Information overload

Imaging a world where your thoughts, what you see and what you feel is broadcast to the whole world. Where you hear and feel the fishes thought about you, EAT.... That is the basic premise of the chaos walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. It was a good read, but it is not a book review per se, but what it meant to cope with information overload.

Too much information is Noise (that is what the immigrant from the Old world call it), where the effort require to filter the true and the false, and reality and fantasy is enough to drive people mad. When the first batch of colonist reach the new world, many are driven mad by the flow of information. The two extremes of how to cope with such information is to either embrace it (like Ben in the series) or reject it (like the mayor).

What kind of parallel can we see in our world? The Internet is overflowing with information, truth, half-truth and outright lies. People who are quiet and introvert are spilling their guts on blogs and tweet. People who jump on the first piece of news and spread it without even bother to think about the authenticity. People who opinion are the sum of the collective noise they are immerse in. People who constructs mis-informations to bury their true intend.

To not to connect to the flow of information is to deny one a huge asset, however to filter the noise required a strong values within a person. The more selfless one is in the the sea of information, the more self assertive one need to be.


The New World Prequel
The Knife of Never Letting Go: Chaos Walking: Book One
The Ask and the Answer: Chaos Walking: Book Two
Monsters of Men: Chaos Walking: Book Three