History of Overload

The history of information overload has been discussed by a number of writers. Detailed and scholarly treatment is not confined to the Western context and has been provided by Blair (2003, 2010) and by the contributors to a special issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas (Rosenberg, 2003; see also, Bawden & Robinson, 2009; Gleick, 2011; Neill, 1992). The concept of information overload is usually taken as originating at the end of the 19th century with George Simmel, a German sociologist and philosopher who was one of the first to analyze it in modern terms (Klapp, 1986; Savolainen, 2007), but its roots can be traced much farther back.

Almost from the beginning of writing, in the ancient and classical world, there were complaints of too many books and too much to read. Solutions immediately began to appear, in the form of summaries of texts and lists of collection holdings. In the European medieval age of handwritten manuscripts, the problem was perceived to become more serious, with Vincent of Beauvais lamenting “the multitude of books, the shortness of time, and slipperiness of memory” in 1255. “By the middle of the thirteenth century,” writes Blair (2010, p. 45), “the principle ingredients both of a perception of overload and of solutions to it were in place.” The solutions included reference works, compilations, indexes, concordances, and structured design of text.

The introduction of printing to Europe in early modern times exacerbated the problem. A tremendous acceleration in the production of texts throughout the 16th and 17th centuries amounted to a kind of information explosion (Rosenberg, 2003), with Leibnitz giving a typical lament in 1680 about “the horrible mass of books which keeps on growing” (Rosenberg, 2003, p. 7). This was when what might be seen as the first systematic solutions to overload became widely used: skim reading, browsing, cutting and pasting, and annotating (Blair, 2003, 2010).

The volume of published material continued to escalate throughout the 18th century, which led to more innovations to control the flood. The first modern encyclopedias and dictionaries appeared (Yeo, 2003), together with indexes to periodicals and a greater use of summaries and reviews. The first approaches to systematic documentation practices appeared in the sciences. The great volume of descriptive natural history published in the 16th and 17th centuries (Ogilvie, 2003) was systematized by Linnaeus, through the intellectual means of his nomenclature and classification and documentary innovations that included filing systems, index cards, and structured text annotation (Müller-Wille & Charmantier, 2012). The eighteenth century saw the beginning of a much criticized trend, a reliance on skim reading: “the late eighteenth century boom in the number of publications . . . encouraged rapid scanning and skimming rather than intensive study of a few” (Secord, 2014, p. 128).

Overload in its modern sense began to be recognized with the communications revolution of the 19th century, with steam-powered presses multiplying the volume of material available and the widespread adoption of newspapers and magazines, learned journals, textbooks, and other new formats (Edmund & Morris, 2000). Around the beginning of the 20th century, the documentation movement and the development of tools for bibliographic control, such as abstracts, bibliographies, subject indexing, cataloguing rules, and classification schemes for the paper-based world, reached its peak (Csiszar, 2013; Wright, 2014).

Around the mid-20th century, complaints about overload in dealing with scientific information in particular were at their height. An influential article by Vannevar Bush (1945) noted that scientists were bogged down by a growing mountain of research.

Overload was explicitly acknowledged (though not under that name) at the Royal Society’s Scientific Information Conference in 1948, which was highly influential in dictating the pattern for academic and professional information services at the start of the digital age. At that conference, “not for the first time in history, but more acutely than ever before, there was a fear that scientists would be overwhelmed, that they would no longer be able to control the vast amounts of potentially relevant material that were pouring forth from the world’s presses” and that “torrents and rivers of current literature pour themselves into libraries, adding, without cease, to what is already there” (Bawden et al., 1999; Bawden & Robinson, 2009).

The first scientific treatment of the overload phenomenon is ascribed to the American psychologist George Miller (1956, 1962), who detailed many examples of what would come to be called overload, based on psychological studies of the limits to human capacity to deal with information. Galbraith (1974) reflected on the relevance of these kinds of studies to dealing with practical problems of overload.

