The Overflow of Information

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 769, 15 April 1954, Page 4

The Overflow of Information

NE of the social phenomena of these times is the appearance of men and women, carrying notebooks and ball-point pens, at suburban doorsteps. They ask questions, write down the answers, and go off with expressions of esteem and _ gratitude. Later, when the answers have been collated, the results may be published. In this way wee@were able to discover a week or two ago that 280 people out of 1000, questioned in London, could not identify Sir Edmund Hillary, that 180 could not remember the name of a notorious murderer, and that 500 knew something about Dr. Kinsey (the Dr. Kinsey) and Senator McCarthy. There are, presumably, good reasons for this sort of investigation; but they are not easily discovered. What is proved if a housewife could not remember the name of the Notting Hill murderer? Had she known and forgotten? Was she trying very hard to remember, with half her attention on what was cooking in the kitchen? Perhaps she had read one of the newspapers which refrained from splashing the trial across the front page under ghoulish headings, If she had read the reports, her failure to remember them might have been the result of a sort Of concussion: there is, we suspect, a point beyond which the headlines and the adjectives have no further impact. She might even have been a woman not much interested in murders, or in the biographies of those who commit them. Such people exist, though some Fleet Street editors might refuse to believe it. For better or worse, however, the information is collected. Later it is studied by persons unknown, for reasons only to be guessed at; and finally it disappears even ffom the archives. We are a generation so busy about the collection of facts that some wastage is inevitable, and much to be desired. The work is being done continuously by private or semi-public bodies, State departments all over the world, and every agency of

United Nations. They are not, of course, concerned very often with such matters as memory tests for housewives. The aim is severely factual. Huge volumes are produced which enable us to see at a glance that 2.5 metric tons of newsprint were imported into the Seychelles in 1939, that about 250 receiving sets are being used in Dominica, and that the Government Press in Zanzibar has three linotypes manufactured 30 years ago in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, by the time these volumes have been circulated, the position has changed slightly: there may be less newsprint in the Seychelles, an alteration of listening habits in Dominica, and a replacement of equipment in Zanzibar. The search for information must begin again. From the first edition, meanwhile, has come an immense proliferation of booklets, pamphlets and leaflets. An astonishing number of these documents are sent to newspaper offices. If they were all put aside, filed and indexed for future use, a large staff would be needed to look after them. If they were allowed to accumulate haphazardly, they would take possession of an office as remorselessly as trees coming back to an abandoned hillside. The waste paper basket must therefore receive them. It is depressing to think of the work that goes vainly into the preparation of so many documents. They are cemeteries of facts-facts that have ceased to be correct, facts that are correct about the wrong things, facts that nobody wants to know. And too often they grow up like weeds around information that is really wanted. The collection of data about anything and everything is sometimes thought to be the beginning of wisdom. It is more likely to be a magpie habit that leads only to confusion. One of the aims of United Nations has be@h to bring about "the free flow of information." A useful beginning would be to close the channels for cleansing, and afterwards to encourage a more rigorous selection of what should be entitled to flow.