A bomb named 'Information': Is it set to explode?

Naveen Sundaresan, who works in an enterprise that deals in the KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) space, starts his day by checking his emails, reading the online versions of newspaper (read e-paper), checks for messages on his mobile (keeping himself updated on the schedule for the day), watches the television news and then switches on the radio as he travels to work.

On the road, he comes across large billboards that more often than not display new products with models proudly displaying them. The bottom line is that the amount of information given to us is mind blowing to put it lightly.

Sundaresan points out that there is always something that he wouldn’t know and he is forever running out of time. He belongs to those millions and millions amongst us who suffer from “Information Anxiety.”

If one goes through a study conducted by IDC (International Data Group), it points out that the planet earth is in the midst of a digital ‘Big Bang’ and the rate of information being generated and replicated would surge from what it is currently to surge more than six-fold to 988 exabytes by the year 2010.

This epoch has witnessed information being churned at a blistering pace resulting in what is now known as ‘information overflow’. Interestingly, over the years, pundits have often warned that in the route of arming ourselves with more and more information, we were only digging our own graves.

Eminent thinkers such as Neil Postman, Jose Ortega Gasset and Fremont Rider have highlighted this aspect from time to time. Don’t we utilize our mobile handsets to not just call up our near and dear ones but to surf, chat online and even listen to music/radio and not to forget the enormous requests to participate in only SMS (Short Messaging Service) polls from time to time? The answer is yes! We do believe in constantly remaining in what is touted as the information loop.

At the recently held 3G India 2007 International Conference, Dr. Biswadeep Mitra, managing director for Texas Instruments (TI) India, stated that the mobile handsets would soon be enjoying high definition television on their handsets due to TI research’s development of OMAP, an application processing engine. TI would also have 8 megapixel cameras on handset enabling camcorder facility.

Dr. Mitra states, “The combination of television and mobile would be the next big event in the growth of cell phones.” Needless to say, cell phones have become an integral part of our existence.

This is just one aspect how much convergence is happening around us. A Sethuraman, chief marketing officer, South Asia, Alcatel-Lucent, says, “There is a lot of convergence happening between the user and the service provider be it in telecom, television or whichever information service you consider today.”

The solution lies in the problem itself and Shyam Mardikar, vice president- Network Services at Airtel avers: “Today, we are at a stage when the service is at the periphery and the user in the center and the service needs to adapt to the users interest. User friendly services are the order of the day.”

Mardikar feels that the need of the hour is generating content or information with the user in mind and companies today are allowing the user to generate his/her own content.

The pundits believe that the information explosion is majorly happening through the media.

Undoubtedly, most of us turn our eyes and ears to the media to build our schema of the orb around us. They feel that the media show shoulder responsibility by mining out information from a bigger pool and break it into pieces that are manageable. In a nutshell, the media must give out large measure of smaller segments of information to its beneficiaries. The amount of information created would be surpassing the storage capacity available for the first time according to the survey conducted by IDC in March 2007.

Information explosion is taking us to a stage where we are biting more than we can chew!