Information overload first became noted as a potential problem for business and government in the 1960s. As Wilensky (1968) noted:

Information has always been a source of power, but it is now increasingly a source of confusion. In every sphere of modern life, the chronic condition is a surfeit of information, poorly integrated or lost somewhere in the system. (p. 331)

Alvin Toffler’s (1970) influential book Future Shock brought the phenomenon to wide attention. He described overload as causing both physical and physiological distress due to overloading of perception, cognition, and decision-making processes by the technological advances that were transforming industrial society. By 1984, leading scientific publisher Eugene Garfield was writing of “the already well-defined disease information overload” (1984, p. 39).

Up to the 1970s, overload was largely a concern in journal and report literature for academics and professionals, and of consumer choice for the general public. It became a major and general issue of concern and focus in the 1980s and 1990s, with the widespread adoption of digital sources and then the internet. A transformation had occurred: the fundamental problem was no longer finding information, but filtering and controlling it (Tenopir, 1990). As Popova (2011) put it: “While the old media fought against the scarcity of information, new media are fighting the overabundance of information” (p. 5). A widely noted Reuters report, based on a survey of 1,300 business managers worldwide, dramatically titled Dying for Information, revealed a number of startling statistics (Lewis, 1996). Two thirds of the respondents believed that information overload had caused loss of job satisfaction, a similar proportion that it had damaged their personal relations, and one third that it had damaged their health. Nearly half believed that it damaged the decision-making process by causing delays and leading to poor decisions. This report was a major factor in bringing overload to the general public’s attention, and it has not been out of public consciousness since.

It may be concluded that a perception of information overload has existed for almost as long as information has been recorded, although its nature and causes have changed drastically over time.

The Nature of Overload

There is no single generally accepted definition of information overload. It is a slippery and highly contested concept. It is easy to give numbers to show the increasing volume of information, but the problem is not just the amount. It is also to do with diversity, complexity, choices, confusion, and harm caused by information. It is notable that these factors are present in metaphors often used for overload, which include flood, deluge, smog, and explosion.

There is a recurring question as to what exactly everyone is overloaded with. Is it information, data, documents, ideas, or ideologies? Commentators suggest that people are drowning in information (or data) but lack knowledge, and often quote T. S. Eliot’s lines “Choruses from the Rock”: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” This is not a new question. As noted previously, the information explosion in early modern Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries was variously regarded as a dramatic increase in the number of books, the amount of descriptive facts, and the number of authoritative voices (Rosenberg, 2003).

Overload has generally been explained and defined in rather pragmatic and informal terms; for example, Edmund and Morris (2000) and Eppler and Mengis (2004) give typical lists for their time, mainly characterized as an unmanageable volume of information (for other explanations drawing on the 21st-century context, see Bawden & Robinson, 2009; Jones & Kelly, 2018; Spier, 2016).

Relatively few have invoked a formal or philosophical approach. Floridi (2014a, 2014b) analyzes aspects of overload in terms of his Philosophy of Information. Spier (2016) examines overload using the ideas of Horkheiner and Adorno, concluding that overload is a feature of a capitalist culture industry, whereby “the increase in standardised cultural messages in the media leaves individuals with fewer capacities for reflection and critical thinking” (p. 394) and whereby individuals are active agents in their own overloading, in that they actively consume more information artifacts than they can interpret or understand. Capurro’s (2013, 2014) analysis refers in part to Heidegger and Foucault.

A statement by the International Federation of Library Associations (2017, n.p.) suggests that “the exponential growth in the availability of information brought to us by technological advances brings not only promise, but for many a sense of information overload and frustrations linked to a lack of confidence in using digital tools.” Here, overload is taken as being caused by technology delivering too much information, which is made worse by a sense that there is not adequate control over the flood.

