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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

5.1.3Attention

5.2.Information overload

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

5.2. Information overload

Now when we’ve analysed the aspects through which a human being receives and processes information, we can concentrate on information overload itself. In this chapter the term is described and explained. Following subchapters concentrate on its consequences and methods for its elimination, which were discovered across the whole spectrum of read sources. Additionally, two methods for potential reduction of information overload in the future were proposed by me.

 

Bawden and Robinson very well but rather simplistically define the issue as a condition in which the effectiveness of an individual is impaired by a number of relevant and potentially useful information available [4]. It would be literally beautiful if one was overwhelmed only by relevant and potentially useful information. But the vast majority of information that overwhelms us is just redundant and irrelevant. Technically, it is not possible for billiards of information bits to be only potential or relevant to us.

 

Eppler and Mengis introduced two concepts of information overload. The first is the ability to process information and the other is the amount of information. According to them, a person is able to respond to a certain amount of information and is able to perform various techniques to improve their ability to process this information [23]. I fully identify with this theory and its validity is crucible for the relevance of this work, so I tried to confirm it in many following chapters.

 

Human ability to process information has only a very limited capacity, yet it can be trained and therefore pushed to a state, where it’s able to cope with more information. Thus said, it is very difficult to determine objectively when information overload is already happening and when the individual is still within his processing boundaries [23]. In my thesis, I consider interpersonal incomparability (the inability to determine objective value [25]) of information overload as a fact, and I treat it as a problem that can be examined only subjectively.

 

If one is unable to identify information that is relevant and potentially useful soon, one is wasting his capacity by absorbing completely unnecessary information. As the work implies so far, the problem concerns all individuals of the information society in the information age. The key to understanding the enormous scale of the problem is the information subchapter. Information that is capable of overloading a human is not only communicated by a human being himself, but it is communicated even by the whole objective reality. One perceives the objective reality whether one wants to or not in everyday life, which, sooner or later, overwhelms him. Humankind already has the defensive mechanism for the information that naturally appears in the world in the form of filters. Still, even the loud sound for instance can "overheat" these filters (if they are injured or the noise is really big). However, information communicated by humans generates the main influx of information inflicting the information overload. Thanks to the latest information explosion, the ability to disseminate information was to a large extent decentralized. This ability has ceased to be in the hands of corporate and government newspapers, television and radio, but has come to the hands of all individuals in the information society. The information thus appears and disappears often without the knowledge (or approval) of any centralized entity [1]. People of course could have tried to spread information, although the effectiveness, compared to today, was absolutely minimal – and they probably have. Thanks to the rise of decentralized platforms today, the ability of all individuals to freely disseminate information is approaching the absolute maximum that civilization has ever reached - the information society is moving towards an "open society."

 

As I tried to prove in the Information society subchapter, everyone is undergoing the information overload at some point. However, due to individual ignorance, one can do more harm than one would normally be able to, provided that information literacy was widespread or if there was awareness of the problem alone. People often tend to prolong the day [1]. People generally tend not to rationalize the problem of information overload, as demonstrated by the practical part of the thesis, not realizing what consequences it could have.

Sources

1.KORTH, Henry F., SILBERSCHATZ, Abraham. Database Research faces the Information Explosion. Communications of the ACM. 1997, vol. 40, no. 2, s. 139-143

4.BOWDEN, David a Lyn ROBINSONOVÁ. Úvod do Informační vědy. Brno: Flow, 2017. ISBN 978-80-88123-10-1.

23.TOMEČKOVÁ, Jana. Informační zahlcení jako bariéra ve sdílení informací v organizaci. Praha, 2010. Diplomová práce. Univerzita Karlova. Vedoucí práce Petra Slouková. Dostupné z: https://is.cuni.cz/webapps/zzp/detail/91353/

25.VON MISES, Ludwig. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. 1. United States: Yale University Press, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1949. ISBN 9780865976313.

 

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