You know - I cannot remember things like my best friends surname, or I walk around the house, intending to get something from the fridge, only to get into the kitchen and wonder why I am there, or worse, open the fridge, get side-tracked, and walk off leaving the fridge door open, something which I then only discover a while later when I realise (again) that I am thirsty.

Information overload, of which the above are documented symptoms, is actually a bona fide syndrome - not just something that I have made up because it is Monday and there is not much else going on... Carte Blanche attempted to do a programme on it about ten years back, but battled (understandably) to get stressed IT execs to confess to being as absent-minded as my aforementioned best friend was during her pregnancy (towels in the freezer anyone?).

One way or another, though, this has got to stop. I was out of the office on Friday (a slow day for us) and came back to 300 or so e-mail messages. Ninety of those were from a mailing list that I can safely ignore, a further 18 were personal, and another 40 were from the various news sites I read on a daily basis.

So - that leaves 152 e-mails I /had/ to do something with this morning, as well as getting other work done. In between handling the electronic load I had five or six SMS, a number of phone calls, and interruptions from the news gang, also trying to pile through their work load.

I read part of one of the daily newspapers while having a smoke break. On my way home tonight I will have the radio on in the car, and be inundated with billboards and poster ads. Once I get home I will probably put the TV on or maybe switch the radio on again. The cell phone, my constant companion, will happily carry on delivering phone calls and SMS. Quite frankly - this is all a bit too much to cope with in one day, let alone all day, every day.

My point is not to moan about the job - I love that most of the time - my point is that with multiple, diverse media/information sources all screaming for our attention, how long will it take before we all start suffering - badly? How is this affecting our concentration span? Our decision-making ability? Our quality of life?

Answers? Questions? Are you a fellow sufferer? Anyone know a good shrink? ;-) Mail me - .

Samantha Perry

Editor
Computing SA