Well, we just may be collectively overwhelmed... According to this article
in The New York Times every American now absorbs 100,000 words and 11.8
hours of information into their brain every day. And evidently, each year we take in 6% more volume then we did the year before.
But our knowledge intake could rise even beyond 6% a year if we discover a more efficient way to absorb stuff. Consider "Information as Matter" a thought-provoking read by information and user-experience theorist Thomas Peterson...
The thinking goes something like this: We get a tremendous amount of information these days through feed readers. But feed readers offer singular points of information, which create bottlenecks. So what if data could be re-structured so we consume it more holistically. After all, we read sentences but we don't analyze each letter. We see physical objects but we don't see individual atoms. Could data be organized in the same way?? Imagine the relevance and ease of access...
A fascinating find over at PSFK. Check out the whole post from Thomas at Black&White.