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Introduction

Blockchainized Bachelor’s Thesis

Blockchainized Bachelor’s Thesis – Initial Brainstorm

Thesis

1.Abstract

2.Preface

3.Introduction

4.Definitions of terms and premises

4.1.Information

4.2.Information explosion

4.3.Information age

4.4. Information society

4.5. Information literacy

5.Information overload as an issue

5.1.1.Thought

5.1.2.Brain

Sources walkthrough

1.Battling Information Overload in the Information Age

2.1.The knowledge-attention-gap: Do we underestimate the problem of information overload in knowledge management? pt.1

2.2.The knowledge-attention-gap: Do we underestimate the problem of information overload in knowledge management? pt. 2

3.Database Research faces the Information Explosion

4.The experience of mobile information overload: struggling between needs and constraints

5.Longer online reviews are not necessarily better

6.An ant-colony based approach for real-time implicit collaborative information seeking

7.A psychological framework to enable effective cognitive processing in the design of emergency management information systems

Case study: Interview

1.First draft

5.1.2. Brain

From the point of view of system theory, we can understand human being as an information communication system in which the brain takes the central position. It has similar capabilities to any man-made information system: it collects, processes, stores and disseminates information [6]. On the basis of the term information that I already defined, it could be deduced that the human brain must receive billions of information bits per second thanks to its "exposure" to objective reality. If all this information really had to be processed knowingly, the brain would be overwhelmed by that information almost as soon as it begins to perceive it. It would have to have enormous amount of information about a very small part of the adjacent objective reality, therefore it would be much more difficult for us to survive. It is therefore highly probable that the defensive mechanism that the human body possesses is the result of some "smart planning" (or rather adapting) of genetic information. The defensive mechanism are our senses. Experts agree that this huge amount is unconsciously registered by the human body, and after reduction, at around 100 bits per second get to our consciousness through the defence barrier of our senses. The human brain, however, literally needs information to survive. It is likely, that we have a tendency to receive information and that even deprivation may occur when the information is not available to us. For the same reason, we also tend to look for and receive mostly new information or the information that can convince us that it is new for our endocept [6].

 

I will try to briefly summarize relevant scientific knowledge of current neurophysiology. As we all know very well, our understanding of human brain isn’t anything extraordinary as of yet. If we were to understand the brain more thoroughly, we could examine the issue more deeply. This is not the case, and therefore the issue must be examined rather empirically. We are currently aware the fact that neuronal interconnections are not solid, but closely tight instead. They are formed by special protrusions of neurons, called dendrites and axons. Their connection is called the synapse. Synapses may arise but they can also wear off. Connections between them are not hierarchical. An example of this is movement control. Neocortex neurons are linked to both the brain stem, where motor reflexes are born, and, in the same way, bypassing the brain stem, directly connected with the spine, when immediate action is needed without a lengthy evaluation. Basic neural processes take place in neurons and in-between neurons. Those lead into higher neural processes, including thinking for instance. Each neuron exhibits bioelectric activity. Its voltage is about 75 millivolts and in neutral state it has a negative voltage. Excitement of individual neurons or entire modules (or transmission of information if you wish) leads to a change in its electrical charge from 75 negative millivolts to 55 positive millivolts. Another crucial piece of information is that highest energy demand occurs when the neurons are being excited or when they return to a state of rest after they were excited. The resulting product of this process is knowledge. The active state is energetically passive [6] [9].

 

The brain in its development, like everything else in the human body, has been subjected to natural development. It is important to realize that natural development does not produce the resulting product from scratch according to the body’s needs (environment and other influences), but must always work with what is already in the body, and alter that through mutation or changes in genetic information. Unlike games, for instance, natural rules are not constant in objective reality, but are very variable in time. The current "information state" after the information explosion is something that biology couldn’t have possibly predicted, for evolution cannot be prepared for future influencers before they appear.[9]

 

It therefore follows that the human body is pre-determined to assess as quickly as possible the relevance of the enormous amount of information to which it is subjected. This is mainly due to the decentralized functioning of the neural network, where the information comes to the brain through different paths from different places (for example, first comes a visual perception, followed by audio and eventually an olfactory component), which allows us to make decisions more efficiently and quickly before the all the relevant information reaches the brain. Unfortunately, Moor's law does not apply to the human brain, and natural selection has to be tested with the ever more complex "information territory" [9]. We can only guess how many information bits are there in the perceived objective reality, how many of them are dropped straight away and how many get into our unconscious and are evaluated. However, from the point of view of information overload, information that is filtered is not relevant, but only information that our body must actively process is. That tiny fraction of the information that gets into our consciousness activates our neurons and the connections between them. Energy-intensive is the initiation phase (start of thinking) and the processing phase. In other words, the "in one ear and out the other" method almost does not use any energy, but we do not know what the information was about after few seconds. If we are actively and critically evaluating the sequence of information, we think about it (we form some sort of “walked through” passages of our neurons and their synapses, thus strengthening them) and after the evaluation of the previous batch of information is completed we start with new one, we "spend" a lot of energy, and in time we will sustain information overload. The brain (or rather the individual neurons and their paths) functions as muscles in the body. If it is used and trained, it improves its performance, if it is not, it tends to degrade.

Sources

6.CEJPEK, Jiří. Informace, komunikace, myšlení: Úvod do informační vědy. 1. vyd. Praha : Karolinum, 1998. 179 s. ISBN 80-7184-767- 4.

10.FULLER, Jack. What Is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism. Reprint edition. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0226005027.

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