Or in other words…too much information. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty much on information overload at the moment. Granted, as a journalist, information is pretty much part and parcel of my daily job. I expect that…and indeed, it’s one of the things I’ve always liked best about my work. I love learning new things, I love talking to new people, I love being in the world and of the world. But somewhere along the way, probably about the same time that digital TV and broadband Internet became part of our daily lives, it all started to be a bit too much.

Once upon a time, many journeys ago, I would go to Europe and feel as if I were, well, in Europe. There weren’t always televisions in the hotels where I stayed, and when there were, CNN had yet to make its presence known. If I wanted to talk to someone at home, I called—but not often because the rates were high and the connections were less than crystal clear. And when I told family, friends, and colleagues that I was going on vacation, I was on vacation. Email and text messaging were still in the future…nobody felt the need to “reach out and touch” 24/7.

But those days are long gone. Whether we’re at home or we’re traveling, we can now be constantly deluged by emails, text messages, cell phone calls from anyone and everyone in our address book. And the immediacy of technology means that everyone expects you to be available at a moment’s notice.

But our own accessibility is just part of the TMI syndrome. How often do you go to look something up on the Internet and two hours later you’ve made your way through two dozen websites as one question leads to another leads to another and so on. There’s always another story to read, another site to visit, another question to ask.

True, this access to information any time of the day or night, from any part of the world, has made my job much easier. No longer do I have to wait until the next morning to go to the library to find what I needed. Indeed, if I didn’t want to, I’d never have to go to a library again (but, bookaholic that I am, that will never happen). That’s the plus side.

The minus? How much of what is coming in to us now do we really need to know? How much is actually enhancing our life? How much time is spent on gathering information compared to actually reflecting on that information? Where is the experience of learning, the sharing of opinions and knowledge that helps us refine our ideas—or even change them. Indeed, how much time do we actually spend anymore with other people at all? As we’ve become technologically obsessed, we seem to have lost the knack—or even the interest—in being with other people. (We could also get into one of my pet peeves, the lack of civility that technology seems to have spawned, but I’ll save that for another rant, another day!)

Perhaps it’s not too much information that’s the problem, but the speed with which we’re collecting it--which leaves little room for thought--and the solitariness of the effort, which leaves little room for the experience of true communication and intimacy.

The world is available to us in ways many of us (well, many of us past the age of 20 anyway) could never have imagined. We have gained much in the bargain. But just what have we lost?