We're all worried about the costs of information overload and we typically associate these problems with new digital technologies. But actually information overload has very deep roots: signs of information overload were present already in the accumulation of manuscript texts in pre-modern cultures and were further accelerated by the introduction of printing (in the 15th century in the case of Europe).
The overload we experience today — millions of Google search results in a fraction of a second — has its costs, but it is also a privilege, the result of the efforts of generations of accumulation before us and of massively increased access to the consumption and production of information in the digital age. Yes, overload creates problems, but it has also inspired important solutions — methods of selecting, summarizing, sorting and storing first devised centuries ago and that still work today, as well as new ones no doubt forthcoming.
Read this HBR blog post
