Information Anxiety

A study by Xerox recently found that people spend 30 percent of their workday just hunting for documents - and that 60 to 80 percent still feel they're missing the most important stuff. According to University of California at Berkeley estimates, we're producing 610 billion e-mails and 7.5 billion documents a year; in the midst of this swamp, Xerox discovered, workers feel they're being productive only half the time. [...]
Seven years ago, the Brooklyn-based writer David Shenk wrote the book "Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut", in which he pondered the central paradox of our era: A little information makes you smarter, but a ton of it leaves you confused. "It's worse than ever [today]," Shenk says. "We're getting more plugged in, but the level of distraction is increasing. And so the question is, are you going to be plugged in or not? If you decide not to be plugged in, you're separating yourself from culture."