# Information management explained

When we observe [nature](reality.md), the incoming perception assembles itself into a hierarchy:

- Measurements - [values](values.md) and [sensations](mind-feelings.md) we experience.
  - e.g., a being we regard as a cat, two of those beings, colors, numbers, opinions, memories, etc.
- Facts - the values that we can observe as true.
  - e.g., orange and black are present, two cats are present, there is a ball of yarn, one cat has swatted the ball, there is a hissing noise from the other cat
- Data - samples of values that have some type of [meaning](meaning.md), which is what [a computer](computers.md) works on (though the meaning comes strictly from the users).
  - e.g., two cats (one orange and one black), one has struck a ball of yard, the other has hissed at it
- Information - values we've compared with other values, which is how we perceive and where most of our [feelings](mind-feelings.md) come from.
  - e.g., the two cats had gotten along, but not right now
- Knowledge - information that has been adjusted from additional information
  - e.g., the two cats had gotten along, but not right now because of the ball of yard
- Wisdom - focused knowledge toward perceived [purposes](purpose.md)
  - e.g., the two cats are having a dispute over that ball of yarn, which may lead to a [conflict](people-conflicts.md)

Therefore, we should only consume information relative to what our [purposes](purpose.md) are.

## The history of information

500 years ago, you were fortunate to own something someone else wrote. 100 years ago, most people could hold about half a dozen of them in their pocket. This article today is easily reproducible and effortless to share, and there are *billions* of them.

Most trends have a historic precedent, where something gets done faster and better, but mostly the same way. History typically gives us principles, if we're willing to learn them.

Multiple information technologies across history have gotten us here, but the [Information Age](history-eras.md) has very little precedent. Each technology has magnified our information availability and increased its flow:

1. Writing gave people the means to share and send information. Philosophers bemoaned what it did to everyone's memory, but it allowed anyone to be [educated](education.md) by long-deceased people if they knew how to read and had access to a library.
2. The printing press magnified writing, and the only constraint to permitting *many* people to read was money.
3. Photographs allowed us to send slices of time across the world, meaning we could see farther alongside [understanding](understanding.md).
4. The telegraph made the entire exchange *instant* with small bits of that information, allowing us to act faster.
5. Radio permitted us to deliver entire *lectures* to anyone in a region, irrespective of price, and the telephone let us hold conversations irrespective of distance.
6. Moving pictures let us capture and share human existence in its most raw form, and television made it commonplace and even more accessible.
7. Electronic games and animation permit us to express fantasy to each other in a tangible medium.
8. The internet has removed the need for much money to do all of the above, first for writing, then for everything else.
9. [Virtual reality and augmented reality](computers-vr.md) bring the entire experience together, limited only by [imagination](imagination.md).

The only thing even *close* to being similar is the invention of the [automotive](autos.md). Our minds are configured to handle the information flow of walking speed at 2-3 mph, and horseback riding maxed out around 25-30 mph. Driving a car that can easily surpass 60 mph is a dramatic normalization of what would be considered an overwhelming experience.

### The Over-Information Age

In the mid-1990s, some geeks built a vast rat's nest of [networked computers](networks-computer.md) called "the internet". Once the [trend](trends.md) caught on, every member of society on all tiers of [social status](classes.md) could access everything as soon as they could get to a computer.

By the 2010s, nearly anyone with a portable computer (e.g., a cell phone) and a reliable internet connection had *instant* access to *far* more information than kings had a century ago.

This trend has Balkanized many established, long-standing monoliths of information exchange, leading to their general [obsolescence](trends.md):

- Why go to the library when the book is online or on your Kindle? As of now, a library's primary feature is that it's a quiet place, and its digital equivalent is a [DRM](legal-ip.md) enforcement vehicle for publishers.
- Why ask a friend about their hobby? You can find just as much information on literally *thousands* of hobbies on numerous message boards or online videos.
- Why pay for college when the information is freely available online? For many industries, colleges only exist to [communicate competence](jobs-specialization.md) to specific [social networks](groups-large.md).
- Why consult [scientific journals](science.md)? The information is on SciHub or floating around online elsewhere.
- Why go shopping anywhere? You can just buy things online, and once [VR/AR](computers-vr.md) is perfected, you can even *test* the product online for the most part.
- Since COVID-19, why go to church? You can practice your [religious observance](religion.md) from the comfort of your own home.

Our present social trend is the Over-Information Age, and I anticipate this era will continue well into the 2050s. [AI](computers-ai.md) adds *much* more semi-decent information on top of what we already have, and a glut of ever-increasingly high-speed computers only magnifies the means to manipulate, store, and transmit information.

The Over-Information Age consists of each individual person possessing many lightweight connections across the world, irrespective of geography but dependent on [technology](technology.md), and comparatively few in-person interactions with their predecessors.

While information itself used to have value, most of the competition has now pivoted to a *desperate* competition for everyone's scarce attention, which creates a type of "attention [economy](economics.md)". While it empowers compared to the past, it now creates a *new* problem of endless distraction.

