Surround noise in the 21st century: perspectives from Seneca

¶ … Noise

Information as Noise

A common reactionary stance to the advent of the Internet and other modern communication technologies is that the inundation of information created by such media is tantamount to the creation of so much mental noise, to the point that the chaotic cacophony makes simple and rational thought all but impossible to develop and perhaps entirely impossible to hear. The sounds of civilization that Seneca wrote about in first century Rome have been increased and expanded by technological advancements over the past two thousand years; the sounds of the gym are actually remarkably similar but they have been joined by the sounds of the freeways and airplanes, and by the ability to interject visual noise into almost any view or experience. There is no way to remain a connected member of modern society and avoid the rapid flow of information, and in fact it is becoming increasingly necessary to seek out and process information with ever-greater rapidity even while the amount of information that must be so processed continues to grow at an exponential rate.

But is it really as bad as certain social commentators and scholars have claimed? Does all of this information really add up to nothing more than so much noise, serving no purpose other than to distract and dissuade from rational and direct thought? Are attention spans and critical thinking skills really as damaged by the modern noise of information as much as is claimed by some extreme Luddites, or are there advantages to the amount of information not only available but clamoring for attention in the modern age? A reflection on how information truly works in the Information Age reveals that things might not have changes as much as we think.

There is no question that we are presented with more noise -- more auditory and visual information -- in this day and age than in any other. Electronic media has made this noise a ubiquitous and for many a continuous part of daily life since the radio first became a household appliance, through the creation and proliferation of the television, and continuing with the Internet and the plethora of computers, tablets, media players, video game systems, and other devices that utilize the Internet and other technological developments to enable users to access more and more information at faster and faster speeds. The vast majority of websites are funded through advertising revenue, meaning the information actually being sought on the web is being presented alongside and in competition with advertisements that are colorful and with increasing regularity noisy; everything can be commented on and comments can be read by others, and the sheer quantity of noise out there certainly can make it more difficult to separate good information from bad.

At the same time, the ability to rapidly share information, to comment, and even to view advertisements for products that might otherwise have gone unnoticed is in many ways the inevitable step of the development of the human consciousness. We are social beings that have always worked towards building better connections in our cultures and civilizations. Some attempts have been decidedly counterproductive, perhaps most of all the attempts to silence individuals within a society and limit the free flow of information. Societies that don't produce a lot of noise don't produce a whole lot of anything else of lasting value, either.