Information Overload

As a journalist for more than 35 years I love information.

I have one of those "inquiring minds." Most of my life has centered around gathering information and spreading the word.

But pholks, I gotta tell ya, today's world is getting out of hand. So much for the Sgt. Joe Friday phrase, "The facts, mam, just the facts..." That just doesn't work any more.

I've always kept up with current events and baseball so I'll use those two subjects to attempt to make my point. Too much, too fast, too often.

With our nation at war and Major League Baseball just under way, my mind is going into overload.

For the last several years I have often found myself shaking my head while listening or watching a Big League game. Hearing that Eric Karros hits right hand pitchers on Tuesday night games at Dodger Stadium 23 percent points higher than on Thursday day games is more than I want to know. Or the fact the guy up to bat made three errors while playing for the Pirates against the Expos but got the game winning hit in the eleventh inning in 1993 is of no concern.

Sure, baseball fans thrive on statistics. But today there are stats which were never even kept before. Twenty years ago nobody kept track of how many times a batter struck out on a three and two pitch with runners on base. Now that fact is at the finger tips of some computer jockey who feeds it to the game's broadcast announcer in a micro second.

There are few things I enjoy more than laying on the couch reading a good book, listening to the ball game on the radio and watching Jeopardy. But today that is getting to be quite a chore. I find myself taking seven minutes instead of three to read a page. I don't want to miss some ball game fact which could come up in a future Final Jeopardy question. At the same time I don't want to miss my chance on a single Jeopardy answer on show I'm watching. This causes even more problems when, due to my split attention, I fail to respond, or "mis-respond" to something my wife Kathy is saying.

Now with wall-to-wall "live" instant war coverage bombarding my little brain is yelling, "Just hold on, fellow. Wait a cotton-pickin'micro second. I'm just gray matter. I haven't been updated."

Some pholks consider me to be a fast thinker. And there are some, I'm sure, who consider me not as fast as I should be. But if this bombardment of information gets much more intense, I could end up being considered just another "half-fast" thinker.

A number of friends have asked my opinion on the war coverage and a couple have asked me if I were in a position to be an embedded war reporter, would I do it.

"Good question," I respond as I attempt to consider my answer. Generally, the answer goes like this. "Well, if I were 25 to 30 years younger and ambitious, paid well, and assigned to a real good group of soldiers, I probably would."

I also point out that I seldom tackle "hard news" stories anymore, opting instead to write on the lighter things in this life. This, of course, is what my generation called a "cop out."

I could go on and on about this information overload stuff but I gotta go. The ball game is about to start, CNN has some live updates from a reporter riding in a tank, 18 miles from Baghdad, Jeopardy is starting and the female detective I'm reading about is just about to bust the bad guy, who was a good guy until only a chapter ago.

And, my wife is asking me something.

---

The above stories are the property of The Valley Voice Newspaper and may not be reprinted without explicit permission in writing from the publisher.