What Causes Information Anxiety?

“INFORMATION ANXIETY is produced by the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand. It is the black hole between data and knowledge, and it happens when information doesn’t tell us what we want or need to know.” So wrote Richard S. Wurman in his book Information Anxiety. “For a long time, people didn’t realize how much they didn’t know—they didn’t know what they didn’t know. But now people know what they don’t know, and that makes them anxious.” The result is that most of us may feel that we should know more than we do. With the flood of information coming our way, we pick up little pieces of data. But often we are at a loss as to what to do with them. At the same time, we might suppose that everyone else knows and understands much more than we do. That is when we become anxious!

David Shenk argues that excess information has become a pollutant that creates “data smog.” He adds: “Data smog gets in the way; it crowds out quiet moments, and obstructs much-needed contemplation. . . . It stresses us out.”

It is true that too much information or an overload of material can induce anxiety, but the same is true if we have insufficient information or, worse still, incorrect information. It is much like feeling lonely in a crowded room. As John Naisbitt puts it in his book Megatrends, “we are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.”

How Computer Crime Can Affect You

Another cause for anxiety is the upsurge in computer crime. Dr. Frederick B. Cohen, in his book Protection and Security on the Information Superhighway, expresses his concerns: “The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] estimates that each year as much as $5 billion is lost to computer crime. And, incredibly, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Weaknesses in information systems have also been exploited to gain the upper hand in negotiations, ruin reputations, win military conflicts, and even commit murder.” Added to this is ever-growing concern over the problem of access by children to computer pornography—not to mention the invasion of privacy.

Unscrupulous computer addicts deliberately insert viruses into computer systems and cause havoc. Criminal hackers illegally gain access to electronic systems and obtain confidential information, sometimes even stealing money. Such activities can have devastating effects on thousands of users of personal computers. Computer crime is a threat to business and government.

The Need to Be Well-Informed

Of course, all of us need to be well-informed, but having vast amounts of information does not necessarily educate us in the true sense, for much of what parades as information is nothing more than bare facts or raw data, unrelated to our experience. Some even suggest that instead of the “information explosion,” this phenomenon might best be termed the “data explosion” or even more cynically the “noninformation explosion.” This is how economic analyst Hazel Henderson sees it: “Information itself does not enlighten. We cannot clarify what is mis-information, dis-information, or propaganda in this media-dominated environment. Focusing on mere information has led to overload of ever-less-meaningful billions of bits of fragmented raw data, rather than the search for meaningful new patterns of knowledge.”

Joseph J. Esposito, president of the Encyclopædia Britannica Publishing Group, makes this frank evaluation: “Most of the information of the Information Age is simply wasted; it’s just noise. The Information Explosion is aptly termed; the explosion blocks out our ability to actually hear much of anything. If we can’t hear, we can’t know.” Orrin E. Klapp gives his analysis: “I suspect that no one knows how much of the supply of public communication is pseudo-information, which purports to tell something but in fact tells nothing.”

You will no doubt recall that much of your education at school focused on learning facts so that you could pass examinations. Many times you crammed facts into your brain just prior to examination time. Do you remember learning by rote a long string of dates in history lessons? How many of these events and dates can you recall now? Did those facts teach you to reason and reach logical conclusions?

Does More Equal Better?

If not controlled carefully, devotion to acquiring additional information can cost much in terms of time, sleep, health, and even money. For although more information does offer greater choices, it can make the searcher anxious, wondering whether he has checked or accessed all the information available. Dr. Hugh MacKay offers this caution: “In fact, information is no pathway to enlightenment. Information, of itself, sheds no light on the meaning of our lives. Information has very little to do with the getting of wisdom. Indeed, like other possessions, it can positively get in the way of wisdom. We can know too much, just as we can have too much.”

Often, people are overburdened not only by the great volume of information available today but also by the frustration of trying to transform information into something that is understandable, meaningful, and truly informative. It has been suggested that we could be “like a thirsty person who has been condemned to use a thimble to drink from a fire hydrant. The sheer volume of available information and the manner in which it is often delivered render much of it useless to us.” So, what is enough must be evaluated, not in terms of volume, but in terms of quality and the usefulness of the information to us personally.

What About Data Transfer?

Another common expression heard today is “data transfer.” This has reference to conveying information electronically. While this has its valued place, it is not good communication in the fullest sense. Why not? Because we respond best to people, not to machines. With data transfer, there are no facial expressions seen and no eye contact or body language, which so often shape the conversation and communicate feelings. In face-to-face conversations, these factors add to and often clarify the words used. None of these valuable helps to understanding are available by electronic transfer, not even on the increasingly popular cellular telephone. Sometimes, even face-to-face conversation does not communicate exactly what the speaker has in mind. The hearer may receive and process words in his own way and assign the wrong meaning to them. How much greater a danger there is of this happening when the speaker cannot be seen!

It is a lamentable fact of life that the excessive amount of time some spend in front of computer screens and television sets sometimes makes family members strangers to each other in their own home.

Have You Heard of Technophobia?

