As a society, a culture, a species? Are our brain / minds, on average, capable of swallowing the fire hose of information at our fingertips?

Because I have come to believe we have not evolved enough to handle it.

Well, to tell the truth, I remember having this conversation before the internet opened the floodgate. In a smoke-filled room discussing if cable television and 24-hour news was making people a bit crazy, prone to propaganda as never before, spoon feed bullshit with a spade, in what, 1990?

Now I am not suggesting that the easy access to information from across the planet should be limited. I’m a huge fan. Raw images from mars! Every geologic map published in the US a few scrolls and clicks away without ever lifting my butt from the chair. Chasing references in an article without searching through library stacks. Live video of volcanos. I’m a g-damn junky. Put it right into the veins, please.

Or, is it a matter not of an evolved brain unable to digest the huge amount of information we are presented with on a daily basis, or of training to discern the good from the bad, the true from the wrong, the intent to inform verses the intent to persuade? To educate or to control?

Do some people break from that river of info?

These are the things I wonder about. And the concept of the global brain; but, that’s another conversation.

(Decided to put this on “Mysteries” board because it is a philosophic question)