Companies
Information overload: It’s everybody’s battle
Summary
- A recent study by Oracle conducted among 14,000 employees and business leaders across 17 countries found that more data is not helping
Without data you’re just another person with an opinion," American statistician Edwards Deming once said. But if data is indeed the new oil, we’re a species dipping, and even drowning, in it today. A recent study by Oracle conducted among 14,000 employees and business leaders across 17 countries found that more data is not helping. Rather it has led to a crisis in decision-making. Around 78% of the workforce could be facing an overload of data from ever-increasing sources, with 29% overwhelmed by the feeling of having too much data, the survey found. This points to a known consequence of technology: information overload and lack of knowledge and trust with data. Mint explores:
Copy. Paste. Send. Repeat.
At the heart of data overload is the simple, yet complex, idea that information can now be created and transmitted in milliseconds. Ancient messengers galloping on horses would have taken more than a day to travel 100 km. Even earlier, it took lengthy cave walls to depict information in the pre-writing era. Today’s messengers can do all this in a matter of seconds, occupying a fraction of the space that a pen-tip occupies. Information not only has become quicker, but also more portable.
Data abound
The volume of data that is created, copied, and consumed globally has been forecast to see a staggering rise of over 32 times in the past decade. In 2010, just 2 trillion gigabytes (around 3,200 trillion books) of data was created, which jumped to 64.2 trillion GB (equivalent to over 100,000 trillion books) in 2020, according to International Data Corporation. By 2025, global data creation could grow to more than 180 trillion GB a year, estimates market data platform Statista.
Overload everywhere!
An average person spends over six hours on the internet per day, according to DataReportal, a data aggregator. Google processes nearly 3.5 billion requests every day. If you thought data is making aspects of life such as dating and healthcare easier, think again.
Numerous unsuccessful swipes and matches on dating apps or a cluttered browsing experience with numerous open tabs are an everyday reality.
Health websites offer contradicting advice on life-and-death matters. The overdose takes a toll on self-avowed ‘data-driven’ businesses as well, with datasets and dashboards leading to analysis-paralysis, stress among business leaders, and inertia in decision-making, according to an Oracle survey.
