By Eric DELBECQUE,
Director of the Strategic Intelligence Department at SIFARIS, Head of the Economic Intelligence Division at IFET, and Chairman of ACSE.
The phenomenon has long been known: too much information kills information. But the cyber-world is accentuating the problem more and more each day, and constantly creating threshold effects. Today, we are bombarded with information via 24-hour news channels, the online press, our e-mails, our Google alerts, our subscriptions to a huge number of newsletters from websites and blogs, the content produced by our applications and social networks, and so on. The digital age undeniably fosters information overload, making us increasingly incapable of distinguishing the essential from the incidental. No matter how hard we try, it soon becomes impossible to synthesize all the data that automatically comes our way in an organized fashion.
What’s more, this flood of information tends to alter our perception of what knowledge of the world, of beings and things, really is. We increasingly associate knowledge with compilation, or rather repetition.
As a result, nothing is really explored in depth, and we’re content with putting on a show of information that doesn’t aim to master a subject conceptually and operationally, but rather to hold the attention of the data consumer.
At the same time, this reinforces the fragility of media flows, as the risk of misinformation increases as the cyberworld becomes a space for entertainment rather than learning. Of course, the picture is more complex than that: the digital world is not entirely reduced to being an appendage of the entertainment society. Many Internet users, individuals and companies, are putting genuine added informational value online. However, the overall logic leads to a deterioration in the quality of the data disseminated.
At the same time, this whole process facilitates the proliferation of all manner of conspiracy theories. The fewer points analysis scores in favor of a dynamic of echoes and infinite repetition, aggravating the loss of credibility in content at every turn, the more space is freed up for delusional and malicious interpretations.
In some cases, the intention and practice of “digital warfare” may even be added. For “cyberterres” now constitute a privileged chessboard for confrontation. This makes it difficult, to say the least, to assess the seriousness of the information spread exponentially on the Web. Who can say today that such and such content is the result of meticulous investigative work or patient reflection backed up by solid references? Who can say that a given media outlet on the Net doesn’t organize data from a particular angle, intended for a perception management operation? What’s more, net neutrality is a myth.
Insofar as anyone and everyone can speak in the digital arena, no discourse can be sacralized, or at least considered as a pillar of meaning, uncontested and guiding behavior or the “fabrication” of ideas in isolation. Trends do indeed exist, but they are quickly challenged by opposing currents.
What’s the bottom line? That combating infobesity in the digital world requires a number of prerequisites, notably a good general knowledge, a constant quest to cross-check information, and a critical mind. The digital adventure opens up tremendous horizons, but you shouldn’t set off without survival gear…