There are negative spiritual side effects when we’re overinformed but underactivated.
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Five years after publishing Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman gave a speech to the German Informatics Society that elaborated on his concept of the “information-action ratio.” In the talk, titled “Informing Ourselves to Death,” Postman described how, for the average person in 1990, “information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems.” The way he described it could just as easily describe the average person in 2025:
The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one’s status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don’t know what to do with it. . . . Our defenses against information glut have broken down; our information immune system is inoperable. We don’t know how to filter it out; we don’t know how to reduce it; we don’t know how to use it.
