What’s So Bad About Information Overload?

I had a conversation with Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy recently about this much-maligned phenomenon. It’s a topic of particular interest at Xerox, which feels partly responsible for the problem. After all, the company created one of the earliest sources of information overload: the photocopy machine, which permitted limitless reproduction of printed information and resulted in towering piles of interoffice memoranda in people's (physical, in that bygone era, rather than digital) in-boxes .

Possibly to help assuage corporate guilt for this near-original sin, the company has developed an array of products and services that help organizations and individuals more effectively manage, filter, and share information. One of the more unusual ones in development is self-erasing paper, to be used for “transient” documents with a prescribed period of utility. When the information on the document is at the end of its useful life, the ink disappears and the paper can be reused -- saving trees but also eliminating a clutter of unnecessary information.

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