Some people consider the Internet to be nothing less than the collective extension of the human mind. Most people would be hard-pressed to disagree. Unlike the human mind, however, if we want to know or recall anything, all we have to do is type it into a little box and hit the ‘search’ button. (If only our own brains were as simple as this.)
The major problem with the expansion of the Internet is the idea of entropy. As the Internet continues to grow, so too does the amount of information it carries and stores. With the number of Internet users numbering less than 100 million in 1992 and expanding to over 500 million in the following fifteen years, the Internet truly is a synecdoche not only for the human mind, but the universe itself. The question is, does it run the same risks? In other words, can there be too much information to share via software like FileZilla and Ares?
In a recent study, statistics have shown that over 60% of people look for information online when answering their health questions. While some of the information you can find online is legitimate, it is becoming increasingly difficult to sort through the authentic and the synthetic. Often times, the synthetic will catch your eye before the authentic, which leaves either a lot of people going to the doctor for phantom illnesses or a lot of other people staying home with serious medical conditions. This is just one example of ‘information surfeit.’
Despite whatever the implications of such a massive amount of information might be, it’s no question that the demand for collective knowledge keeps programmers and engineers on their toes and file transferring programs like File Zilla busy. More information means we need faster ways to process and sort that information, and more advanced hardware to keep everything in order. Strangely enough, the human mind works in exactly the same way.