Too Much Information!

We were watching television at Bill’s house over the weekend. Laurae and I talked about that odd experience on our way home; agreeing that there really isn’t any need to hook up our TV again. If that’s all there is on television, our television can remain the designated ‘Netflix’ viewing machine forever.

What did it for me was a series of shows on the Discovery Channel, all about how things are made. You were shown the steps in how a product was manufactured, all in less than 10 minutes. It takes less than 10 minutes to make a fishing pole; the same for a roll of aluminum foil. Or a hockey mask. All very simplistic. And…very much the way that history is presented on the History Channel. Little bites of history. We have become a nation that doesn’t want too much information. 10 minutes (8 is even better!) will do fine; thank you. And there’s enough time between segments to insert a commercial or two.

I remember that during the time we were in high school, reading the illustrated classic comic books became the preferred way to gain some knowledge of the classics in literature. Why read the whole book when you could simply browse through a classic in 30 minutes? And see the pretty pictures at the same time! That’s the reason that the ‘hotel newspaper’, USA Today is a success. No story takes more than a minute or two to read.

I suppose one could argue that the internet works the same way. We Stumble upon a site and quickly move on. We Google and get a Wiki to answer our question. YouTube and Flickr provide us with the images we desire and all in 10 minutes or less. If we see a blog post that looks lengthy, we move on, promising to come back when we have time.

A few days ago, I mentioned that I had met someone who told me that they didn’t have time to read. And I thought it was odd at the time, but now I’m not so sure. It may be the norm.