More precisely, information overload is the situation that arises when an individual’s efficiency and effectiveness in using information (whether for their work, studies, citizenship, or life generally) are hampered by the amount of relevant, and potentially useful, information available to them. The information must be of value or it could simply be ignored, and it must be known about and made accessible or the overload will only be potential, although the latter situation could certainly cause anxiety or fear of missing out, or FOMO (Dhir, Yossatorn, Kaur, & Chen, 2018; Jones & Kelly, 2018; Przybylski, Murayama, deHann, & Gladwell, 2013). The feeling of overload is usually accompanied by a perceived loss of control over the situation and often by feelings of being overwhelmed. Savolainen (2006, 2007) points out that these feelings are often related to a perceived lack of time to deal with all the information at hand. Wilson (1995) defined overload as the situation in which someone knows that relevant information exists, but knows that they cannot access and use it properly because of time constraints. Time pressures have been mentioned as a specific cause of overload in numerous studies, for example, among health service managers (MacDonald, Bath, & Booth, 2011) and board-level directors (Merendino et al., 2018). In the extreme, it seems clear that information overload may lead directly to problems of mental and physical health, as well as loss of efficiency at whatever tasks are being undertaken. Its significance should not be underestimated.

Information overload has generally been regarded as an issue that by definition affects the individual, but some authors have understood it as a problem that can affect an organization, a city, or even a society, albeit the summation of individual situations. For example, Wilson (2001, p. 113) wrote of overload at the organizational level as “a situation in which the extent of perceived individual information overload is sufficiently widespread within the organization as to reduce the overall effectiveness of management operations” (see also Davis, 2011; Eppler & Mengis, 2004).

Causes of Information Overload

Is Overload Real?

Running alongside the expressed concerns about overload, there has always been a parallel stream of opinion to the effect that these are not “real” problems and that they are exaggerated. This exaggeration may be encouraged by professional groups seeking to magnify a problem to which they claim to have a solution. This has been a potential concern for the library and information professions (Bawden & Robinson, 2009).

Among the skeptics, Wilson (1976) regarded overload as a “phantom.” And when the modern conception of overload was being established, Tidline (1999, p. 486) argued that overload was unevidenced and was a “myth of modern culture.” While this may be an extreme view, there is considerable evidence that many people are quite untroubled by the idea of overload. Rudd and Rudd (1986) suggest that there is potential for overload, due to the amount of available information, but actual overload is rare and occurs only in unusual circumstances. Bawden et al. (1999) note a number of rebuttals to overload at the end of the twentieth century. Savolainen (2007) points out that “information overload does not seem to exist for many people since they tend to ignore what they do not need or that which is seen as irrelevant . . . simply avoiding or ignoring the excessive supply of information [or] may adopt a highly selective approach and seek information that supports their customary decision choices and practices” (p. 614). Others have made similar observations (Feng & Agosta, 2017; Hargittai et al., 2012; Jones & Kelly, 2018; Neill, 1992; Shachaf, Aharony, & Baruchson, 2016; Thompson, 2013; Wilson, 1976).

It also has to be admitted that there is an element of fashion, of being on-trend, in expressing concern about these issues. The idea of TMI was much discussed in popular sources around the turn of the millennium, but seems to have receded from popular consciousness (Bawden & Robinson, 2009). In a review of Clive Thompson’s Smarter Than You Think, Maria Popova (2013) described information overload as “painfully familiar and trite-by-overuse” (Popova, 2013). This is not an argument for rejecting the whole idea of overload as mythical, but rather for a clearer analysis of its nature and applicability.

Others have tried to deny overload by saying that the problem is real, but is caused by other factors. One widely publicized example of this is American writer Clay Shirky’s dictum that “it’s not overload, it’s filter failure” (discussed by Davis, 2011, p. 46), since the problem is not the amount of information per se, but our inefficiency in dealing with it. It is perhaps more helpful to regard filter failure as an intrinsic part of the wider phenomenon of overload (Davis, 2011).

In the context of big data, the information philosopher Luciano Floridi remarks that “big data refers to an overwhelming sense that we have bitten off more than we can chew, that we are being force-fed like geese, that our intellectual livers are exploding” (Floridi, 2014b, p. 305). Instead, Floridi goes on to argue, we should regard ourselves as seated at a banquet where there is more food than we could ever eat, so why should we complain? There is no easy technological solution, so we must, Floridi argues, think hard about the purposes for which the data are created and used and thereby focus on information quality.

