These days, we kind of take information for granted. After all, it's hard not to, living, as we do, in the Information Age. What's the name of the final boss in Gradius? Who was that guy in the movie with the thing? What's a good recipe for tuna casserole? I don't know the answers to any of those, but I bet the Internet does.
It's pretty nice being able to find out virtually anything you want to know almost instantly. Gone are the frustrations and wasted hours that would have accompanied the quest to find any of the answers above, replaced by a few elegant keystrokes and a good, solid connection. And now, thanks to the likes of YouTube, not only can you find out what song played at the end of that movie, you can probably even listen to it and watch the music video! Life is good.
But, of course, as anyone who has ever had to bust out the Pepto-Bismol after an all-you-can-eat experience knows, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. There is a lot of information out there, sure, and we're getting better and better at sorting through it (thanks, Google!), but it still means the signal-to-noise ratio is getting lower and lower. Between marketers finding newer, more viral ways to get the word out and kids with a certain sense of humor changing Wikipedia entries to say butt,"" finding the real-deal information you can trust and count on gets harder every day.
For instance, we all want to be ""happy,"" right? Google lists 925 million hits, making it hard to find some good advice. What's that, you say? Oh, Bill, just ""relax""? That's 120 million hits. You get the point. Even after filtering out all the junk, the average web user is bombarded with information.
Just the other day, my left middle finger felt funny, kind of tingling. It was a little disconcerting, so I figured I'd check out what it might mean. After finding WebMD, a website I felt I could trust, and entering my symptoms (""tingly finger""), the site thought for a moment before giving me a list of 20 ""conditions associated with the selected symptoms."" At the very top, so as to be extra frightening, was multiple sclerosis.
Now, I want to be careful in saying this next part. If you do happen to have MS or know someone who does, I mean no disrespect. I wish you well and hope we find a cure soon. It's a pretty unfortunate disease to have, at least according to all the information I read, nervously, on WebMD. It seemed a pretty big leap to go from tingling in a finger to MS, but since that's (apparently) one of the symptoms of the disease, they didn't want to leave that out. They told me every possible thing I could have, based on the prodigious information at their disposal. Was it helpful? Was it worth it? Well, in this case, no.
As it turns out, I didn't have any of the 20 associated conditions, since my finger tingle disappeared the following day, contrary to what the WebMD lists predicted. Either I had something so minor going on that it wasn't worth checking out, or I discovered a rare new disorder: the Andrews finger. Regardless, not only did all the vast information available on WebMD not help me out, it actively messed with me.
It made me think about all that information we see every day, whether it's information we seek out, like a good recipe, or information that seeks us out, like a Facebook announcement. It's pretty nice, usually, but maybe sometimes it's better not having the info right away.
And I'm not just saying that because I still can't think of who the guy was who did that one thing in that one movie.
Has a finger tingle got you turning to the Internet for information? Have no fear. Only Dr. Andrews knows just the solution. E-mail him at science@dailycardinal.com.
