Surviving information overload: A plea for balance

Human nature and language provide limits for the processing of information, but at the same time people are flexible and try to adapt to their changing media environments. The inability to adapt, however, has specific social and psychological consequences, and here I discuss the main characteristics of reaction to the contemporary information overload. The practices that surround an ‘escape from freedom’ are common, and people have many media practices that could be interpreted as attempts to escape the problem of information overload, even if these are not ultimate solutions. To understand the problem, however, is the first step towards survival, and the key point is that information overload violates the balance between nature and technology and between ‘life’ and ‘death’. Survival will therefore involve retrieving a sense of balance.