Similarly, Capurro (2013, 2014) regards overload as a paradoxical condition: Information at hand is always the product of some selection process, guided by what an individual perceives they need. The paradox, for Capurro, lies in the great number of options provided by available information and hence for the need to choose the criteria for selection. Spier (2016) expresses this paradox more generally: If we live in an information society whose main feature is, by definition, a growing informatization, how can such a society suffer from too much information?

One answer to this paradox may be another—the paradox of choice, as enunciated by American psychologist Barry Schwartz (2004). Put simply, while having little choice may be problematic, having too much choice may be equally or more so. Having too many options may cause anxiety and lead to a paralysis of decision making or irrational decisions to overload. And indeed, studies of online shopping behavior have shown that an increased choice of brand alternative causes feelings of overload among shoppers (Li, 2017).

A closely related viewpoint is that overload, assuming that it exists, is not caused by TMI because there is never a necessity for anyone to absorb all relevant information. Rather, it is caused by “filter failure,” an inability to identify which information is useful at any particular time (for a clear identification of this in the context of health information, see Klerings, Weinhandl, & Thaler, 2015).

As guests at Floridi’s banquet, we may feel it does not matter if we cannot consume all the food, or even try a majority of the dishes, as long as we get enough to eat. For most of us, most of the time, that may be a reasonable assumption, hence the studies showing that many people successfully cope with overload and are unaware of its existence. But that does not mean that we should not be mindful of what information we consume and how we do it.

Information Poverty

It may seem odd for an article on information overload to devote space to what may seem to be its diametric opposite, information poverty. But, in fact, information poverty is in a sense the evil twin of information overload, and the two are in many ways connected.

Information poverty, which in the simplest terms means that individuals, organizations, or communities have insufficient information to enable them to be effective, is a contested concept that has been understood in different ways (Britz, 2004; Chatman, 1996; Haider & Bawden, 2007; Lee & Butler, 2019). It is closely connected to the concept of the so-called digital divide, the idea that some individuals and groups are disconnected from an ability to access and use digital information (Bawden & Robinson, 2009; Flanagan, 2018).

Information poverty is not solely a feature of economically impoverished or ill-educated groups. For example, it was found to be a factor in a study of health service managers. The subjects had difficulty either because the required information did not exist, they were unable to access it, or they could not get it in time for it to be useful (MacDonald et al., 2011).

The particular relevance of information poverty to overload is that, seemingly paradoxically, the two problems may be identified in the same setting (MacDonald et al., 2011). The two pathologies may also have much the same effect. Those suffering from information poverty are unable to make good decisions or take effective action because they lack the information and data that would enable them to do so; the overloaded suffer the same fate because the surfeit of information causes fatigue and anxiety (Goulding, 2001).

Overload and poverty can be confused because their consequences are much the same. As with overload, there have been concerns that these may be false, or at least exaggerated, phenomena, focused on by professional groups wishing to offer solutions (Bawden & Robinson, 2009). In any event, the solutions to the two problems may have something in common.

Consequences of Overload

Solutions to Overload

Conclusion

Information overload is real. It is not a myth or a phantom. For almost as long as there has been information, there has been a perception that humanity has been overloaded by it. The essential nature of overload has not changed with evolving technology, although its causes and proposed solutions have been altered. The people and mechanisms that suffer from overload are by and large the same as those that cause it. The problem has never completely overwhelmed individuals, organizations, or societies, but it has never gone away. The best ways to avoid overload, individually and socially, appear to lie in coping strategies that enable satisficing and in seeking a mindful balance between consuming information and finding understanding.

The difference in the 21st century is that the move to hyperhistory and the infosphere means that individuals and societies depend on, and are formed by, information in an unprecedented way. Information overload needs to be taken more seriously than ever.