“Technophobia” merely means “a fear of technology,” including the use of computers and similar electronic devices. Some believe this is one of the most common anxieties produced by the information age. An article in The Canberra Times, based on an Associated Press release, read: “Japanese Executives Afraid of Computers.” It was said of the executive director of a large Japanese company: “[He] commands power and prestige. But set him down in front of a computer, and he is a mass of nerves.” According to a survey of 880 Japanese companies, only 20 percent of their executives could use computers.

Technophobia is fueled by such major disasters as the 1991 telephone shutdown in New York City that crippled local airports for several hours. And what about the accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in the United States in 1979? It took the plant’s operators several fateful hours before they could understand the meaning of computer-controlled alarm signals.

These are but a few examples of how the technology of the information age has dramatically affected mankind. In his book, Dr. Frederick B. Cohen asks these thought-provoking questions: “Have you been to the bank lately? If the computers weren’t working, could you get any money from them? How about the supermarket? Would they be able to check you out without their checkout computers?”

Perhaps you can relate to one or more of these imaginary situations:

• Your new videotape recorder (VCR) seems to have too many buttons on it when you want to select a program you wish to record. Either you sheepishly call your nine-year-old nephew to set the VCR for you or you decide that you don’t need to see the program after all.

• You are in urgent need of money. You drive to the nearest automatic teller machine but then suddenly remember that the last time you used it, you got confused and pressed the wrong buttons.

• The office telephone rings. The call was put through to you in error. The call was for your boss on the next floor up. There is quite a simple way to transfer the call, but, unsure, you decide to have the switchboard operator transfer the call instead.

• The dashboard on your recently purchased car looks as though it belongs in the cockpit of a modern jetliner. Suddenly, a red light flashes, and you become anxious because you don’t know what the light indicates. Then you have to check a detailed instruction book.

These are just a few examples of technophobia. We can be sure that technology will continue to develop more sophisticated equipment, which people of previous generations would no doubt have termed “miraculous.” Each new updated product entering the marketplace requires greater know-how if it is to be used effectively. Instruction manuals, written by the experts in their jargon,a become frightening in themselves when it is assumed that the user understands the vocabulary and possesses certain knowledge and skills.

Information theorist Paul Kaufman sums up the situation this way: “Our society has an image of information which, although alluring, is ultimately counterproductive. . . . One reason is that too much attention has been focused on computers and hardware and too little on the people who actually use information in order to make sense of the world and do useful things for each other. . . . The problem is not that we think so highly of computers but that we’ve come to think rather less of humans.” It does seem that preoccupation with the glory of producing stunning new technology has often left people worrying about what’s next. Edward Mendelson says: “Technological visionaries can never recognize the distinction between the feasible and the desirable. If a machine can be made to perform some dazzlingly complicated task, then the visionary assumes that the task is worth performing.”

It is this ignoring of the human element in technology that has added greatly to information anxiety.

Is Productivity Really Improved?

Columnist Paul Attewell, writing in The Australian, comments on his research into how much time and money have been saved by computers over recent years. Here are a few of his well-made points: “Despite years of investing in computing systems designed to handle administrative tasks and to control costs, many universities and colleges find that their administrative staffs continue to grow. . . . For several decades, computer manufacturers have asserted that the technology they were selling would produce major breakthroughs in productivity, allowing a given volume of administrative work to be done by far fewer workers at much less cost. Instead, as we are coming to realise, information technology has led to a displacement of efforts: many new things are being done by a workforce of the same or larger size rather than the old work being done by fewer employees. Often, no money is saved at all. One example of this displacement is that people use technology to enhance the appearance of documents rather than simply to produce paperwork more quickly.”

Now it seems that the information superhighway, potentially dangerous for Christians, is here to stay. But how can we avoid information anxiety—at least to some extent? We offer a few practical suggestions in the following short article.

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Information Garbage Glut

“Society, as we all know from experience, is becoming inexorably more crass. We are witnessing the new reign of trash TV, hate radio, shock jocks, tort litigation, publicity stunts, excessively violent and sarcastic rhetoric. Films are ever more sexually explicit and violent. Advertising is noisier, more invasive, and frequently skirting the bounds of taste . . . Profanity is up, and common decency is down. . . . What others have called our ‘crisis in family values’ has more to do with the information revolution than it does with Hollywood’s lack of respect for the traditional family model.”—Data Smog—Surviving the Information Glut, by David Shenk.

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Wisdom The Old-Fashioned Way

“My son, if you will receive my sayings and treasure up my own commandments with yourself, so as to pay attention to wisdom with your ear, that you may incline your heart to discernment; if, moreover, you call out for understanding itself and you give forth your voice for discernment itself, if you keep seeking for it as for silver, and as for hid treasures you keep searching for it, in that case you will understand the fear of Jehovah, and you will find the very knowledge of God. For Jehovah himself gives wisdom; out of his mouth there are knowledge and discernment. When wisdom enters into your heart and knowledge itself becomes pleasant to your very soul, thinking ability itself will keep guard over you, discernment itself will safeguard you.”—Proverbs 2:1-6, 10, 11.

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Information overload has been compared to trying to fill a thimble from a hydrant