Too much choice – we can’t decide what we really need

The vast amount of information and choice now instantly available may also be narrowing our field of vision. A metastudy of scientific journals (a study of other studies) by James Evans at the University of Chicago found online journals are starting to cite fewer and fewer other academic papers and the papers that are referenced tend to be relatively new.

In other words, the breadth of information links is actually narrowing. This is odd because you’d think that online searching would make it easier to add more sources but perhaps this is a function of narrowing search. People simply don’t bump into information accidentally as much as they used to.

For example, only 1% of Google searches actually proceed beyond page one of results, so if something isn’t listed on page one, it might as well not exist. So does this mean that Google is closing minds rather than opening them? Late in 2009, for instance, Google launched an online news service called “Fast Flip”. This allows users to browse news stories significantly faster than if they loaded individual web pages. It is, according to Google: “really fast without unnatural delays”. Yes folks, you can now jump from one factoid to another without having to think about what you are doing.

Another example of how choice can create restriction is my own television viewing habits. When I only had 3-4 terrestrial channels to choose from I would be forced to watch certain programmes simply because there was nothing else on. And this indirectly expanded my experiences. I found things that I didn’t think I’d like and programmes I wasn’t expecting to watch. But nowadays I have a choice of 100+ digital channels from around the world and there never seems to be anything worth watching. Over-choice forces me to watch what I’m already familiar with and new experiences are forfeited.