I’m tired. In fact, I’m exhausted. I’m overwhelmed. It’s not from going to the gym. It’s not from being glued to my TV, watching my favorite baseball team trying to survive the playoffs.
It’s the torrent of information that has been drowning me 24 hours a day, with no promise of abating. Is there any hope that the flood will end and that I’ll have a respite from information overload? Is there any hope that the barrage will shut down over the weekend, when we try to pay less attention to our laptops and cellphones? Or are we doomed to being perpetually overwhelmed by the greatest avalanche of facts, figures, news, emails, text messages and robocalls since the dawn of the high-tech era?
There is no one culprit that we can identify whose elimination would give us a reprieve from the onslaught. One of the biggest offenders of them all is, of course, the White House, which engages in a strategy known as Flood the Zone. Every day, it releases so many “hot” news items that it would take you or me two or three days just to get through them. In addition to the media flood, President Trump holds freewheeling news conferences that can last well over an hour. Generally, those events generate other news stories on top of the daily pressroom output.
Then there’s the smartphone app challenge. I checked my phone and found that I am attached to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X and have subscriptions to the Daily News, the New York Post, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsday, Newsday TV, the Huffington Post, Apple News, The Hill, CNN, The Weather Channel and some others that I’ve forgotten. I know that over the course of the day, I tap into every one of those outlets for some type of information.
Once a week, I get a text telling me that, on average, I’m on my phone for a minimum of six hours a week. That doesn’t sound like a lot of hours, but imagine waiting at a bus stop for six hours. It’s a long time.
Beyond all these challenges is the introduction of artificial intelligence into our lives. No matter how hard you try, there’s no way to escape the onslaught of articles, studies, memos and office talk about AI. Just a few years ago, if someone had uttered the words artificial intelligence, they would have been largely ignored. These days, those words hover over us like a threatening storm cloud, with most of us having no idea whether it will help or harm us.
Once upon a time, watching television was a respite from the pressures of the day. Today, watching TV can leave you dazed and confused by hour after hour of commercials for countless drugs, all of which, apparently, will save humanity. On top of the drug tsunami, there are countless other ads that dominate the time you would like to just sit back and watch your favorite show, uninterrupted.
To add to the desperation for some chill time, there’s today’s typical news program. How many times in a half-hour can there be so much “breaking” news? And the repetition of the same stories can be head-splitting.
Last, but by far not least, is the introduction into our space of the podcast. Today, almost every media, political, religious, sports or entertainment personality has a podcast of some kind. They have rotating guests, and offer a mountain of opinions on the subjects of the moment. Many of them are interesting and informative, but how many hours in a day do we have to partake in this newest information vehicle?
So that is my ongoing nightmare. It is mine, but it’s the nightmare that we all face. We’re just human beings; we’re not robots. At least for now, they can’t implant a chip in our brain to help us fend off the cascade of facts, figures, opinions, ideas, theories and concepts that flood our every waking hour. So we’ll have to find new ways to help ourselves live a normal life, and still be adequately informed people.
Jerry Kremer was a state assemblyman for 23 years, and chaired the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee for 12 years. Comments about this column? jkremer@liherald.com.
