Too much information - the bytes that blow our brains

WHAT if everybody just took a timeout? Now there's a concept for a TMI-addled nation. It isn't just Too Much Information, but the pitch and tenor of delivery that have us in a persistent state of psychic frenzy. From cable news to microblogs, life's background music has become one prolonged car alarm.

The market's up! The Dow plunges! OMG, Obama's taking 500 people to Europe and Merkel doesn't like his new deal and they're taking our assault weapons and we're all going to be communists! But first, if your erection lasts for more than four hours, contact your physician immediately.

The phrase "too much information", a now-cliched talk-to-the-hand deflection, isn't just a gentle whack at someone who tells you more than you want to know about his Cialis experience. It's a toxic asset that exhausts our cognitive resources while making the nonsensical seem significant.

TMI may indeed be the despot's friend. Keep citizens so overwhelmed with data that they can't tell what's important and eventually become incapable of responding to what is. Our brains simply aren't wired to receive and process so much information in such a compressed period.

In 2006, the world produced 161 exabytes (an exabyte is 1 quintillion bytes) of digital data, according to Columbia Journalism Review. Put in perspective, that's 3 million times the information contained in all the books ever written. By next year, the number is expected to reach 988 exabytes.

The massive explosion of information has made us all a little batty. Just ask the congressional assistants who field frantic phone calls from constituents.

"Everybody's come unhinged," one told me recently. "They think we're going to hell in a handbasket. And maybe we are."

Who knows? The unknowableness of current circumstances, combined with a lack of trust in our institutions, may partly be to blame for our apparent info-insatiability. People sense that they need to know more in order to understand an increasingly complex world.

And, of course, it's fun. The urge to know and be known is a uniquely human indulgence. Being connected to friends and colleagues without having to inconvenience one's gluteus maximus surely must stimulate our pleasure centre or we wouldn't bother.

Yet, with so much data coming from all directions, we risk paralysis. Brain freeze, some call it. More importantly, we also risk losing our ability to process the Big Ideas that might actually serve us better. It isn't only Jack and Jill who are tethered to the Twittering masses, after all. Our thinkers at the highest levels are, too. Consider: who didn't want to surrender his BlackBerry?

In fact, brain research shows that we do our best thinking when we're not focused, yet fewer of us have time for downtime. Daydreaming, we used to call it. Ask any creative person where they got their best ideas and they'll say, "Dunno. Just came to me out of the blue." If you're looking for the Eureka moment, you probably won't find it while following Tweets. Or checking Facebook to see who might be "friending" whom.

More likely, the ideas that save the world will present themselves in the shower or while we're sweeping the front steps. What the world needs now isn't more, but less. The alternative to mindless activities for the mindful is turning out to be not a less-informed nation but a dumber one.

Unchecked "infomania" can lead to a lower IQ, according to a 2005 Hewlett-Packard study. The research, conducted by a University of London psychologist, found that people distracted by email and phone calls lost 10 IQ points, more than twice the impact of smoking marijuana — or comparable to losing a night's sleep.

Given that the brain is apparently more receptive when less focused, might our myriad problems stand a better chance of creative solutions if we more unplugged? Back in the day, Timothy Leary urged boomers to "turn on, tune in, drop out", which was his snappy way of encouraging the mind-expanding benefits of LSD. A more apt mantra today might be "turn off, tune out, drop in". Turn off the switch, tune out the noise, drop in on a friend. Can't hurt. Might help. Hitting pause now …

Kathleen Parker writes for The Washington Post.