Further, this perpetual cosmopolitanism ensures that [cultures](people-culture.md) can be *extremely* divided, all the way down to where many individuals have very little in common with their neighbors. Standard trust mechanisms (e.g., living in the same neighborhood, going to the same school, having the same workplace) become obsolete methods of knowing who to [trust](trust.md).

Societies with this newly formed attention economy (i.e., most developed regions of the world) are a perpetual, monotonous hum of inattentive focus that provokes us to be [unhappy](mind-feelings-happiness.md) and [unsuccessful](success-1_why.md), [mindlessly pursuing tasks](habits.md) and [substances](addiction-substances.md) that don't [resolve our concerns](purpose.md) or [give us meaning](meaning.md). It's the [human condition](humanity.md), but fast-forward.

This issue isn't merely my opinion, either. [Someone at Google in 2013 made a call to minimize distraction](http://www.minimizedistraction.com/), and [time is now officially our most limited resource](https://ourworldindata.org/time-use).

## Where we stand

In this era, there's a *lot* of information available, on pretty much everything:

1. The internet gives thousands of articles on almost any subject.
2. Most of the "fact-checking" sources are supposed to distill the truth, but they have a [bias](mind-bias.md), and their information may not be accurate in specific domains.
3. For the first time in recorded history, our ability to filter out bad information is more important than our ability to gather it.

For various reasons, most information doesn't have much value:

- People don't apply much [common sense](understanding.md) to the subject, or are repeating what everyone else says (which can get *much* worse when [AI](computers-ai.md) assists with the [creative](mind-creativity.md) process).
- The creator has intentionally made the information inadequate to provoke people to pay more [money](money-1_why.md) to get the complete information.
- The creator's [bias](mind-bias.md) overshadows the truth.
- The goal of the content is to [influence](power-influence.md) people by [distorting the truth](image-distortion.md).

Everyone has a limit on how much information they can consume.

- When we reach that limit, we become [distracted](success-4_routine.md), [unhappy](mind-feelings-happiness.md), [unable to retain information](mind-memory.md).
- Over time, we can adapt that distracted and miserable state into [habitual, mindless autopilot](habits.md).
- We can train that limit to expand a little, but it's mostly hard-wired into our [personalities](personality.md).

Being frequently inundated with information is *not* healthy for us:

- We adopt a heavily [biased](mind-bias.md) and judgmental [culture](people-culture.md) from *many* people who have extreme views that either radicalize a more moderate (and balanced) belief we may have or make us attack the opposite view.
- Perpetually being online can become [addicting](addiction.md), and its symptoms demonstrate from few to no other hobbies and adapting [meme](trends.md) [language](language.md) for offline use.

Without [awareness](awareness.md) and making [decisions](people-decisions.md) that enforce limits, we tend to perform "[crash diets](body-2_diet.md)" of information control:

1. Passively permit too much information to flow in, waiting for [meaning](meaning.md) to arise from it.
2. In a reactionary fit of overwhelm, vow to "purge" everything for a while.
3. Revert back to passively permitting too much information to flow in, with no long-term solution to [fix it](https://adequate.life/fix/) in the future.

Therefore, we need [long-term tactics that work](information-tactics.md), as well as specific approaches to [various types of media](information-media.md) and [specific information-heavy content](information-content.md).

## In summation

The fixes can be distilled into a set of questions, which can be asked for every bit of experienced information:

1. Am I consuming too much information?
   - If so, turn off the valve for a while.
2. Do I have too much information to consume?
   - If there is, get rid of portions of the inbox.
3. Am I learning fast enough with the information?
   - If it's too slow, aim for better-quality consumption.
4. Does my information add value to anyone else?
   - If not, stop providing information for a while until your subconscious reloads.
5. Have I sufficiently [organized](organization.md) my information?
   - If not, turn off the valve, stop creating for a while, and get to organizing.
6. Am I consuming cutting-edge stuff?
   - If so, stick it on a calendar and consume it later.
7. Am I fully certain of the bias of the information?
   - If not, learn who made the content, and why.
8. How do I plan to use this information?
   - Use it, organize it, or shove it out of your workspace.
9. Does anything else work?
   - If it does, make it a principle.

This information blast [trend](trends.md) will only slow down when two conditions happen at once:

1. The [culture](people-culture.md) shifts to hate "junk" information, which requires them to at least somewhat agree on what's important.
2. The culture normalizes [sifting out the bad information](information.md) and tuning it out, which involves them all being tech-savvy or novelty-resistant enough to *not* overconsume.

The approach would start with a well-managed social media outlet, then work outward as the higher-quality content went viral. Or there'd be a civilization "reset" from a particularly ugly [political conflict](people-conflicts-war.md).

Since this will likely not happen soon:

1. Opt out.
2. Unsubscribe.
3. Avoid the endless wall of "feeds" by self-curating your streams.
4. Limit RSS use.
5. Limit podcasts.
6. Make hard limits on your read and watch lists, or work hard to shave them down.
7. Find security in a community, *not* in a system.
8. If you're doing anything mindlessly involving consuming information, pay more attention to what you're doing.
9. Try to only do important things with your life.

In other words, move slowly when everyone else moves fast, and don't move at all if it's not worth your time.