As with food, we spent most of our history deprived of information and craving it; now we have way too much of... — Douglas Rushkoff

As with food, we spent most of our history deprived of information and craving it; now we have way too much of it to function and manage its entropy and toxicity.

Author: Douglas Rushkoff

Insight: We used to live in scarcity, hunting for facts the way our ancestors hunted for food. A good book was precious. An expert's opinion was hard-won. Now we're drowning in it—algorithms feeding us content at machine speed, notifications pinging every few seconds, hot takes multiplying faster than we can think. The problem isn't ignorance anymore. It's that our brains, evolved for selective attention, are being asked to process what feels like infinite information at once. What's tricky is that more information doesn't automatically make us smarter. It can do the opposite. We mistake volume for depth, scrolling for understanding. The constant flow actually makes decisions harder, not easier. You end up paralyzed by options, or worse, absorbing junk alongside the genuine stuff because you're moving too fast to filter. It's like going from being hungry to being force-fed—the transition solves an old problem while creating an entirely new one. The real skill now isn't accessing information; it's knowing what to ignore. It's choosing slowness in a system designed to punish it. That's not about being less curious. It's about protecting your attention as fiercely as you'd protect your time, because in an age of abundance, scarcity has just shifted—now it's your focus that's in short supply.