information overload!

Quotes from the reading:

"We have be-come irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other."
The Medium is The Massage,   24

"One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with".
Marshall McLuhan, The Best of Ideas, CBC Radio, 1967

These statements really resonated with me.

First of all, now that we have the current communication technology, there's no way to avoid hearing about people's problems (unless you actively turn it off, or actively refuse to participate - else it just is in your face all the time). Globally, we also have the ability to provide for each other in a way possibly unprecedented in human history. So, now that we know about the problems and have the capability to fix them, we really ought to be doing that. Hmm.

I also totally agree with the second statement! That has been a problem sometimes for me in this class - so much information, so many blogs, so many ways I can get lost in the Internet doing outside reading for this course. This has been a concern for me recently for sure!

This relates pretty directly to my final project. Researching the effectiveness of medical support groups, we recognize the help these groups can provide for those who are suffering through an illness and their family members. And yet, sometimes there is so much information on the internet that it is often organized in a decidedly unhelpful manner, and can be too much to wade through for the busy lives of so many individuals. We hope to, in some small way, decrease this concern for these groups and fix it! Make it better! Help these organizations help people more effectively. What a good plan, eh?