Communicating the Impossible:
Is Technology Creating Information Overload?
by Peter Vasdi and Peter Zvalo
Technology generates a lot of information. Just spend a few hours surfing the Internet; you will probably
be astounded by the limitless quantity of information that technology has generated. Or how about learning a
new software application? Whether you are using a hard-copy manual or on-line help, most major applications
are accompanied by hundreds of pages of documentation.
It is sometimes puzzling why so much of the information to which present-day people are being exposed is
so weak. One possible explanation is that because technology makes it so easy to create and distribute large
quantities of information in a very short period of time, the creators of the information become more
concerned with quantity rather than quality. Is this simply an oversight, a result of too many technocrats
who believe that because they created the tools, they are also the best qualified to use them? Or is this
phenomenon a deliberate mechanism that has been devised to justify the need for continued technological
progress (i.e., more sophisticated communication tools)? One fact is becoming clear: the people driving
technology into the future often do not devote enough attention to the quality of information. They simply
fail to formulate and structure information in a way that is effective and efficient. 
What is often overlooked these days is the fact that information is a vital resource. After all, if
information wasn't such a valuable commodity, industry and government would not be investing so many of
their resources toward purchasing information technology. While we have been building information networks
for decades, what seems to be happening today is that the technologies that facilitate the flow of
information have generated great interest in themselves. The result is that technology is increasingly being
used to carry more information about—you guessed it—technology. Technology becomes the primary focus of
our collective mind, rather than on the actual information that the technology was designed to carry.
Part of the problem may stem from the fact that the wrong people are too often being used to create and
distribute information. A typical example of how things can get out of hand came to my attention when a
request for a proposal came across my desk. The proposal called for a technology specialist, a senior
systems analyst, a project leader, and a project administrator to form a team that would create the
documentation for a multi-million dollar system. The introduction of the request consisted of several
sentences obviously copied directly out of other systems development proposals that required
"experience and specific knowledge on the ability to develop, deploy and support a range of
custom-developed and commercial-off-the-shelf software in a controlled and effective manner". Not a
mention of any requirement for experience in the area of documentation—just an assumption that anyone can
write, and that anything that anyone writes will be sufficient to do the job of communicating.
The consequences of the proliferation of poor quality information are significant. Ultimately it is the
consumer of the information technologies, that is, society as a whole, that loses. As industry and
government continue to spend more on the latest in hardware and software, public deficits rise and
environmental pollution spreads. As the attractiveness of each new technology wanes, consumers come to
realize the deficiencies of existing technologies, thus driving the demand for newer and better
technologies. Few people stop to think whether existing technologies are being used most efficiently and
whether the quality of the information they carry meets the needs of its target audiences.
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FEATURE
