Information Management in the Century of Information
Information in our century is a leading resource for sustainability of any system at any level. However, the amounts of information which is daily going through a person’s consciousness in 21st century is much more than a person is able to “digest” properly. Requirements of the civilized world in our regular life and at work are increasing; abilities to obtain a balanced consciousness are decreasing. We are no longer able to give enough attention, emotions, and thought to everything we need or want to accomplish. Many people are not able any more “to chew and then swallow” information (to think). They can “digest” only simple ideas and statements which are put in an easy way, a bit at a time with visuals, just like picture books for little kids.
Also, the discovery and use of the internet, a “virtual reality”, brought an informational revolution to the world and rearranged our reality. People with similar interests, business customers and partners who were distant in the real world, become “virtually local”, and local in the real world things become “virtually distant” for those with no informational interest in them.
As Information distribution opportunities grow it brings more opportunities for making money on marketing, advertisements, and commercials. It leads to deeper information inflation and fewer opportunities for consumer’s consciousness to remain healthy.
Many people are conscious enough to care about the quality of food and water they consume. People are aware that unwanted components in our food and water can cause health problems like allergies, gaining weight, digestion-related diseases, etc. In the same way unwanted components in information flows and ways of their distribution like aggressive destructions and mind attacks can cause psychological and mental problems like attention disorder, forgetfulness, learning disabilities, stress, depression, addictions, etc. Information flows coming to our minds get us in tune with certain thoughts, feelings, and actions. We should care about quality of that information and figure ways of navigation of information in different fields, ways of selection of the information, processing it and generating new information, then passing it on, communicating it. Sustainability of information traffic determines sustainability of consciousness on personal and social levels.
A person should be protected from being bothered with the enormous amount of information of different sales or fundraisers, especially ones which are aggressively fighting for people’s attention. Did anybody count the daily wasted enormous amounts of paper, ink, and labor which always ends up in recycle baskets all over the world? Businesses and other social-economic structures which are surviving in the economic world won’t stop trashing our minds unless it is prohibited by law. We need a law for sustainable advertisement strategies and information traffic regulations.
Mass media should be made to care about providing sustainable information flows which do not harm consciousness and do not create health disorders. Also, it is time to centralize virtual information security, create laws for protection of private virtual property and create a nationwide “virtual police”. Messing up with people’s computers, emails, phones and websites should be considered as a serious crime just like messing up with somebody’s private property in the real world. Today this kind of security is in medieval age: different internet security business products are reminiscent of castle walls around medieval cities.
Now is the time to develop a set of laws for the protection of the sustainability of human consciousness, and support this law by mass education and fostering ethics of appreciation for human attention, time, energy, and human life in general. In the long run it will help our society to prevent numerous problems caused by destroying and disabling human consciousness.
* * *