Has the web given people access to too much information?

I like how you drew a line connecting Gutenberg’s printing press and the web as we know it today as efforts to distribute information. The web might not exist without the technical advancements introduced by the printing press, but the technical influence is beside the main goal of making information more widely available. It’s more about friction — or lack thereof.

So, here we are. It’s the 21st century and we have effectively removed any friction that prevents content from being distributed to all corners of the world. If there’s some meme I absolutely want you to see, there are a number of ways I have to get it in front of your face whether you’re on the next street or the next continent. The web doesn’t have the same physical barriers that we have to contend with when we’re not behind our screens.

So, yes. We have access to lots of information. It’s wild that the sum of all human knowledge is captured online and can pulled up from a device we keep in our pockets. There are very few questions we can’t answer for ourselves with a simple search query (or “prompt” in AI parlance).

But do we perhaps have too much information at our disposal? If we’re answering this through the lens of the web containing the sum of all human knowledge, I’d have to turn the question back around and ask: Is the human brain even capable of consuming that information, not to mention recalling it at will?

Scientific American has an interesting way of comparing human memory to digital memory:

The human brain consists of about one billion neurons. Each neuron forms about 1,000 connections to other neurons, amounting to more than a trillion connections. If each neuron could only help store a single memory, running out of space would be a problem. You might have only a few gigabytes of storage space, similar to the space in an iPod or a USB flash drive. Yet neurons combine so that each one helps with many memories at a time, exponentially increasing the brain’s memory storage capacity to something closer to around 2.5 petabytes.

Paul Reber, “What Is the Memory Capacity of the Human Brain?”

Estimating the amount of information stored online might be an inexact science. I’m really not sure how that even gets measured, but some estimates have the web weighing in at 64 zettabytes as of 2020 with a forecast for as much as 180 zettabytes by 2025.

Hold on, let me do some math…

• 1 zettabyte = ~1 trillion gigabytes
• 1 petabyte = 1,048,576 gigabytes

If the human brain can hold 2.5 petabytes, then we’re looking at a total capacity of 2,621,440 gigabytes. If we accept that today’s internet is the size of 2020’s internet, then we’re looking at something around 64 trillion gigabytes.

Ignoring the glaring holes in this logic, my brain is simply unable to hold as much information as the internet and neither can yours. Heck, we could combine our brains and still come up woefully short. Seen this way, yes, there is too much information on the web for any one person to take in.

That being said, your question isn’t about physical capabilities but about the amount of access to the information that’s out there. Who needs to memorize anything when we have devices that can access everything?

I had a realization while thinking through how I might answer your question: access is a form of currency.

Think about it. We used to have somewhat unrestricted access to any content published online. All it took to access it was a computer with a modem connected to a phone line.

I like to think of AOL as one of the first “walled gardens” of the web. AOL provided a portal for online content, some of which was exclusive to AOL subscribers. If I’m a Prodigy subscriber and want access to AOL content, then too darned bad. But for 14.95 per month, I can have all I want.

I think you said it better than me:

Both the printing press and the Internet represent massive leaps in the ability to distribute information freely. And Cerf rightly points out that once you do that, there are those that will seek to repress the technology.

Publishing online content behind paywalls inherently creates friction between people and information. The exact amount of friction, however, is variable depending on a person’s economic means. And the paywalls have only gotten taller and broader since the days of AOL. How many journalistic archives — such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal — require your credit card information to view the latest news? Access is now a privilege, not a right.

(Aside: A new war over open access — or perhaps consent to access — to information is brewing between content publishers and new forms of content distribution involving AI technologies.)

So, here it is, the long-awaited answer to your question: It depends.

Has the web given people access to too much information? In terms of a human’s physical capacity for storing information, yes, we have too much access to more information we could possibly ever need and are prone to overloading ourselves with the deluge that is available directly in our pockets.

In terms of equity? That’s tougher to answer. But if the goal of an open web is simply to make information accessible to as many people as possible, then it’s hard for me to say that there is too much access, especially for those who are unable to afford the bill.

If I had to commit to a firm “yes” or “no” answer, though, I would say the web affords us access to the right amount of information: all of it! But it’s on us as individuals to act as our own filters to distinguish signal from noise because constant noise, as we know, keeps us chronically stressed.