documentary will also inevitably happen in our society. I wonder if having so much information and constant connection, will cause us to abandon or retreat from some technological advances, in hopes for a more sound and happy life.

            I think my own solution is to simplify and reduce the number of things I am trying to achieve and keep up with on the Internet and accept that there will constantly be more to know and experience. I just have to realize that I am not going to be able to process all the information that I want to and to enjoy and experience the information that I can when I have the time and ability, and not to stress.