As if newspapers, the Internet and the gossip from our cell phones don't supply us with enough information to think about on the way to class, campus vendors find shoving pamphlets in our face a good way to advertise their product.
Welcome to the age of Information Overload.
Technology has aimed to make our lives easier, but the opposite has occurred. The Internet can bring the world to us with the touch of a button, but it takes us away from libraries and books. It is easier to acquire information, but there is so much to learn that we may in fact be comprehending less.
When we are asked to remember the words of ancient philosophers or the dates of battles hundreds of years ago, that information is competing with more current data.
A business manager can read up to 1 million words a day, the equivalent of one and a half full-length novels, according to computerbits.com.
That's something to look forward to, right?
According to Alvin Toffler, a futurologist from the 1970s, "people exposed to the rapid changes of modern life may develop a state of helplessness and inadequacy."
It would seem the general public relies on mass media to supply them with enough information to form their own opinions. But whose opinion is it really, if we are being spoon-fed?
"We will lack the information-processing skills needed to elect responsible leaders or counter the myriad waves of propaganda pushing our dollars this way and that," William Van Winkle said in an article on information overload.
The information age supposedly makes us smarter, but could we actually be getting dumber because there is just too much information? We can't absorb it all, and we've become lazy, so we select the easy stuff to remember.
Maybe that would explain the fascination this generation holds for reality TV series.
The dilemma we face is filtering out unwanted information in order to concentrate on our studies and fully take advantage of the knowledge available to us.
According to Justo Alarcón, a Spanish professor at ASU, students don't have time to learn how to filter out the information with which they are bombarded. We can't stay focused long enough to remember the importance of the things like the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a very integral part of our Southwestern history.
There is something very wrong when we are unable to appreciate the importance of history. In order to know where we are going, we must know and understand where we came from. This holds true on a personal and national level as we try to understand how we fit into the global culture.
"Americans don't like to learn about history. I think technology and apathy will end up hurting us in the end," business senior May Lu said.
Have technology and the Internet proven to be too much for American society to the point that we can't even think for ourselves in the way that the great philosophers, Aristotle, Socrates and Plato did?
Though there are many new gadgets like Eudora Pro and e-mail software that combats spam and unwanted messages, they don't seem to be enough.
What we need is not more technology; but rather the ability to enjoy what we already have.
Catherine Portillo is a journalism senior. Reach her at catherine.portillo@asu.edu.
