Being overwhelmed in the information age

It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much. - Yogi Berra

Chance
ESPN
Columbia
By the Numbers
rogerebert.com

And that's just a sampling of what I try to keep track of by reading them on a regular basis.

I keep finding that anytime I read something, there are 10 other things that I feel like I have to read in order to understand where this discovery, reference, or insight is coming from. It's enough to drive a man bonkers. And with my information appetite, it often does.

However, this chase for knowledge has left me wondering to what end does it go. Can a renaissance man exist in the age of Google? Can trying to know something about everything lead to knowing nothing about anything? In other words, can you try to make yourself so smart you just make yourself dumb?

While the advent of the blog has given millions a public voice they never had, there are times when it comes to be a disservice. To be honest, I have no clue how on earth scholars 2 centuries from now (provided the human race isn't consumed by the expansion of the Sun at that point in time) will be able to study this age like we were able to study early American history. There is just so much information to go through that it'll take years for something meaningful to define our society to be discovered from it.

At the present though, I believe all this information does need to humble us all to accept this fact: We may all know something about everything, but nobody knows everything about anything. If you think you do know everything about something, please feel free to say so. I have a bludgeon right here to knock some sense into and arrogance out of you.

So, why did some of us get like this? Let's look at the story of one Martin Luther, perhaps the patron saint of the blog. He sure had some ideas, and decided to list them on a piece of paper and post it for public viewing. Boy, he sure created quite a stir, the legacy of which is the numerous denominations of Christianity beyond the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. Were these multiple churches what Luther had in mind when he wrote his 95 theses? Most certainly not, but others felt embolden by his actions to speak out against the Catholic Church, and felt they could start their own church. Remarkable how one idea, whether confirmed right or wrong, can lead to such a fragmentation of society when reaction takes precedence over reason.