27.Feb.2010 Après Moi le Déluge

The Economist states the obvious brilliantly with an expose on the tremendous, nearly unimaginable flood of information humans generate through their various activities (although by this metric, your requests for help in Farmville count as information):

This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.

But they are also creating a host of new problems. Despite the abundance of tools to capture, process and share all this information—sensors, computers, mobile phones and the like—it already exceeds the available storage space. Moreover, ensuring data security and protecting privacy is becoming harder as the information multiplies and is shared ever more widely around the world.

I guess the bummer that people are finally starting to recognize is that more information does not automatically mean more knowledge.